First, it updates regulations to allow
contracting officers to presume that a prior Defense Department commercial item determination applies to subsequent procurements of the same item.
Without answers to those questions, your job as the unit
contracting officer will be much harder than it needs to be.
In our current budget environment,
Contracting officers consistently seek innovative ways to ensure we spend our limited resources judiciously, and work closely with customers to search out strategic and innovative solutions that stretch their dollars even further.
The federal rules generally require competition among healthcare sellers to win our contracts, and require that, for a MEDCOM contract to be legally binding, it can be entered into or changed only by a warranted
contracting officer. As the US Supreme Court has stated (Federal Crop Insurance Corp v Merrill, 332 US 380), the fact that sellers
Part of the reason that
contracting officers might believe that they are the top dog is that the term "
contracting officer" appears 5,381 times in the FAR, while the term "program manager" appears a mere 7 times.
If SBA ruled that the company was not small, the
contracting officer may, but is not required to, take action such as terminating the contract or denying an option.
During this stage and during all the activities associated with the contracting process, the
contracting officer will help you, while also complying with his or her many legal and regulatory requirements.
(38) The court noted that the Department of Defense specifically prohibits delegating to a
contracting officer's representative (COR) the authority to make contract changes that affect price or other contract terms, (39) and that this prohibition was incorporated into the contract by the clause at Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.201-7000.
A
contracting officer from the RCC then prepared the solicitation, compared bids, awarded the contract to a local vendor, and issued a proceed notice to start work.
On the other hand, 8(a) set-asides and SDVOSB set-asides are discretionary with the
contracting officer. (22) This means the
contracting officer does not have to restrict competition to only 8(a) firms (23) or SDVOSBs when the criteria for those set-asides are met.
The IG found that "In 22 of the 24 contracts,
contracting officers did not support price reasonableness determinations, and in 13 others little or no government oversight was provided after award" (Federal Contracts Report, 2004, March 30, p.
(78) Imputed knowledge exists when a government employee making the unauthorized commitment has a duty to inform the
contracting officer of the questioned event, and the court presumes the government employee did so inform the
contracting officer.