Contract saves millions of dollars

By Ms. Rachel Clark (Army Contracting Command)June 4, 2014

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KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany - The 409th Contracting Support Brigade recently awarded a contract for support services saving the government millions of dollars.

The 409th CSB's Regional Contracting Office Stuttgart awarded a contract for U.S. Africa Command's Joint Training and Exercise Directorate Services to receive exercise and training program support; readiness, assessments, and doctrine support.

"With people working together on this contract, we were able to achieve a cost savings of more than $23 million over five years," said Dan Shearer, 409 CSB, contracting support operations director.

JTEDS had been doing contracting business with a number of agencies when it began working with Daniel Jaques, 409th's procurement liaison for USAFRICOM. Jaques provided initial customer training, guidance and recommendations and then brought the customer to RCO Stuttgart to develop an effective and efficient cost-saving approach.

During the requirements development stage, RCO Stuttgart and USAFRICOM were able to identify many inefficiencies and redundancies caused by the separate contracts.

Upon further investigation, Brian Vaughn, 409th CSB contacting specialist, started researching all of AFRICOM's open contracts and found four separate task orders administered by several different contacting agencies could be done in one contract.

According to Vaughan, these consolidation effort significantly simplified and improved contract administration while doing away with redundancies. The consolidation eliminated communication barriers that existed between various contracted firms and ensured consistency in the service deliverables while providing uniformity to the contract terms and conditions. Additionally the effort reduced overhead, management fees, and applicable Government administration fees, while creating a straight-forward performance-based, firm fixed priced contract vehicle.

"Developing the requirements for this contract was the biggest challenge, but we have such a good working relationship with the customer, we were able to create a performance of work statement that clearly identifies their needs, and save money in the process," said Vaughan.

The teams worked closely together through the acquisition process to attain a contract providing better support and a cost savings of $23 million over five years. This savings estimate is based on current costs of the four separate contracts.

According to Vaughan, the cost savings are realized by eliminating inefficiencies and contracting agency surcharges in the current contracts and replacing them with a performance-based, firm-fixed-price contract. A firm fixed price contract provides the maximum incentive for the contractor to control costs and perform effectively while imposing the minimum burden for government administration.

"Getting the best value for the U.S. government and for our customers is a critical part of our job and this award saved 60 percent of the amount previously paid for these services," Bilal Shain, contracting officer, RCO Stuttgart.