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Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)
... Reflecting this evolution, a major professional organization in this field changed "purchasing" to "procurement": The National Association of State Purchasing Officers was renamed The National Association of State Procurement Officers in 1998. 1 Then, in 1990, the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing Inc. decided to take a leading role in academic research and education by signing a partnership agreement with a higher education in 1990. This agreement has led to a new Public Procurement Research Center in 1999 at Florida Atlantic University, and two years later, a new academic journal, Journal of Public Procurement (2001). ...
... In the spirit of the technical superiority of bureaucracy, the centralization trend in public purchasing continued mostly unchallenged until early 1980s [30]. Within the latter 1 The year of name change was confirmed in an April 30, 2012 Outside military spending, the political narrative of the last two decades has probably been most critical force in shaping public procurement dynamics. The deregulation movement of 1980s, importantly informed by economics-driven perspectives such as public choice and new public management, put immense pressure on the system as a whole to reconsider its practices and priorities. ...
... The Office of Federal Procurement Policy, a part of the Office of Management and Budget, assists in the establishment, development, and maintenance of Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR); coordinates the development of government-wide procurement systems criteria and expectations; and provides direction in the development of procurement processes of executive agencies. The FAR represents the main body of administrative rules that have been developed to guide public procurement at the federal level and they are set within title 48 of the United Stated Code of Federal Regulation [1]. The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Councils also play important roles within in establishing procurement policy and regulatory activities. ...
A decade ago, there were valid concerns regarding the limited emphasis that was being placed on public procurement within scholarly literature and within the policy discourse. This is no longer the case. The latter, however, has perhaps been motivated more by necessity due austere financial and budgetary constraints, than by strategically nurtured interest in the area. Overall, it could be argued, that while we have made authentic progress in our understanding of the intricate dynamics of public procurement, there are still lesson to be learned before we could recognize a habitual practice of procurement excellence. This chapter addresses these types of lessons through a discussion of the public procurement in United States.
... The central objective of partnering is to encourage contracting parties to change their traditional adversarial relationships to a more cooperative, team-based approach. The Corps of Engineers believes that the benefits of successful partnering relations include avoidance of disputes, improved communication, increased quality and efficiency, on-time performance, improved longterm relationships, and a fair profit and prompt payment for the contractor (Carr et al. 1991). ...
... Much of the taxpayers' money does not go to productive facilities, but instead to increased overhead, litigation, and contesting experts. To overcome the negative impacts of adversarial relationships, the Corps has looked to partnering as one solution to the problem (Carr et al. 1991). ...
Partnering in engineering and construction usually involves an agreement between an owner and contractor to work together for an extended period of time, over several consecutive contracts. Because of legal regulations, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is unable to establish long-term partnering relationships, but has been successful in implementing partnering on a project-by-project basis. This paper presents an overview of the methodology that is used to set up public-sector partnering agreements. It presents the extent of the Corps of Engineers’ partnering program in domestic districts, including the status of projects both completed and ongoing. Data from recently completed projects are presented that indicate significant cost savings and schedule reductions for construction projects executed using partnering arrangements, and interview data with partnering project participants are given that tend to support the premise that partnering is a viable contract administration alternative for public-sector projects. Finally, conclusions and recommendations concerning partnering on Corps of Engineers’ projects are presented.
... us to discern the R&D portion of non-R&D contracts. However, the primary objective of non-R&D contracts is not to conduct research on behalf of the government (GSA, 2005). ...
This paper addresses the question of whether government procurement can work as a de facto innovation policy tool. We develop an endogenous growth model with quality-improving innovation that incorporates industries with heterogeneous innovation sizes. Government demand in high-tech industries increases the market size in these industries and, with it, the incentives for private firms to invest in R&D. At the economy-wide level, the additional R&D induced in high-tech industries outweighs the R&D foregone in all remaining industries. The implications of the model are empirically tested using a unique data set that includes federal procurement in U.S. states. We find evidence that a shift in the composition of government purchases toward high-tech industries indeed stimulates privately funded company R&D.
Cities increasingly plant trees for the numerous benefi ts they provide to communities. Tree health and structure at planting affect their growth and development and the long-term accumulation of important environmental, economic, and social benefi ts. Consequently, it is important to procure and acquire high quality trees from commercial suppliers. In order to characterize the range of experience with tree procurement, a qualitative study was conducted to document this important urban forest management process in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 municipal arborists to obtain primary information about tree procurement and acquisition, and the data collected were evaluated to summarize the state of knowledge about this process. The data suggest three main components comprise tree procurement, including establishing needs and requirements, evaluating and assigning suppliers, and managing commercial relationships. During 2008, participants in this study collectively planted over 26,000 trees from 132 woody taxa. Although participants described similar tree planting needs, they adopted markedly different approaches to buying them from and interacting with commercial suppliers. The results illustrate similarities and differences in tree procurement among participants and establish a framework for further research and discussion.
This paper offers a new approach to government's vendor selection decisions in major public procurements. A key challenge is for government purchasing agents to select vendors that deliver the best combination of desired non-price attributes at realistic funding levels. The mechanism proposed in this paper is a multiattribute first price, sealed bid procurement auction. It extends traditional price-only auctions to one in which competition takes place exclusively over attribute bundles. The model is a multiattribute auction in which a set of possible budget levels is specified. This model reveals the benefits of defining a procurement alternative in terms of its value to the buyer over a range of possible expenditures, rather than as a single point in budget-value space. This new approach leads to some interesting results. In particular, it suggests that in a fiscally constrained environment, the traditional approach of eliminating dominated alternatives could lead to sub-optimal decisions. Finally, an extension of the model explicitly examines the buyer's decision problem under budget uncertainty by applying a utility function assessed over the value measure.
Acquisition of a system-of-systems can be an all new acquisition of multiple systems that are intended to operate together as a system-of-systems. Much more common in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is acquisition of one or more new systems that are intended to interoperate with existing systems as a system of systems (SoS) with new capabilities. In either case, successful SoS acquisition necessarily depends on effective contracting structures and processes for SoS acquisition. In this paper, a set of issues that need to be addressed in SoS acquisition are identified, and the current findings discussed. The findings suggest maintaining an extensive systems engineering effort within the SoS acquisition and changes to the existing contracting processes, structures, and organizational structures to maximize the probability of SoS acquisition success. The resulting changes are recommended to current and future DoD SoS acquisitions. ©2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 15
This thesis was directed at identifying the effects of multiyear procurement (MYP) on the subcontractor competitive environment. Two separate questionnaires were utilized to elicit operational procedures and subjective opinions from a sample of U.S. Navy MYP prime contractors and their vendors associated with the multiyear contract. The responses from the prime contractors were not of sufficient detail to derive any generalized statements about the effects of MYP on their subcontracting activities. The subcontractor surveys indicated a strong consensus of opinion that their current position as a subcontractor created a definite advantage for their firm at contract resolicitation. The perceived negative effects of multiyear procurement are on the subcontractors who have to wait for up to five years to recompete for that segment of business.
Thesis advisor, James M. Fremgen. Available from National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Va. Thesis (M.S. in Management) Naval Postgraduate School, Dec. 1987. Includes bibliographical references. Microfiche.
For the case in which a product with an uncertain cost is acquired in a competitive environment, Samuelson developed a bidding model that analyzes the trade-off between the objectives of risk sharing and efficient contractor selection. Using Samuelson's model as the basic analytical framework, this paper extends earlier results for concealed bidding and the optimal number of bidders so that they apply to cost-reimbursement contracts, and extends earlier results for the optimal profit margin in a follow-on contract to allow a more general bidding situation.
Continue on teverae aide If neceaaary and identify by block number) This paper gives four principles for preparing multimedia instructional sequence and, where necessary, the experimental methods for applying the principles successfully. It also describes the empirical experiments on which the principl are based. Principle One is a criterion for good terminology for unfamiliar objects, actions, and situations, with methods for deriving such terminology. Principle Two tells how to overlap visual and spoken elements in time (as in FORM 1473 EDITION OF 1 NOV 65 IS OBSOLETE DD 1 J^N 3 SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF THIS PAGE (When Data Entered) SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF THIS PAGE(M/hen Data a movie or lecture with slides) in order for good associations to be formed. Principle Three states that division of instructions into conceptual units should be in agreement with people's natural conceptualization. Here, a method is presented for finding the natural conceptualization. Finally, Principle Four regards mixing audiovisual instruction with hands-on practice in learning a procedure. These principles should be useful in a variety of situations.