James Hasik

COVID-19 Response: Contracting with Speed

Charles Dolgas — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 19:36:05 +0000

COVID-19 Response: Contracting with Speed Charles Dolgas Fri, 03/25/2022 - 15:36

Focuses on the performance of FAR and non-FAR authorities in the COVID response to date:

Rapid contracting approaches in federal contracting
Acquisition Reform
FAR and Non-FAR contracts

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Center for Government Contracting Media Mentions

Center for Government Contracting Reports

No. 7. What Future for Remote Work in Federal Contracting?

Marianne Klinker — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 20:47:54 +0000

No. 7. What Future for Remote Work in Federal Contracting? Marianne Klinker Fri, 10/08/2021 - 16:47

At this juncture, we can have some confidence about what the past few decades and the past year have taught us. Remote work has been a long time coming, but remote work mostly works. It is certainly less expensive than commuting to central offices. The COVID-19 crisis has provided a great opportunity, and the broad enthusiasm for remoteness may be developing some permanence. Many contractors are already embracing the practice formally and with lasting effect. What is less clear is what breadth and permanence federal agencies will allow, at least in their on-site contractors, and on contracts where work locations are geographically restricted.

The degree to which remote work will continue depends on the following factors: legitimization, shaping, and timing.

Legitimizing the new practices, even against a backdrop of questionable old practices, means making them “socially, culturally, and politically acceptable,” here within the particular context of federal contracting. Legitimization of a market practice can be seen as a three-step process: unfreezing the current equilibrium, moving it to a new equilibrium, and then refreezing it there, at least for the near-term. Public reaction to the pandemic quickly unfroze the widespread acceptance of tacit discouragement of remote work. The task for contractors enthused about remote workforces is to prevent backsliding by federal contracting officers to old demands.
Shaping the market means inducing transformational learning across the market—learning which changes their organizations’ view of what is possible in the markets—by both customers in government and providers in industry. In business-to-government marketing, shaping the institutional practices of organizationally complex procurement bureaucracies can require great investment of time in creating facts on the ground
In market-shaping, timing can also be important. Office work, airline travel, and mass transit have clearly been affected cyclically, and possibly transformed secularly, at least in the private sector. We may be in a long stretch of a lingering, undulating response to a pandemic that substantially affects the willingness of people to work alongside one another. How quickly that willingness will return, and how much of it will return, after the widespread availability of a presumably efficacious vaccine remains to be seen.

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No. 4. The Value of Intellectual Property in Government Procurement Auctions

Marianne Klinker — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 20:41:04 +0000

No. 4. The Value of Intellectual Property in Government Procurement Auctions Marianne Klinker Fri, 10/08/2021 - 16:41

The intellectual property (IP) stakes are high, for “if government holds the IP rights too tightly, exercise of power can damage industry’s incentives for innovation, potentially limiting the flow of those innovations to the military.” On the other hand, if the government fails to leverage its rights, it can leave money on the table in follow-on awards for the same materiel.

Where the government owns the IP rights to their designs, even sole-source incumbents might be expected to use limit-pricing—maintaining lower margins than expected—to discourage further competitions, maintaining at least some of that margin.

To test this proposition, author James Hasik, who has been studying global security challenges and the economic enterprises that provide the tools to address them for decades, undertakes a focused comparison of two recent programs by Oshkosh Corporation for military, medium-weight trucks: the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) for the US Army and the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) for the US Marine Corps.

His findings suggest the opposite: prices can rise sharply after competitively awarded contracts expire, whether the government owns the IP rights or not. Thus, securing advantageous pricing over the long-term through IP rights requires a credible threat by government to move away from sole-source, follow-on awards.

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Center for Government Contracting White Papers

No. 2. Pricing Intellectual Property in Defense Competitions: Toward Theoretical and Practical Advice for Government Officials and Government Contractors

Marianne Klinker — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 20:36:55 +0000

No. 2. Pricing Intellectual Property in Defense Competitions: Toward Theoretical and Practical Advice for Government Officials and Government Contractors Marianne Klinker Fri, 10/08/2021 - 16:36

The ownership of the intellectual property (IP) underlying the design of complex weapon systems has been at issue—between governments and their contractors—for over a century. In the United States, federal policy has directed several cycles of attention, both positive and negative, on the relative need to acquire these IP rights.

In this white paper, author James Hasik, who has been studying global security challenges and the economic enterprises that provide the tools to address them for decades, introduces a model of defense procurement competitions to examine the difference on pricing IP between the government and government contractors, and how that difference can be reduced.

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Center for Government Contracting White Papers