Sign Wisconsin Electrical Services Contract Secure

Document type sign electrical services contract wisconsin secure

hi everybody this is jennifer shouse coming to you live from washington dc today and thanks for joining us in our dfar's defense federal acquisition regulation supplement 2021 series last year we covered the far the federal acquisition regulations and decided to move on to defense contracting this year like last year this is a complimentary webinar series they're held every wednesday you'll get the recording the link to the recording from hunter barr from my team later this afternoon but let's move on to the next slide i can tell you a little bit more information okay so as i mentioned this is a complimentary webinar series uh obviously every wednesday at 12 o'clock today obviously it's tuesday so we're just going to kick it off with an introduction to the dfars diana mcgraw will be our speaker you'll hear more about her and from her later in this presentation and all of our speakers throughout this series throughout the entire year are going to be attorneys consultants and other folks that have experience in defense contracting most of our speakers have been speakers in our webinar series in the past so we're excited to have them back and sharing great content and really just breaking down the rules and the regulations for selling to uh department of defense so with that i'm going to turn it over to hunter barr for my team he's going to go through and thank our sponsors and give them the recognition that they deserve he'll then tell you a little bit about diana and she will share some great content with you guys and we're excited to have diana be a presenter today so hunter over to you thank you jennifer and a special thanks to our educational sponsor um the national veterans small business coalition for making these webinars possible the nvsbc is the largest non-profit trade association for veterans and please visit the website for more information okay and now a little bit about us we work with u.s federal government contractors including products service and software firms our services range from market analysis reports to contract vehicles and compliance and more information can be found on our website we also have opportunities for your organization to advertise in our newsletter we now reach over 23 000 subscribers and this includes both contractors and government contact us for pricing information with the email shown on the screen i also wanted to inform you of a new series in 2021 we have launched a monthly series called the govcon live q a cafe this is a live webinar series held each month and these will take place on the second friday of each month in 2021 at 12 p.m eastern and we have assembled a group of four panelists who are subject matter experts on a specific federal contracting topic the panelists will make a short presentation about the topics listed here on your screen and then take your live questions about that topic so for example january will kick off with our panelists covering cmmc this friday january 8th and next month in february another panelists will cover ota our panelists include attorneys consultants and other industry professionals and you can sign up on our website under the q a cafe tab and sponsorships are available and you can email hello at jennifershouse.com for a media kit with pricing details and please note that there's a discount code defaults for a 15 discount for this series okay and now to introduce our speaker diana mcgraw welcome diana we are glad to have you here with us today um and i'll now turn the floor over to you thank you so much hunter um again i'm diana mcgraw i'm an attorney that specializes in government contracts with fox rothschild i'm based out of the washington dc office and i am excited to present to you guys uh a dfars overview um so hunter if you'll go to the next slide today we're going to be uh here's our agenda um today we are going to cover a high level overview of the historical re you know reasons when the defarts came along along with its purpose how it interplays in with the federal acquisition regulation we'll talk about what happens when an amendment needs to occur to dfars and the defar structure how it's organized and the differences with regards to department of defense contracting under the dfars specifically will highlight one of the most significant differences which relates to cyber security requirements and also other transaction authority otas next slide so let's let's talk about a high level overview and and what i want to do is take a quick step back and just you know welcome everybody to the presentation and and just kind of talk through uh some of the benefits of getting into department of defense work one i think you know now is the time for those of you depending on which industry you are in it has you know 2020 was a rough year and and while i'd like to say we have hit the economic low i don't think that's quite happened for every industry uh specifically for those of you that are in construction you lag about 18 months behind the economy and and so i think uh with that in mind many businesses probably need to diversify and um and and the government as we have seen in other economic issues we've had throughout our years the government has always come up and spent money when the commercial economy has had the inability to and so now is a great time to learn about doing work with department of defense and having a better understanding of of what that work is going to require what those obligations are and how is that different from doing work generally in terms for the government for any of these other uh federal agencies that are out there that are not department of defense so taking a quick look at the dfars um we're gonna you know looking at the high level overview the purpose of the defense acquisition regulation system uh was to you know manage the investments of the united states in technologies and programs and product support to achieve national security strategy that's prescribed by the president uh pursuant to the national securities act so um and additionally and importantly is to support the united states armed forces so the primary objective here is to assist department of defense acquisitions to acquire quality supplies and services that satisfy the user's needs the end user and and provide measurable improvements to mission capability and operational support at a fair and reasonable price so generally speaking this does apply to all domestic contracts however there are some additional obligations for foreign military sales or north atlantic treaty organization cooperative as identified here on the slide uh 201.104 the next slide um as we continue with this high level overview let's just take a look at the historical background and how uh you know you know how do the dfires get to get to the position where it is um the government has always used contractors applied goods and services to the armed forces and it this really started during the revolutionary war um mobilization efforts during world war one you know identified specific challenges that led to reform that was necessary in government contracting and a more formal process for advertising fast forwarding to 1948 congress passed the armed services procurement act of 1947 which provided a more standardized procurement method for all military departments and uh required this formal advertising uh that they learned they real that the government realized that it needed during world war one and then in 1984 the federal acquisition regulation was created and this really standardized all government contracting with uniform rules and requirements shortly thereafter the defense federal acquisition regulation supplement followed to provide more specific nuanced pieces to the federal acquisition regulation that's specific for department of defense work next slide here the department of defense maintains and administers the dfars it you know dfars is a supplement to the far for those of you that participated in this very similar series last year that covered the federal acquisition regulation the far is just a set of rules that are that regulates how a government conducts itself with regards to purchasing goods and services from contractors these rules are applicable to pretty much all agencies to ensure fair and open competition and to provide provisions applicable to contractors performing government contracts so the dfars requirements of law department of defense-wide policies delegations of far authorities and deviations from far requirements that have a significant effect on the public the defar should be read in conjunction with and as as and with the primary set of rules of the far next slide so let's talk about where you can locate these uh you know these regulations and i have identified here or placed an image to kind of give you an idea and i don't think this photo does it justice but it's a very thick book um which identifies all of the regulations of the dfars so both the far and the dfars they're located in title 48 of the code of federal regulations um d the d fars is chapter two uh and the dfars is generally amended um every you know on occasion to add or remove provisions or update the policy you know depending on um law changes additional acts and policies that are put in place by by the government um specifically though the department of defense makes changes to the dfars by issuing final rules that are published in the federal register and we'll talk about that entire process here in just a second to give you a more thorough understanding of how that works additionally congress revises the dfars through an annual national defense authorization act this gets uh approved you know every year and it's done before the president for his approval so next slide and let me give you kind of a better understanding of how this timeline works for amending and adjusting uh the dfars the defense acquisition regulation council which is uh the acronym and and for those of you that aren't familiar with acronyms you'll get a lot of them doing work with the department of defense it's dark d-a-r-c and they provide recommendations to the department of defense for publication of proposed interim and final rules to amend the dfars these recommendations are made based on reports provided to the dfars committee and or the defense acquisition regulation system staff case managers so let's kind of start at the beginning of the process so the original process is the committee report which drafts an interim rule based on either recommendations that they have received related to current policy so that process takes approximately seven weeks it then goes to the dar council for review it's edited reviewed approved to be published um it then goes to the ofpp for review and aura for clearance and and once all that has has been done um it now goes out to public comment um and the public comment period is approximately 60 days and once the committee receives and analyzes all of those comments they prepare a final rule that final rule goes to dar counsel for review again to the dar editor for review and dod approval and again through the ofpp for review and clearance and then finally it's given to the dart editor for publication and then we have a final rule that is published in the federal register this entire process takes approximately a year um so change does not happen overnight for the dfars and uh what that means for you is that you should have ample time to make adjustments and to either review how you currently proceed with compliance with these dfars regulations um and if you need to make adjustments you have time to make adjustments or at least to have a better idea of what the expectation is the final rule once it arrives so um next slide now i want to kind of give you guys some real world examples of some proposed rules that are out there right now um so within the last 90 days they've been five proposed rules that have been published the federal register and these are rules that are our proposed rules to uh that will you know amend or adjust the dfars and specifically we have them in sibers which is small business innovation research program data rights uh commercial item determinations validation of proprietary and technical data and authorities for minimizing the use of material contaminating hexavalent chromium and source restrictions on auxiliary ship components so if any of these items are important to you or affect your business uh now is the time to make comments and uh and to provide uh the d fars council with your suggestions or opinions on how these policies should be adjusted or changed so um just to kind of give you a little bit more background i'm gonna you know briefly cover each of these five that are out there just to give you an idea about what the rule is um and what changes we're expecting so the department of defense this is with regards to sibers is hosting a public meeting to engage in discussion and obtain the use of experts and interested parties uh in government and the private sector regarding the implementation of the defense rec uh defense acquisition regulation supplement of the data right portions data rights portions of the small business innovation research program and small business technology transfer program policy directives so this is specifically with regards to data rights the commercial items determinations uh this proposed uh amendment uh would further implement a section of the national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2018 that provides that a contract for an item using the far part 12 procedures shall serve as a prior commercial item determination as far as validation for prior proprietary and technical data this relates to the statutory presumption of development exclusively at private expense for commercial items in the procedures governing the validation of asserted restrictions on technical data as required to be implemented as a section of the national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2019. so as you can see you know we mentioned that congress can make adjustments and suggest amendments to be revised in the dfars but again it's not instant here we are you know we've just covered two of the current proposed rules which could take up to another six months to a year to put into place for a final rule and uh and and those were published or originally requested as early as 2018 and we're now heading into 2021 and we're just getting started so again just want to emphasize that these revisions are not instant um as far as the last two the authorities for minimizing the use of materials containing hexavalent chromium this is obviously references uh the revocation of executive orders relating to minimizing the use of these materials and then finally the last item that is up uh currently for public comment relates to it actually is more of a correction to a clause number for the dfar section on restriction on acquisition of large and medium speed diesel engines so with that being said let's go to the next slide and let's talk about the dfar structure and organization it is a very thick book and so if you were to pick it up and and try to read through it it's important that you have a kind of an understanding of how it's organized so that you can know exactly where to go the dfars provides legal requirements for federal contracting it provides the policies put out by the department of defense any deviations from the far that apply specifically to dod agencies and just to be clear our dod agencies are your army navy air force and uh nasa uh the defar structure mirrors out of the far um so if you participated last year on the far presentation that cover each of the specific parts of the far you'll be in a good place here for the defaults because it mirrors that same process so what would be far part one is d far's part 201 same thing for 52 for d4 that'd be 252. so hopefully that helps give you some sense of where you are in the dfars and where you should be looking so let's take a look at the next slide and let's break down each of the 52 parts of the defaults to kind of give you a general idea of what's going to come and and and to give you a highlight uh jennifer schaus and her and her team they are going to be providing uh through this series they ill be covering each of the 52 parts of the dfars um over the course of the next year so a great opportunity for you to come back and continue to learn about very specific parts of how the department of defense expects you to operate uh on on their contracts so uh sections 201 204 this really covers the background definitions and administrative parts of the dfars uh 205 the 211 these are your pre-award agency procedures 212 through 218 covers the different types of contract vehicles that are out there uh and 219 to 226 these are all of your socio-economic programs uh such as uh the small business program the woman owned small business uh edvosb i mean i'm sorry edwosd also you have um the service disabled veteran-owned and veteran-owned small business programs uh along with the a day and uh the small disadvantaged business so these uh so that will all be covered in 219-226 your general contracting requirements these are your obligations that are identified uh you know as far as part of the contracting piece those are 227 to 233 they're from 234 to 241 these are your special categories of contracting and then contract management is 242-251 this has to do with how the contracts will be performed and you know unfortunately uh some of these contracts have to be terminated and and what that process is like for termination and what rights you have uh in that process and then finally probably one of the most important sections that you will go to 252 these are where all the contract clauses are identified that will be incorporated either through reference or in whole text in your contracts so as you can see it's very similar to the far setup structure it's practically the same and if you can find something in one you should be able to find it in the other but let's go ahead and take a look at the next slide and uh you know i think at this point what i really now that we've identified how they're very similar the dvrs with the far now i want to talk through how are they different you know what is so different about doing department of defense contracting under the dfars and i think here the dfars contains different requirements for department of defense contractors due mostly in part to the unique concerns of military agencies national security and defense which includes the need for the most up-to-date technology to protect national assets the defense pricing contract and contracting is responsible for all pricing contracting procurement policy matters including e-business in the department of defense um you know specifically let me just be clear that the dpc their policy is to manage the nation's investments in technologies programs and product support necessary to support the united states armed forces consistent with our national security strategy and so i provided on this on this slide a link so that you can go and see the dpc's website take a look at what their policies are and how they address certain issues um you as a department of defense contractor have an obligation to adhere to a higher cyber security standard um as you know for those of you that have watched the news recently and seen the cyber issues that have come up with solar winds um this is a very serious threat and uh the department of defense has a you know has much uh a higher level of requirements uh for for doing work with uh with these agencies so um let's go ahead and and i guess we will also once one of the other significant differences with doing work at the department of defense is that there is a carve out exception and i feel like you know it isn't government work if there aren't exceptions to the rule and so one of the exceptions here is this called other trans transaction authority you know also referred to as otas um otas are an exception to the application of the dfars or the you know rules to um provide the government with flex by the government i mean department of defense specifically with flexibility to contract for prototypes and research and development without using the standard procurement requirements so we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail here in just a moment um but these you know these are the you know significant differences um and and while i would say uh there is a lot of other changes and you uh and nuances of doing work for the department of defense that's what this whole series is about and over the course of the next year uh the different speakers that will get up will break down each of these sections for you into bite-sized pieces to help you better understand what it means and what your obligations are when you decide that you're going to pursue department of defense work and again i can't stress enough those obligations and those duties are different um and and we're going to walk through an example in more detail as to how those differences um what does that mean so let's take a look at the next slide and um let's you know i i think one of the best examples is the difference between the far and the dfars when it comes to cyber security and again uh there will be someone who you know will be walking through uh not only parts 252 uh which is where this clause actually lies um but also as the introduction identified there is a cafe series and one of the very first topics is cyber security and so you can get a full dose of both of these topics in more detail you know through that cafe uh webinar series which hopefully you will join especially since you get a 15 discount after attending this series so uh with the dfars um we're going to look at you know how you know these two provisions just so you can see in real you know in in text how they're different and and what types of changes you know you can see between doing work for either gsa or fbop or any of these other uh federal agencies as opposed to doing work with the department of defense so um looking at uh its counterparts and and so the two provisions we're gonna look at are far 52 204-21 and it's d far's counterpart which is 252 204 70 12. and so um so far and i'm going to talk about the bottom half of this slide first uh the far has one provision that requires contractors to secure their internal cyber security controls while performing federal contracts and that basic safeguarding of covered contract information systems requires you with regards to cui which is controlled unclassified information to protect it and it doesn't provide additional training it's pretty basic and it covers information systems not information contained on the system and so uh this this contract clause meaningfully addresses cyber security information across all agencies um not um and it does cover the dod but the dod is gonna take a step further in uh 252 704 or 70 12. so uh this you know i the way i kind of like to look at this is this is this reflects the actions that any prudent business person really would take they're pretty basic requirements and there's no training penetration testing cyber incident reporting or cyber security insurance that you have to have and essentially what you're putting in place is eight what's going to be for the cmmc level one so that's really a very basic that's what the far requires very entry-level cyber security and then when you get to the defaults uh and now we're looking at the top half of the slide the defaults on the other hand they um they are going to require a much more stringent cyber security requirement than the far specifically they have produced what's called a cyber security maturity model certification the cmmc and and this has five levels and and the five different levels provide a much more extensive uh program so let's go ahead and take a look to the next slide and we'll cover that program in more detail here in just a second so again um the far 52204-21 requires contractors and subcontractors to meet the 15 most basic safeguarding requirements to protect to protect covered contractor information systems um that store process or transmit federal contract information that that was never intended for public release whereas here uh the dfar 7012 is going to implement the nist 800 171 110 security requirements so the full-blown if you went to level five it's a hundred and ten security requirements whereas the far only requires for you to have the basic 15. so um clearly a much more aggressive program that's going to ensure that information and personnel are prepared to handle a cyber incident reporting requirements and generally this is going to require that you be able to identify comprised compromised computers servers specific data and end user accounts analyze information systems that were part of a cyber attack analyze other systems that don't contain covered data that may have been accessed as a result of cyber a cyber incident and the ability to rapidly report cyber incidents within 72 hours i mean that's you know huge so not only do you have to identify that a threat or an incident has happened but you have to be you know be able to rapidly report that to the united states government the department of defense within 72 hours um i mean that is a very fast turnaround um additionally you want to have the ability to discover isolate and submit malicious software to the contracting officer so while uh you know this is probably a lot for you to take in and there will be an entire uh session that's going to cover this i just wanted to give you a a real example of how the dfars differs from the far and if you are traditionally doing work uh for the government but you have not dipped your toe in the department of defense arena i just want you to be prepared that it is not the same um and you really need to be cognizant of what those obligation differences are and and this is really at the forefront um cyber security is just one of the the biggest issues right now that are facing government contractors and um and while this interim rule that was released earlier this last year at the end of september in 2010 20. it implemented the cmmc requirements it did do a five-year phase rollout but i highly encourage you if you are bidding work now as of today you want to be looking through that department of defense solicitation and looking to see does it have 252 204 7012 if it does what level is required um and uh you know you just wanna and and i think the other key here is to know that this requirement um it slows down it has a mandatory flow down to all of your subcontractors and vendors now granted the prime may not have the same requirements as i'm sorry the subcontractors may not have the same requirements as prime as far as level that they have to meet uh you know this is not something that you can hide you know by being a subcontractor and not being the person who's actually um in a contract with the gu with the department of defense um you still will be held to the standard and and with regardless if you're a subcontractor or a prime you should be really reviewing those far provisions and slow downs and dfars provisions with a fine toothed comb to make sure you understand how your contract works so let's take a look at the next slide and we're going to shift from talking about the cyber security to the other major difference between the far and the defaults and this is what's called the ota procurement process and this is um the department of defense can forego any of the dfar's pre-award full competition requirements in order to carry out prototype projects that are directly relevant to enhancing the mission effectiveness there is no similar far exemption for any for this type of prototype and r d research for civilian agencies so this is something that you're only going to see with the department of defense and and just to kind of give you some background on when ota showed up on scene uh congress first authorized them in 1958 with the passage of the national aeronautics and space act and um you know while it was quite a long time ago it really hasn't become the useful vehicle until 2015. and um and so let's kind of talk about what otas you know what their purpose is to kind of give you a better idea so otas are a more flexible acquisition approach that enables specific federal agencies to access goods and services outside of the traditional acquisition process they are not subject to the far the dfars or any other related regulations meaning that all of the usual government contract requirements that are either abs are either absent or negotiable in return otas give agencies greater flexibility and customization in designing a contract approach that can incentivize and attract non-traditional defense contractors it better manages risk and uncertainties and increases efficiency otas though are not without risk they can be more complicated to design and execute which is compounded by the lack of familiarity and training amongst the broader acquisition community additionally otas are more restrictive in what they can be used for the specifics depend on the laws and statutes governing the different department of defense agencies and ota authorities but otas are largely limited to activities involving rnd so let's take a look at the next slide and talk some more in detail about what these procurements may look like so uh generally speaking these procurements if they cost in excess of a hundred thousand but less than half i'm sorry 100 million but are less than 500 million then you only need written approval of a senior procurement agency executive but if they are in excess of 500 million you will need written determination from the under secretary of defense for research and engineering or the under secretary of defense for acquisition um these uh projects are you know really what items that are essential for national security and uh they are only required to give 30 days notice again these were always intended to be primarily to non-traditional contractors and you may be asking yourself well what's the non-traditional contractor that's an entity that's not currently performing or has not performed any department of defense contractor subcontracts for at least a one period proceeding with solicitation um and you know so a lot of these are uh you know maybe their colleges their um research facilities their cities um you know different uh different quite a quite a quite an array of what a non-traditional contractor is so um let's take a look at how these have developed over the years so next slide as i mentioned uh otas were authorized uh in 1948. i'm sorry they were authorized at 1958. i got the wrong year 1958 um but it wasn't until recently that we've really seen the full full effect of these so um in 2019 um the obligations uh the ota obligations increased 75 percent um uh and have increased almost 712 percent since fiscal year 2015. so the spending has gone from approximately 0.7 billion dollars to 7.4 billion in 2019 uh the army leads the department of defense agencies in the number of ot ota procurements used and and generally again this has to do with uh research and development and and usually and i would say usually but often times deal with weapons and um and that type of research so ota procurements have totaled 18 percent of all of the department of defense contracts in 2019 which has been you know obviously a huge jump um you know that we've seen uh over the years and this is growing and growing to become a more flexible vehicle that department of defense agencies are are trending towards especially when it has to do with research and development or um and i think we may even see probably in the near future that uh department of defense will use these otas especially when you get to the final stages of um testing weapons to see that they're doing what they were intend if they're performing the way they were intended to perform so we may see some of that crossover happen um you know in 2021 and 2022. i went ahead and i did provide you guys a link where you can take a look at this center for strategic and international studies which really has a great report on how otas have come full circle in you know the last five years and um let's go on to the next slide this takes us really to the end of the presentation and what i wanted to do here was just take a moment to reflect with you guys i think one of the you know and i wanted to provide some insigh into what you know i believe uh the market you know the shifts we're gonna see in the market and while the government and specifically the department of defense is going to increase spending over the next year and two years especially you know in light of the pandemic and what we've seen happen so far i just think that that that spend is going to continue to grow and like we have seen already any time the government throws huge amounts of money into the economy that money does not come without strings and the strings the limits you're going to see is there's going to be a a ton of oversight um people will be scrutinizing how agencies are spending this money and they're going to be scrutinizing government contractors and are you living up to the expectation are you doing what you said you would do are you accomplishing the far and defars requirements that have been set forth in your contracts and if you aren't you're putting yourself out there at huge risk and and if you are looking to get into this market and and try to build and diversify your portfolio it is so imperative i just cannot stress enough that you should take extra care in reviewing these provisions so that you truly understand what your obligations are what what you're being asked to do and and these these provisions are not hidden from you there is an entire section in the solicitation when you bid work that identifies either in full text or by reference what these requirements are and what you will be held to so before you even submit your bid you should be well aware and you are on notice for what the requirements and obligations will be so um i just encourage you to take that extra care if you have questions ask i know that i'm happy to help and there will be a whole slew of experts and other attorneys who will be presenting through this process that will help shed some light on each part of the dfars and will walk you through all 52 parts and it's a lot it's a lot of information to take down but i think you know it's great to be prepared diversify if you can um and and just if you have questions make sure you ask so with that i will turn it back over to jennifer and hunter and their team you so much diana um for a great presentation um and sharing your time with us today um and thank you to everyone who joined us um and intended attended the webinar um the recording will be on our website and youtube channel within the next 24 hours and like mentioned earlier um please join us tomorrow for our defaults part 201 webinar and please join us this friday for our new q a live cafe series