Streamline Federal Contract Management for Life Sciences

Federal contract management for Life Sciences

the broadcast is now starting all attendees are in listen only mode hello everyone this is Jennifer shal coming to you live from Washington DC as we continue and finish up our first week of Government Contracting webinars uh today is Friday and we are joined by Danielle Carr who is going to present on subcontracting and risk mitigation obviously a very important topic in Government Contracting uh we do have seven weeks of webinars um start to finish we wrap up on the 15th of September um the full schedule is on our website all of the webinars are recorded and in the event that you need to jump off early or if there's a topic that you want to uh see that you're not able to attend uh just check back on our website for the recordings uh we have done these over the past several years so our library currently holds I think it's about 30 or 40 uh webinars uh at the end of these seven weeks we'll be doubling that uh that Library list again they are all complimentary uh and you're more than welcome to download uh any of those on the site uh a little bit about us uh based in downtown Washington DC providing various services for government contractors ranging from uh adaa uh certification uh capability statements GSA schedules proposal writing contract admin Business Development uh we also host some networking events and seminars throughout the year uh we're doing one in uh November on doing business with BD in the Intel Community uh if you're sign up for our newsletter you'll be um alerted to the dates times and locations for those uh if you want to sign up for our newsletter you certainly can do so on our website it's a complimentary uh newsletter um um we also have an event section where information on events and seminars um are posted uh a little bit about me um on this slide but more importantly I'd rather um use our time wisely here and share some information about Danielle Carr who again is uh covering the topic of subcontracts and risk mitigation so Danielle thank you so much for joining us today sharing your knowledge and insight um and I will let you uh dig into your presentation and thanks to all the atten for joining us okay thank you thank you hi everyone my name is Danielle Carr I am a Acquisitions Pro program manager for Washington headquarters Services I do work as a consultant so outside of my client site work I also Mentor small businesses um regarding compliance um cpsr reviews um I do a lot of checklists for them as far as matrixes um procurement action and I also do business development I do a lot of training on subcontracts and risk mitigation so I'm going to touch on a few points within the few minutes that we're allowed and if you have any questions as far as anything you want me to elaborate on you know please contact me or Jennifer by email or by phone um you can go ahead to the first slide so we can start next SL so I picked a quote um that you know pretty much um says what subcontracts and risk mitigation is I and it's by Ja wi every aspect of business carries some degree of risk one of your key responsibilities as a subcontract management professional is managing these risks to avoid situations that might jeopardize a firm's operations risk can be anticipated and controlled in areas such as Financial legal quality and performance my hope is that you the presentation in the next few minutes you walk away and are able to apply some of these medication strategies to your agency your small business or your large business um subcontracts is really a big deal and most people don't realize it but actually 60 to 80% of all federal acquisition dollars are spent with subcontractors um the majority of the activities that occur you know at the subcontract level are pretty much everywhere public private commercial large medium small and St companies next slide as the work increases you know with the government their Insight decreases so subcontracting it does present a lot of risk you know when you look at the government not only do they need to focus on a crime but they really need to have you know privacy and with the subcontractors but because of you know the the the contractors only with the prime they don't have that and as you get into more subs not just the tier one and tier two but they're also tier three Subs you know the problems they you know sometimes can get out of control so you need to have you know plans put in place to make sure that everyone's concerns all the parties involved you know are are very well protected next slide as you can see you know I have this this picture it says the US government Prime and said contractor so your relationship it starts with the government and the prime most contracts it says that the prime is they only want allow to talk to the government so the subcontractor pretty much doesn't have a say and a lot of things that that can go on you know the government slows down their terms and it gets to the prime prime flows it down to the subcontractors and you have the subcontractor like hey you know what's going on you can can I can I see um the actual contract so that I can know what I am negotiating go to the next SL and here I listed you know some points regarding you know a lot of the risk with the government you know there is typically no legal privity of contract between the US government and subcontractors that that's a pretty big deal the prime contract establishes processes by which the US government can control and manage subcontractors they put things in place for in like say if there's you have an award that's over 750,000 that large business is supposed to develop a subcontracting plan and when you bring on those subcontractors you're supposed to get Advanced notification orqui a consent to bring an additional sub contractors there are also mandatory um Prime contract slowdowns I won't go into many of them but let's say for instance your contract is over $750,000 then you're going to get into Tina which is the true negotiations act so you're supposed to disclose certain things about your subcontractors and yourself as to the government and also under far part 44 you know that's another topic on the 18th but then you get into contract of purchasing System review go to the next slide and the primes concerns as far as subcontracting the prime is held financially accountable you know for the subcontractor they have to also deal with a lot of complex government oversight um they have to deal with you know the sub La of time reporting of cost on cost reimbursement contracts and that's pretty big concern or you know if the sub performance isn't doing very well you know that's the prime space out there on on that client site and if the subcontract is isn't performing up the car there needs to be a type of mitigation plan put in to correct that let's go to the next slide and then these are some of the subcontractor concerns adhering to the prime way even if the sub has more experience that's always a pretty big deal or the sub test performance is not usually reported in the in the government reporting system because when the government is doing CS like I said before the relationship is only with the crime so that basically report on that prime contractor performance and then the sub has to deal with price cost and delivery pressures by the prime so my way of doing things is always try to find a winwin strategy um for everyone let's go down to the next slide go to the next slide so here are some of the reasons why the government you know does have a major need for oversight um one is to provide the customer that's usually their requirements office with timely best value solution to a requirements to maintain public trust in the government acquisition system to implement public policies to protect the government of interest to assure contract performance which is one of the most important which is probably one of the most important pieces um of subcontracting and here are some ways to to alleviate those many concerns which is to um properly manage your subcontractors through their creation of you know a work breakdown structure which would be the subset of the Prime work breakdown structure um and if you focus a lot on project management this wouldn't be something complicated to you know develop design Implement and execute and part of it is a lot of you know dealing with Communications and here I call it a using interface control documentation ICD you know a communication requirement achievement of requirements Baseline documentation that folds through the program and to all team members that's go that thought in the dod space um we do a lot of C quality assurance and basically the quality assurance is you know inspection you know performed by the United States government to determine whether contract has afforded the contract obligations we we're monitoring contractor performance through meeting reports and inspection we're pretty much developing a surveillance plan that sets forth the methods and frequency you hold meetings require reports and conduct inspections let's go to the next SL and this would be AAL a quality assurance Avail plan I kind of put in you know a sample you know of a matrix that you could use you know it has you know your contract title your subcontractor PC and it has about seven um you know questions that you will want to complete let's go down to the next slide this is pretty much the same thing it's just an outline that you will follow you know your work your master work breakdown structure your elements assigned to the subcontractor the schedule your deliverables acceptance risk management plan inspection meetings report documentation and close out you can take from this you know develop your own you know whatever you know fits the situation that you are in let's go down to the next slide and these are just some of the examples I chose the you know use Professional Services um you know some of the the risk and concerns that they have and there are seven the seven major sources of risk for Professional Services the government's difficulty in determining its requirements selecting the right type of contract overly optimistic delivery schedules poor quality of services lack of project manag management multi sector Workforce challenges and adequate acceptance criteria let's go to the next slide and here are just a few ways to mitigate those risks found in Professional Services contracts we want to establish an integrated project team develop a performance work statement or statement of objectives Andel very very th market research you know use commercial quality standard and metrics create contract incent you know for you know fast performance or they're exceeding your expectations you want to develop a quality assurance plan you'll Implement project management and TI pay to Performance results so the next slide and I always like to tell subcontractors you know really really be mindful of Border PL slowdowns there there is a list of slowdowns that are mandatory you know I didn't include them but if you would like to you know have that list I'm more than willing to send it to you a lot of the risks that are involved is is basically when a nous subcontract administrator you know handles these transactions and many prime contractors you know they tend to include a generic list of flowdown you know they just do do a deep dive and the subcontract like what's going on you know I don't have access can I see you know the contract so I can actually know what I'm negotiating and I'd like to say if this is not applicable do not agree to it if you have not seen a prime contract how do you know that it is accurate and especially when it comes to you know cash flow Downs because a lot of large business they have to adhere to a lot of the cost accounting standards and they and they're just flowing it down to the subcontractor but if you are a small business concern you are totally exempt from a cash flow down and that's something really important that I like to you know point out there is a list of other exemptions for cash and far Part 30 and also far part 8.10 3.2 let's go to the next slide Clauses that I would say you know pay a lot of attention to would be limitation of liability you know price charge your price changes deification your scope and goals liquidated dages payments data protection and security service level and warranties let's go to the next slide overall best practices is always I'm going to Advocate to educate your staff the more knowledge that your staff and you as a provider for your company has the better you'll be able to mitigate a lot of the risk you know have a plan have a plan in place when you are even thinking about entering that contract you know have a statement of work or PWS consistent with the crie contract bir breakdown structure whatever you know the crie is getting from the government you would want to have something similar to that be very selective of your flow down Clauses you know develop you know a clause you know document your meetings your reports and your inspection of your deliverable you know treat subcontract as part of the team because they are they are very critical you know part you know of the infrastructure and the work moving forward use a compliance Matrix at the prime level do the same you know for subcontractors I might have several examples of a compliance Matrix if anyone on the call is interested in seeing one I be more than willing to you know forward that to you and also again do not fall into a trap or FL going down everything let's go to the next slide here are just some tools and resources that I wanted to list um the national contract management association launched the subcontract management training form in 2015 um the subcontract Management Institute they developed the subcontract body of knowledge pretty similar to the simbach which is the contract management body of knowledge but this is geared for all the standards um for the subcontract management professional and subcontracting also the National Defense industri Association ndia has a far flowdown guide and I included the link um as well as the Uniform Commercial Code because when you're doing like Court toour um subcontracting a lot of the far doesn't really apply um you can p a lot of the claes you know from the link at cornell.edu that I um entered into this SL live let's go on to the next slide and that pretty much is the end of the presentation today if anyone has any questions you can feel free to contact me at 24784 7418 or at theart at iasis llc.com Danielle thanks so much for presenting today and sharing your knowledge on subcontract and risk mitigation a lot of great uh resources there and good uh information as far as what uh contractors should do both at the prime and subcontracting level and you've got Danielle's contact information there um we hope that you will join us next week which is the second of seven weeks of uh Government Contracting webinars next week we're covering cyber security bid protests grant writing proposal writing and pipeline filling your pipeline uh all of the webinars are complimentary and listed on our website under the webinar section any questions we ask that you please direct them directly to Danielle thanks again everybody