As you may remember we reported previously that the Department of Veteran Affairs banned proposal consultants from assisting offerors on RFP VA118-15-R0558. Unfortunately, we have more bad news. A second federal agency has followed suit. On May 18th, 2015 the US Census Bureau issued an RFP that restricts technical consultants participation. The draft RFP in question is YA 1323-15-MS-0003 for Multi-Tiered Acquisition Framework for Systems Engineering and Integration.
The ever-diligent Richard Harris APMP executive director has already taken action. He submitted a request to the Census Bureau for the removal of this stipulation.
He had this to say:
“We find it particularly disturbing that after the VA “no consultants” language, most of the professionals in Government we met with were also appalled but told us not to worry because they believed it was an isolated, one-off attempt.
A few months later, and we see similar, exclusionary language from a completely different agency. Our fear was then and continues to be that this could become a regular requirement for all of the wrong reasons. Once is an anomaly, twice is worrisome and three times is a trend. “
Proposal Consultant Ban
The draft RFP stipulates: “In order to ensure proposals reflect the technical abilities of offerors and their subcontractors, not those of outside technical experts who will not be involved with performance post award, the use of technical consultants to help prepare the proposal is strictly prohibited unless the technical consultant will be part of the offeror’s team as a subcontractor after award of the ESF. As part of their written (and oral if applicable) proposal, the offeror shall certify, in the proposal introduction, that their proposal was prepared only by the offeror and its subcontractors.”APMP Reaction
