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David: Thanks, Mark. I have a question from Yvonne. Of the CTA, who takes or
becomes the team prime?
Mark: Well, thanks for that question. This goes back to the privity issue that
we discussed. In terms of CTAs, each team member is a prime contractor on
that BPA or on that task order, so they have privity of contract with the
government, they have a legal relationship with us. But what does
happen is pretty common with contractor team arrangements is sometimes the
contractors decide that they want to have a team lead to handle some of the
administrative things like invoice and payment, or sometimes the government
does encourage that there be a team lead. So the team lead does not affect
the fact that all the team members are prime contractors. They're just serving
as a team lead and they might serve as the single focal point for the
government for general communication and for some of the administrative matters.
David: Thanks, Mark. The next question's from Anthony. It's a fairly
involved question. If a furniture contractor is awarded SIN 71-204
dormitory furniture and 71-205 chairs, is that contractor permitted to provide
refrigerators, pool tables, window treatments, wall art etcetera under
teaming arrangements with multiple schedule holders? Or would this type of
procurement be made under the packaged room SIN 71-200?
Mark: Well, thank you, Anthony. That question is certainly a deep dive into
our furniture schedules. I kind of want to go back to a little bit of the
fundamentals in terms of the scope of the statement of work defines the scope of the
requirement. So it should fit up, and they fit up under multiple SINs like you
identified under a particular schedule. And then it's up to the GSA schedule
contractor to provide a solution that meets that requirement. So they should
be providing an arrangement and be providing everything off of their GSA
Schedule contract. So there shouldn't be any teaming partner that is providing
anything that is not on their GSA Schedule contract. So I think that's
the key there is that each team member must be providing items that are on
their GSA Schedule contract.
David: Thanks, Mark. And everyone, we're coming pretty close to the hour
here, it's almost 3:30, so I could probably take a couple more questions
via chat here, then I'd like to open up the phone line if there's any
additional. And of course you can always email me at david.orcutt@gsa.gov
if you have additional questions.
Mary has another question, she says, it sounds like CTAs could be an invoicing
and IFF reporting nightmare if personnel on the overall team work on a task order
requiring multiple SINs covered by the prime CTAs. Differentiating which
personnel work on what subtasks under which SINs belonging to its CTA . Am
I making this more complicated than it really is?
Mark: Well, I think, Mary, you're pointing out some of the challenges of
our contractor teaming arrangements, and I think it's important that the planning
happen up front. We talked about a couple things in the presentation about
the keys to making teaming successful on the energy side. One is having that
arrangement clearly defined roles and responsibilities, who's going to perform
what, and have a good solid arrangement. Then obviously in terms of like any
other team that you have, communication is critical. So communicating and all
that. But I do think the way scenarios can be mitigated is that we initially
put together a well-documented arrangement that clearly outlines roles
and responsibilities, who's going to provide what, and then having that
communication during the administration performance of the order so that they
are not running into situations where they're not meeting the requirements,
either the order or their respective contracts.
David: Thanks, Mark. Last question via chat. Julie. I have seen where an
agency has not been made aware of the CTA, however the contractor can
demonstrate the use of a CTA. If something happens with one of the
teaming partners, who is ultimately responsible if the agency was not made
aware of the CTA? Is it treated as a prime sub relationship at that point?
Mark: Julie, thanks for that question, I think that kind of depends on the
nature of it. I mean, if the vendor performing is proposing a teaming
arrangement, they should provide you a copy of the teaming arrangement and we
know that there is GAO case law that says if they don't provide an adequate
teaming arrangement for you to evaluate then the government could rightly deny
them an award. In that case, it sounded like prime and there was subcontracting,
because my hope is that that contractor is providing everything within the scope
of their contract. Because if they propose on something and they didn't
disclose that it was a teaming arrangement and it's not on their
schedule contract, it could be construed as they were providing stuff outside the
scope of their contract. So it does really depend on the more specifics of
the situation. But it sounds like in some cases where some people do confuse
teaming with subcontracting, and so I think it's really important in those
scenarios to kind of review back to that diagram that we went over in the court,
because I think that really does give your visual learners out there a good
picture tutorial of what the difference between teaming and subcontracting is.
David: Thanks for that clarification, Mark. Do we have any questions from the
folks on the phone? Does anyone want to ask a verbal question now?
Okay, well, I just want to thank you, Mark, for taking the time to educate us
about contractor team arrangements in a comprehensive presentation today.
Again, everyone, if you want to learn more about CTAs you can always go to
GSA.gov/CTA. We'll be giving this presentation again on December 8th at
the same time, at 2:30. Please go to interact.GSA.gov to learn about our
future webinars, and we post our recordings of webinars there as well.
So thank you, everyone, for participating today. Thank you, Mark.
Mark: I did want to mention that if folks are available, that we do have a
student guide of the presentation today, so I just want to encourage all the
folks participating to feel free to download that student guide, and it does
have some of the notes from the presentation and so that is a good
document to have as a handy reference in your future use of contractor teaming
arrangements. These are on the government side or on industry side.
David: Sure thing, Mark, thank you for reminding me. I'll leave this pod open
for folks to download the student guide here, and you can also download a copy
of the presentation.