U.S. General Services Administration
Region 6 ushers in 5-year design-build pool of contractors
By Alison Kohler
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On Aug. 31, GSA awarded a 5-year contract to a pool of 25 design-build contractors, 12 of which are qualified small businesses.
“The most remarkable piece of the design-build IDIQ was the amount of offerors GSA received,” said Contracting Officer Maria R. Doedtman, Acquisition Management Division, Region 6 Public Buildings Service. “The response was 26% higher (39 offerors this year) than the responses to the 2015 contract.”
Benefits abound
By getting the best price and making future task order awards more efficient, this award should save American taxpayer money in the future, Doedtman said.
“GSA’s federal customers benefit as the taxpayer benefits, because the multiple offerors for future projects will have competition and give the federal customers the best fair price,” Doedtman said.
Lessons learned
Doedtman said that because the required paperwork was well written the first time around, she was able to award the contract on time.
In the future, the team plans to involve the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization earlier in the process.
“The OSDBU and (U.S. Small Business Administration) must sign off on the GSA 2689,” Doedtman said. “Had we involved OSDBU earlier in the process, this check would not have been delayed.”
Teamwork essential at ‘crunch time’
Contracting Specialist Steven Steinkamp and Student Intern Jack Anderson assisted Doedtman to make awarding on time possible.
“A special thank you to all of the construction AMD staff, management from AMD, and the Design and Construction Division for allowing employees the time to work on this,” Doedtman said. “The source selection board members reviewed 39 proposals during fiscal year end.”
“A significant portion of PBS performance depends on the quality of our industry partners and our ability to efficiently engage with them,” said AMD Director David Rumsey. “These contracts assist in that. We look forward to working with these IDIQ holders over the next 5 years, and I appreciate everyone’s effort in developing these contracts.”