• Business With Volpe
  • Procurement Opportunities
    • About Acquisition Division
    • Contact Acquisition Division
    • Current Procurement Opportunities
    • Contract Awards
    • Information for Contractors
    • Links
  • SBIR
  • FOIA
  • How To Start Work with Volpe

Important Information for Contractors

Guidelines for Submission of Unsolicited Proposals | Procedures for Exchanges with Industry |
Metric Measurement Requirements

Procedures for Exchanges with Industry

The Acquisition Regulations encourage early exchanges with industry about planned procurements. The purpose of exchanging information is to improve the understanding of Government requirements and industry capabilities. This gives potential offerors an opportunity to judge whether or how they can satisfy the Government's requirements, and enhances the Government's ability to obtain quality supplies and services, at reasonable prices, and increase efficiency in proposal preparation, proposal evaluation, negotiation, and contract award.

However, the Volpe Center has taken steps to ensure that these pre-solicitation exchanges with industry are conducted in a manner which provides all potential offerors fair and equal access to acquisition information. We do not want to disclose specific information relating to a proposed acquisition that would give one or more potential offerors an unfair competitive advantage over others. Consequently, the best way to avoid violating this restriction, or give the appearance of such a violation, is to release acquisition information in a fair and equal manner to all potential offerors, and as nearly as possible, at the same time.

Methods for Disseminating Information

Some techniques identified in the regulations to promote early exchanges of information are:

1. Industry or small business conferences;
2. Public hearings;
3. Pre-solicitation notices;
4. Draft Request for Proposals (RFPs);
5. Requests for Information (RFIs);
6. Pre-solicitation or pre-proposal conferences;
7. Market research, as described in FAR Part 10;
8. Site visits; and
9. One-on-one meetings with potential offerors.

Some Things to Remember

At any time, and under any of the exchange techniques listed above, general information about agency mission needs and future requirements may be disclosed. However, any information that if divulged to one or more potential offerors could create an unfair competitive advantage or give the appearance of doing so for a specific procurement, should be addressed using only those techniques that involve public exchange forums, such as techniques (1) through (6) cited above. A contracting officer will always be involved when using the techniques cited under (1) through (6) above.

Furthermore, when using techniques involving one-on-one communications, any discussions will include either a contracting officer, if identified, otherwise an Acquisition Division Manager. These sessions will consist of a one-sided exchange during which the potential offeror provides information to the Government.

Particular care will be taken to ensure that either source selection or proprietary data is not disclosed, including any potential offeror's confidential business strategy.

Use of Internet

For our major procurements, we will designate an area on our web site which will describe the requirement in more detail and provide the ability to submit comments and/or suggestions and for us to post responses, requests of information etc.

Wall of Silence Notification

When a requirement is posted on our site and on the Federal Business Opportunities (FEDBIZOPPS) site, an e-mail message will be sent to all federal staff informing them that the requirement has been announced and that any further communication with industry will be through the contracting officer only.

When a contractor registers on our site to receive a notification of solicitation issuance, they will receive an e-mail informing them that any further communication will be through the contracting officer only.

In some cases we may issue these notifications before a requirement is posted.
Please contact David Scali at 617/494-2042 or either Orin Cook, Branch Chief, DTS-852, at 617/494-2593 or Mary Doherty, Branch Chief, DTS-853, at 617/494-2669, for assistance.