The Middle East District uses full and open competition to the maximum extent practicable. Therefore, the vast majority of our acquisitions are solicited using full and open competitive procedures. We post our acquisition requirements on the Federal Business Opportunities website (FedBizOpps).
Middle East District solicitations are then issued either through a secure file transfer protocol (FTP) site or via CD. The method used and point of contact will be listed in the FedBizOpps synopsis.
The large majority of our acquisitions are awarded via the negotiated contracting method, which includes the receipt of proposals from offerors, permits bargaining, and usually affords offerors an opportunity to revise their offers before award of a contract. A small number of acquisitions may be awarded using sealed bidding, which uses competitive bids, public opening of bids, and timely contract award to the contractor with the lowest priced, responsive bid.
The majority of contract awards are issued as fixed price; however, we also award cost-reimbursement contracts.
- For a fixed-price contract, the contractor has full responsibility for the performance costs and resulting profit (or loss). Fixed-price contracts are used when the risk involved is minimal or can be predicted with an acceptable degree of certainty.
- For a cost-reimbursement contract, the contractor has minimal responsibility for the performance costs and is reimbursed for costs that are allowable and allocable, plus the negotiated fixed fee (profit). Cost-type contracts are used when uncertainties involved in contract performance do not permit costs to be estimated with sufficient accuracy to use any type of fixed-price contract.
Our primary source selection evaluation technique is Best Value, using the Tradeoff source selection process or the Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) source selection process.
- Tradeoff process is used when it is in the best interest of the government to consider award to other than the lowest priced offeror or to other than the highest technically rated offeror.
LPTA process is used when the best value is expected to result from the selection of the technically acceptable proposal with the lowest evaluated price.