How the Army's Own Cost Estimate Got Into Your Bid Workbook

Attachment 0006 to solicitation W15P7T-27-R-A001 is an Excel workbook with eleven tabs. Seven of them are yours: instructions, a price summary, one tab each for the base year and the two option years, one for the six-month extension, and a travel sheet.

The other four are labeled (CUI) IGE-Option Year 1, (CUI) IGE-OY1 Breakout, (CUI) IGE-Option Year 2, and (CUI) IGE-OY2 Breakout.

That is the Independent Government Estimate, sitting in the same file every offeror on this competition has to download and fill in. Each sheet carries a CUI banner at the top and a CUI Category: PROCURE line at the foot. It prices the work at $8,048,955.20 in the first option year and $8,285,398.55 in the second.

ACC-APG posted the final RFP on Tuesday at 19:42Z, four days after the draft. Proposals close at the end of the month.

What You Actually Get to Compete On

The requirement is systems engineering and technical assistance for the Army's Public Safety Communications portfolio, run out of PM IEN's Product Director for Base Emergency Communications Systems. Cost-plus-fixed-fee, term form, single award. One-year base, two one-year options, and a six-month extension under RFO 52.217-8, so three and a half years of runway if every option lands. NAICS 541330 at the $25.5M size standard, total small business set-aside, performance at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Now look at how much of the price the solicitation has already decided for you.

The level of effort is directed. Ten position lines, 13 FTE, 1,980 hours apiece, and the RFP leaves no daylight: "Offerors must not deviate from the stated LOE hours provided in the Cost Price Proposal Workbook, or their proposal will be considered unawardable."

Travel and other direct costs are plugged. $168,740 in the base year and in each option year, $74,360 in the extension, $580,580 across the term, and the table is followed by the words "Do NOT CHANGE THE ABOVE PLUG NUMBERS."

So the hours are set and the ODCs are set. What moves is your direct labor rates, your fringe, your overhead, your G&A, and your fee.

All of it has to be substantiated: a forward pricing rate agreement, a DCAA-approved compensation table, signed letters of intent, payroll records, or survey data for the labor, and an FPRA, an FPRR, or three years of incurred cost submissions behind the indirects.

Then the government evaluates those rates for realism and awards without discussions.