Name: Next Stop! A Review of the Latest on Army MAPS
Uploaded: 2026-04-09T20:01:05.712Z
Duration: 1 h 31 min 44 s
Description: Next Stop! A Review of the Latest on Army MAPS

Transcript for "Next Stop! A Review of the Latest on Army MAPS": Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's webinar focused on providing insight into the army maps opportunity. Before we begin, just a couple things to note. You can download the slides and additional resources in the resources widget on your screen. You're also gonna be emailed a copy of this presentation within twenty four hours after the webinar ends. And if you do have any questions at any point in the presentation, there's a q and a box on your screen. You can go ahead and and type those in. Our friends at Baker Tilly are providing the the content and, presenting today, and, they they ask for an accurate approval of bios and introduce themselves. So we'll hand it off to you. Thank you for being here. Thanks very much, Kerry. Really appreciate that. Pleasure to be on with everybody that's joined us today. Very excited to have the opportunity to talk about the Maps RE. Before I begin, just wanted to thank Deltek and the team for the terrific support putting this program together. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Leo Alvarez. I'm a principal at Baker Tilly. At Baker Tilly, my practice focuses on supporting clients through the complete government contracts lifecycle. So we often find ourselves supporting, clients on major scorecard based acquisitions like OASIS Plus, AFRL Map excuse me Army Maps, Alliance three Polaris. You name it, we've done it. Today, I'm presenting with Tiffany Hixson. Very excited to have her join our practice as she was one of the main architects at GSA who helped oversee the Oasis plus program and creation, and Molly, Tiffany, Molly, do you want to introduce yourselves here? Sure. Thank you, Leo and Carrie. This is Tiffany. I'm so happy to be here today to share some insights on what I think is a very exciting contract opportunity. What I bring to today's conversation is, as Leo mentioned, a strong background in government wide and agency level IDIQ contracts. I served in government for over thirty five years, leading procurement organizations, at. the Department of Commerce, DHS, and GSA. In my leadership roles at, those agencies, I had the privilege to create and manage several of the most innovative, in my view. GWACs and government including COMETS, OASIS, OASIS Plus, as well as professional services schedule contracts in GSA's multiple award schedules contract program. Yeah. I'm. sorry. We're we're getting a little bit of feedback. So before I continue to ramble on, perhaps everyone can go on mute if we're not speaking. Okay. Thank you. I think that probably took care of it. Alright. So in any event, I I bring, a lot of passion and interest, around big IDIQ contracts, and I'm really happy that I am able to support industry, in in tackling what can be, very challenging source selection criteria in particular for this procurement. So happy to be here. Molly, did you wanna share a bit about your role at Baker Tilly and how you're supporting contractors, through this procurement? Yes. Thank you, Tiffany, and thanks everyone for joining today. Molly Manoni. I am a manager here at Baker Tilly in our government contractor solutions practice. I've been with the firm for almost eight years now, and have supported contractors with a variety of compliance related matters from proposal support to market entry and enterprise transformation efforts as well as supply chain risk management program development. Alongside Leo and the rest of the team, you know, supported a number of contractors on the Oasis plus procurement and have been closely tracking MAPS for quite a bit of time now. So far on MAPS, you know, have been involved in the bid no bid process for some of our clients, you know, evaluating existing project populations, making a determination that's right for the business based on their past performance and ability to meet the screening questions, you know, before undergoing that full scale proposal submission effort, in addition to helping, you know, with the full spectrum of the proposal submission process. But it's great to have you all here with us today. Excited to get started. Thanks, Molly. All right. So just a little bit of background on Baker Tilly for those of you that are not familiar with us. We're the sixth largest accounting firm in the country with offices all around the globe. A A lot of what we do is traditional tax and audit work. But we also have a consulting group that provides a full range of business advisory services. Our GovCon consultants in our government contractor solutions practice are based in Washington, DC, where all day, every day, what we do is we work with companies who provide product and services to the federal government. And as you can see, we have extensive experience with acquisition programs like the GSA schedules and GSA's suite of GWACs and MAPS. And as you can see, we offer a wide range of services in a number of areas to support federal contractors. We have a significant amount of work focused on contract cost accounting. Many of us are accountants, after all. We focus a lot on proposal efforts such as this one. We focus on risk management, contract management, and also provide support to contractors and outside counsel when something goes wrong in relation to managing those compliance obligations. We like to think that that compliance mindset helps us think critically about how to set up these contracts right on day one. So we're not a proposal shop. We have various capabilities beyond just proposals, cybersecurity, CMMC, for example. And so we're very selective about the kinds of proposals that we dedicate our team to. And fortunately, we're going to be supporting Maps. And here's just a brief overview of some of the other ones that we've supported in the past. To go back to Oasis, we've worked with contractors on that program for over a decade, did a lot of work in 2018, 2019 for the on ramps, and then, of course, in 2023 for, Oasis plus and the start of that program, and have been working with contractors on Oasis plus as part of the phase two, reopening of that solicitation. And happy to have Tiffany with us to help support clients who have interesting questions in that area. But we're here to talk about maps. So to give you an idea of how we'll be structuring the conversation today, here is the agenda. We're going to start with a refresh on maps. We're going to be talking about the proposal requirements, the evaluation criteria. We're going to talk about scoring. And then we're also going to be talking about our thoughts in different areas and things to keep in mind as you, think about, going out and preparing an offer, for this solicitation. Just within the past hour, Army has released another amendment, amendment two. We've been able to analyze that and are prepared to incorporate our thoughts into the presentation today. That said, we're still sort of assessing and trying to, to figure out the full details. So, we, you know, plan to to be vocal and and describing some of our our thoughts. And we'll be very honest about the areas that we're still waiting for army feedback on and are ready to move forward with. And then, of course, at the end of the presentation, I think this presentation will go for about sixty minutes. And we're going to leave about thirty minutes for questions so that everybody can get some use out of the materials today. And with that, I will be passing off to Tiffany. Thank you, Leo. Alright. So here we go. Let's dive into it. There's a lot to talk about. So, I we thought first we would start with a refresh in terms of what does the the MAPS, request for proposals look like today? It has evolved, really over the the last year. So this is where we're at today and really where the competition kind of kicks off in terms of scope and the basics for the contract program. So, first of all, I'll talk a little bit about the who's managing the program because I think that's important context, for you all to understand, which is it's being managed by the US Army Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, in partnership with the Army Contracting Command Aberdeen Proving Ground Procurement Office. So the PEOEIS is the acronym that we use for all of that. We'll be serving as the program office, while ACC APG, which is the acronym for the contracting office, will be leading, the source selection, efforts on behalf of the army. I think it's important, to take some time out to research, if you're not familiar, with the program office or contracting office to have an understanding of how both participate in the program. Do a little research on the Internet, understand who they are, because it'll be an important factor in terms of how these organizations think about the opportunity. You can take a look at their previous source selections, as well as how they're going to, assess in particular the technical merit, that you're going to be sharing through qualifying projects. Shared here on this slide is a high level summary of the solicitation in terms of scope. A couple of caveats. While this procurement combines elements of predecessor contracts, ETES or ITES, three s and RS three, there are some key differences. We have seen, a number of questions around, is this really merging the two predecessor procurements? Is it really the same thing only different? And I think the key takeaway that we have for you here today is that this is a brand new procurement, and you need to focus on the scope, and the requirements of the the RFP based on what's in this document and not what happened previously. So from a consolidation perspective, yes, the Army did consolidate the requirements of those two predecessor contracts, into MAPS, but the requirements are different. So it's important to really just start fresh, and pay attention to what the army, is is asking you for, in terms of this proposal response. Services will include a variety of IT and engineering services ranging from cybersecurity, program management, business process reengineering, to research development and testing. The new contract also aligns with the army's ongoing digital transformation and efforts to implement agile, throughout their acquisition process. So there is really that kind of context overlay there. So what's the scope? It really is to streamline procurement processes for the army, reduce duplication of effort, and provide comprehensive solutions for acquiring professional services. So, as they're calling it in the RFP, this is for their uncommon professional services requirements. So I'm expecting that there will be probably fairly difficult task orders that are coming through, the IDIQ contract on the back end after awards are made, given the the the focus on uncommon services. That said, you are going to be, evaluated in terms of how depending on the domain, on cybersecurity, program management, business process reengineering, RDT and E, and engineering services. And what you'll see is this aligns with the army's digital transformation efforts, again, to implement Agile throughout their acquisition process. Maps will be the army's single source for professional services, while providing multiple NAICS to fulfill category requirements. So we're gonna talk a lot about NAICS codes in this briefing, and sometimes it can seem a little overwhelming, but it's important for you to understand the NAICS construct and how important that is in terms of source selection and how the army views really the task orders that are gonna be put through the procurement program. Alright. Some of the finer details. This is an IDIQ contract that will have multiple awards in multiple fair opportunity areas that we will talk about. The duration is going to be ten years with a five year base and one five year option. The government, anticipates awarding 70 awards per domain. For each for each of the five domains, there'll be 30 large business awards, 15 of which are reserved for emerging large businesses, 25 small business awardees, and 15 commercial awardees. There is also, which we will talk about in this presentation, a whole approach in terms of how the army is gonna be, taking to fill these slots. If they don't get enough qualified, commercial awardees, there's a process they're gonna use to backfill those slots. If there are ties, there's a process that they're gonna use, to address those those ties and scores, in making their award decisions. So important to to follow that. The contract users are primarily going to be the Army, but also the Department of Defense and potentially other federal agencies may use the contract program. The ceiling for the contract is $50,000,000,000 And other considerations, again, is let's remember who the Program Office is, as well as who the Contracting Office is. One other note I wanted to mention before we get into the mechanics of the source selection and what those requirements are is, this is very much, in terms of a source selection strategy like the original OASIS contract program. There have been other contract programs that also use what's called Highest Technically Rated Fair and Reasonable Price. That's the approach source selection methodology that the Army is using for MAPS that was also used on OASIS, Alliant, Polaris, VAs. I always forget the name of it. T s four. Is that right, Leo? T Sorry to catch you. You're probably not on mute. t four n g two. t. four n g. Thank you. Matter of fact, I was just looking at it yesterday and looking at the source selection methodology for that procurement, very, very much the same. And the takeaway from that is all of those procurements were very, very competitive. And we'll we'll highlight that a little bit more later, in our our talking points, but this is going to be a highly competitive procurement, that follows that model for some of those legacy contract programs. So just boop for thought. Alright. Here we go. Next slide. In terms of the what's called the domain structure, is and this is where you're gonna be qualifying, your company to compete. There are five domains or technical areas associated with unique NAICS codes, and these NAICS codes are really important to pay attention to. They are designed to align to order requirements to qualified industry partners. Also, the contract is meant to be encompassing of multiple domains to fulfill the goal of being a single source for professional services. Offerors may propose in multiple domains, but each proposal for each one of these domains need to be submitted separately. So if you are interested and qualified to compete in more than one of those domains, you're welcome to do so. But you're gonna need to submit stand alone proposals, for each one of those domain competitions. Okay. For the domain structures, again, this really gets into the NAICS code applicability, and it's important to pay attention, to these technical elements for each one of the the domains. First, the engineering logistics and operational services, which is 541,330. Has scope areas of engineering services, logistics services, manufacturing readiness, medical logistics, technology insertion, integration, and interoperability. And while I don't wanna have to read all of this to you, the what I wanna highlight, is each one of these individual areas for your qualifying projects, you're gonna need to highlight. If you're competing, let's say, for the engineering domain, and you've got capabilities in one of those subsets, you're gonna need to be able to demonstrate that in your qualifying project. And if you can't, that's great, and give yourself scores, right, for that. Aligning to those individual scope areas is important. Even if you believe, right, that you have got qualifying projects that may not be listed in those subcategories, and I'm just gonna use this first domain, as an example, you are still able to submit qualifying projects that say, you know, we've got capabilities that align to this NAICS code and let us show you what that looks like through the offer that you're going to be submitting or your qualifying project as part of your offer competing for that domain. And then you'll follow the same process, right, through each one of those domains. And it's important to really take a look at what the scope is and how your qualifying projects really demonstrate capabilities at either, the overarching NAICS level or in one of these subcategories of, skill sets. Next slide. And, again, for the NAICS codes, well, I'm gonna go back one slide. Well, these are the primary NAICS codes, that qualifying projects can be aligned to. There are also supplemental NAICS codes, that can be used to qualify your projects. And so you've got and and the importance of this is that you'll see that there are shared NAICS codes that go across these domains, notably under, RDT and E. What you'll see is that NAICS code is embedded in the supplemental NAICS codes for each one of the domains. It's very complicated. So you can actually have, a NAICS code qualifying project that reflects RDT and E, and use that for competing purposes under the engineering domain, for example. So, you are not locked out. Let's say if you've got something that is very engineering like, but the qualifying project had a NAICS code that reflected RDT and E, you could still be using that qualifying project to to compete under the engineering, domain, for example. NAICS codes. They're hard people. It's important to pay attention. Okay. In terms of the timeline, it's pretty crisp. The army, now that it has released its final RFP, is looking for questions and answers, or questions, anyway. The answers may not be there, but the questions will. Excuse me. Excuse me. Thank you. But the deadline for questions, which is really important, is April 17. So if you've got questions around the RFP, and we have collected a number of those and have started to share those, with the army. It's important that you get those questions in so they can factor that into their thinking or any adjustments that they wanna make to their RFP. Today, proposals are due on May 1. So there is no time to waste, in terms of pulling your proposals together. And, of course, we're here to help anybody that, would like some support in doing that work. But we really really, it's time to put a pen to paper and start putting those proposals, together. So that May 1 date could be, met. Okay. Molly is going to take us through a deep dive, in terms of the proposal requirements and evaluation criteria. So, Molly, you wanna take it away? Yes. Thanks, Tiffany. So now that we've covered, you know, the overall maps construct, we're really gonna shift into what really matters for you as the offer and how to submit your proposal and, ultimately, what you'll be evaluated against. This procurement is different from other traditional best value RFPs because it's highly structured, score driven, and, you know, very much so documentation based. Everything ties back to section l and m, and it's a highest technically rated selection process with a great deal of compliance and verification involved on your end. So your success really depends on two things, passing all the screening requirements and then maximizing and substantiating your scorecard points. So on the next few slides, you know, I'm gonna walk us through each proposal volume and what the government expects to see. I did see that we were getting some questions on the second amendment that was just released. So I do wanna caveat. The slides were created based off of the First Amendment, but any scoring changes, you know, and and things that came out of that Second Amendment, we'll try to speak to today, but some portions of the slides might be outdated now. So we'll try to address those as we go. Alright. So on this slide, you know, we we kinda wanted to do a high level overview of the four volume proposal structure. You know, by no means is this a narrative heavy proposal. For volume one, this is largely an administrative volume in nature, but it is critical to your submission. This is where your key representations, and pricing is captured, which we'll talk about a little bit more later. Volume two is a very important component of your proposal as well. The screening questions are essential because any response of no will prohibit you from proceeding any further, and your proposal will not be considered, which, again, we'll we'll get into those a bit later, but just to give you an overview of these volumes. Volume three is where you'll submit your qualifying projects or QPs as we'll refer to them today. And then past performance is really an essential piece to this because of the amount of points that are at stake. Once you make it through those screening questions in volume two, and the systems and certifications, your main focus will be on the past performance section of the scorecard. And last but not least, volume four, the small business subcontracting plan is only required for large businesses, and we won't spend too much time here as our main focus is really gonna be on the meat of the submission, you know, focusing on past performance and scoring for your proposals. So the cover letter, well, this is a short volume. It really shouldn't be underestimated because compliance is critical for all aspects of your submission. The cover letter should include your entity structure, including any joint venture or mentor protege arrangements, and your required representations and certifications along with the other items, you know, that I've highlighted here on the slide. The firm fixed pricing element for the post award conference will also be submitted within this volume. And that pricing element is the submission for the cost of two people to attend a virtual post award conference is how it was written. And it also states that a fair and reasonable submission is no less than $50 and no more than a $100. So just something to keep in mind there when preparing that. Alright. Moving on to the screening questions or, you know, in other words, the great the gate criteria. If you do not pass screening, your proposal would not be evaluated any further. These are a set of pass fail requirements built into the top half of the scorecard attachment if you're looking at it. So here on the slide, we've identified the applicable questions depending on your business size for the domain. But we would strongly recommend going through section l with a fine tooth comb to make sure you fully understand what is required for your submission. Some of the key questions, in the screening portion focus on certifications, facility clearance, sam.gov registration, and CPARS thresholds, where in the case for CPARS, too many marginal ratings would result in exclusion. So kind of digging a little bit deeper into that because I I do think it's important. For the CPARS portion, the government will pull CPARS scores for all five NAICS codes identified in the acquisition over the last three years from, the date that proposals are due, so 05/01/2026. We did see that regulatory compliance as a CPARS element was not included in the screening evaluation for emerging large, small, or commercial businesses. So something to note there if you're trying to get a sense for what the government will be looking at. And, again, that was in the first amendment. We'll need to go back and confirm that that stayed consistent with the with the second amendment. But if your CPARS ratings exceed the thresholds that we've provided here on the screen, you would be excluded from any further evaluation. So as an example, for large businesses, if 5% or more of the element ratings are marginal or below, you will be excluded from evaluations. Small businesses, however, are not evaluated on a percentage basis. It's actually account basis. So if five or more of the CPARS element ratings are marginal or below, your proposal would be excluded at that point. And then lastly, for some reason, let's say, you know, no CPARS ratings are available for you, they would not be evaluated for the screening questions. So you would just put that as, you know, not applicable. Alright. So moving on to past performance. You know, assuming you've made it through the screening questions at this point, past performance will be evaluated through your qualifying projects. A QP must be either a single contract, including prime or commercial, or a single task order awarded under an IDIQ, BPA, or a basic ordering agreement. This also includes task orders awarded under an FSS contract, or subcontracts are also acceptable, something we wanna note, but only for the emerging large, small, and commercial business categories. This option to submit a subcontract as a QP is excluded for large businesses, and they cannot, you could not submit a subcontract if that's what you're proposing as. And then, you know, the last kind of piece here, a QP can also be an other transaction authority agreement. We did get some questions in this area whether you can submit a group of task orders as a single QP. And the answer as of right now is no, but it might be worth submitting a clarifying question to the army on just just to make sure. But we're reading it as a single task order. Each qualifying project, will need to align to the appropriate NAICS codes that Tiffany went through, the domain scope, and then the performance time frame or recency requirements that we'll talk about, a bit later. There are two types of projects to consider because that will impact which portions of the scorecard that you're completing. There are level of effort and outcome based contracts. The level of effort projects are defined in the solicitation as all cost reimbursement types, firm fixed price level of effort term, time and materials, and labor hour contracts. The outcome based contracts, on the other hand, are all fixed price type contracts, cost plus fixed fee completion form contracts, and then grants and agreements as well. Each of those will be evaluated differently. So level of effort focuses on staffing metrics like vacancy rate and time to fill, and then outcome based will focus on schedule and completeness in your evaluation. Something I do wanna note here because I am anticipating a question on this. For any contract that's a hybrid of contract types that I mentioned before, the QP should be considered a level of effort qualifying project. So that's the guidance that was that we received. And then if you're if you're using a subcontract for your QP submission, you will use the prime contracts contract type. So on the next few slides, I'll cover, you know, some considerations as it relates to scoring just to really emphasize how important it is that you select the right projects to maximize your points when it comes to past performance. So for every project, you will need to submit the QP form, as well as any supporting documentation that validates your claims. And then the past performance questionnaires are only applicable if CPARS is not available for the project. So you you couldn't submit a PPQ, as a substitution. If the CPARS exists, you have to use it. The qualifying project form does include two signed certifications from both yourself as the offeror and the representative of the contracting party, whether that's, you know, government or private. If the form does not include that signed certification, it will not be evaluated by the government. So this is really important to get those QP forms completed and certified well before that May 1 deadline. Again, you know, I'm moving through these volumes at a high level because we're gonna go into much more detail when we get into past performance, a bit later. Alright. And then for volume four, few things to highlight here before we do a deeper dive into scoring and past performance. You know, only applicable to large businesses, the subcontracting plan should outline goals, small business participation strategy, and your reporting approach. And then these plans are evaluated on an acceptable unacceptable basis. So if your subcontracting plan is deemed unacceptable, you would not receive an award, and the next highest rated offer would be considered. This requirement does not appear to apply to the emerging large business category as we last read it. It you know, it's something to keep an eye out for. Sorry, Leo. Do you wanna. say something? Yeah. That's actually been clarified, as of an hour and a half ago in amendment two. So, emerging large businesses would also have to be submitting a, small business subcontracting plan. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you for that. Alright. Okay. And then another area, you know, we've we've been getting questions on, for affiliate experience. Offers may use affiliate experience in their proposal, but there are some rules and caveats here. Affiliates typically include parent companies, subsidiaries, or entities under common control. So as an affiliate, you're still subject to the same evaluation criteria that are outlined in the screening questions. Only one contract per domain is allowed for a single legal entity. So this would include any parents, subsidiary subsidiaries, excuse me, and affiliates. So in other words, two entities under the same parent company cannot each propose on the same domain, and we wanna make that very clear because we've we've definitely gotten some questions on that. Alright. So now moving, you know, into scoring in a little bit more detail because we went through the volumes at at a high level. But for the next section, we will be breaking down the scorecard really with an emphasis on the categories that get you the most points. So, for example, performance quality, relevancy, pass through rates are all some of the areas with the largest maximum amount of points available. These three categories alone make up just over 50% of the total maximum points available for offers, so you'll wanna pay close attention as, Tiffany and I cover those. But, again, just wanna caveat these slides reflect the First Amendment RFP. I you know, we'll call out some of the the changes that we've seen in the Second Amendment, but just as you're looking at this. So taking a look at the scorecards for each of the different size determinations. Really, the main difference across the four scorecards, is the distribution of points across systems and certifications. So for the sake of time, I'll primarily focus on those systems and certification requirements for scoring, and then we'll dive a bit deeper into the larger scoring categories that I mentioned before, you know, like relevance and performance quality. For large businesses, you can earn points for a government approved property management system, but you will need to provide a copy of that system review report or the official letterhead from DCMA or your cognizant federal agency. Now, something to remember, while property management, you know, is shown as the only system you can leverage for points on the scorecard, you must have a government approved accounting system and purchasing system to comply with the screening requirements as a large business. So those requirements exist at the screening level. They're just not an option for points, on the scorecard. And then for the next couple slides, I'll I'll get into the remaining size standards. But you'll see, you know, as a whole, systems and certifications make up 10% of total scoring across the board, but the weighting of points is what varies across each size. So in the case for large businesses, the certifications make up 8% of the total scorecard here. Emerging large businesses have the opportunity to score points for government approved property management, purchasing, and accounting systems, making up 6% of total scoring. The certification opportunities are the same as large, but it's just worth a lower percentage of total overall points. And, again, you know, we'll get into these other sections here on the scorecard, a little bit later because we wanna get into as much detail as possible there. But just for the sake of comparing scorecards, we're focusing on systems and certifications now. So moving on to small, something that is a change, you know, is a change to the existing slide. So with the final solicitation, we saw that small businesses had the opportunity to score points if not proposing as a joint venture. That has since changed. You know, that opportunity to score additional points was actually removed with the most recent amendment. So the points, distribution here has changed a little bit. Small businesses can achieve points for a government approved accounting system as well as the certifications shown here. So, you know, really the takeaway here, previously, small businesses were able to actually gain points through an organizational strategy, but, you know, that is that has since changed. And then last but not least for commercial. So no points awarded here for government approved systems for commercial vendors. And there are no requirements for, the systems in the screening requirement or in the excuse me, in the screening questions either. All 13,000 points are allocated towards certifications for commercial vendors. They actually have the opportunity to achieve points for for either an active secret facility clearance or a top secret facility clearance. In addition to the ISO 27,001 certification, offers can also score points for ISO 9,001 as well. And, you know, now that we've covered these differences just at a high level, we're gonna focus on the past performance section of the scorecard, which is really, you know, the most important piece here, and how to maximize your points for the other areas that that are Molly, just one one quick clarification. Yep. on, that small business point that you were making. So the prior amendment under systems said that you received points, per government determined acceptable systems. And small business offers will receive additional points if they are not proposing as a JV. This one took out that language about small businesses will receive additional points if they are not proposing as a JV. So one could interpret the latest amendment as meaning that there's still an opportunity for small businesses to receive points if they're proposing as a JV, Just to just to clarify. Makes sense? Yes. Thanks, Yeah. Leo. Yep. Alright. So the sections that, you know, Tiffany and I are gonna cover on the next two slides actually make up close to 90% of total scoring. So that's why we really wanted to spend some time on, you know, these sections specifically. You know, diving right into performance quality, project performance is one of the most important considerations for your proposal submission. And, you know, I know that's been said a few times already today, but at a minimum, your project must be rated as satisfactory and above. No projects with a CPARS scoring below satisfactory, neutral, or nonrelevant would be considered. If you do not have a CPARS available for your project, you may submit a past performance questionnaire like I mentioned. This has to be completed by both the offeror and the contracting representative. So, you know, like I said before, our recommendation is to get these out as soon as possible. And you can receive the maximum amount of points here or 10,000 points per qualifying project only if your project is rated as exceptional in all CPARS or PPQ elements. For relevancy, you can achieve the maximum amount of points if you're able to demonstrate that your qualifying project meets a 100% of the technical capabilities of the domain. These capabilities are identified on the QP form, and we would, you know, we would very strongly recommend annotating your contract statement of work to make it clear to the government how this aligns. It's also important to note that your projects are scored independently, so you couldn't combine capabilities across your projects. Leo, anything I missed there? yeah. No. Yeah. I I would say the other thing that was interesting with amendment two is that for relevance, they removed, the amendment one language said, you know, to determine, relevance to technical capabilities identified for each domain, go ahead and look at the PWS. They basically took that part about looking at the PWS, which to me means you can use other forms of documentation to prove relevance to the particular domain. So that's my personal takeaway. As we're going to say throughout this presentation over and over again, these are our thoughts. We recommend submitting questions to the Army. We ourselves have already submitted as many as 20. Please make sure to ask that kind of question to the Army to get official clarification. Great. Thanks, Leo. And then for the pass through rate, so you'll be evaluated based on the portion of work completed by the offeror versus the subcontractor. This is reported on the QP form as well as, is calculated or excuse me. It's calculated as total incurred subcontractor labor dollars divided by total incurred labor dollars. Something that, you know, was clarified with the first amendment, was how to calculate this rate if you're submitting a subcontract as your qualifying project. So in the event that you're submitting a QP as a subcontractor, the total incurred labor dollars would reflect the total labor performed by the offeror and the incurred subcontractor dollars should represent any second tier subcontracts that fell under the subcontract, itself. So, in other words, total labor incurred by sub tier subcontractors divided by total labor that was performed by you as the offeror. And with that, I will pass it along to Tiffany, and she's gonna cover the next set of scoring questions. Thanks thanks, Molly. I am going to talk a little bit about vacancy rates and and, really, again, this is things that you need to pay attention to, when you're putting in your qualifying projects and documenting, or really supporting, right, the the points that you're claiming in each one of these areas for level of effort effort QPs. Consider using the date the vacancy was opened versus the date the offer was accepted from a personnel perspective. Again, this applies only to level of effort QPs. Time to fill rate. Consider projects that meet forty five days or less to fill, or to achieve the maximum points. And so if one or more, vacancies was filled on the QP over the last full year of performance, offers must take the average of all filled positions. So it's really important when you're claiming points, right, that you are supporting, those scores with specific math and examples of how you've achieved, those results. In terms of schedule, the QP must meet the acceptable quality level or AQL, which is 100% of the overall project schedule was met. It's a pretty high standard. Offers receive points only for exceeding 100% of the project schedule, which, I you know, we have seen some feedback like, wow, a 100%, and or you need to beat the schedule, and that's really what they're looking at, for offers to really max out the scores, against that schedule, subfactor. For completeness, QPs must meet the AQL, which is a 100% of the requirements fulfilled. Again, a high target. Offers will only receive, points per QP, or qualifying project that meet the AQL and have the efficiencies greater than the designed threshold. So for example, if you've got 10 documented efficiencies, you would have you'd be able to claim 5,000 points. And again, this is only applicable to outcome based, qualifying projects. And we've had some internal discussions around what type of qualifying project you might wanna put in, to compete on this requirement. And I I I think we're all in in good agreement that if you've got outcome based, qualifying projects as examples, to lean on those first, and then lean on, level of effort, qualifying projects second. And then lastly, and this we will correct this, perhaps on the slides before we, or we can correct them and resubmit them back to Deltek to share with you all. The before today's amendment, small businesses could gain, additional points by, not aligning to a JV that has been removed, if I got that right, Leo, from that was removed thirty minutes ago. So that is no longer, an advantage, really, for small businesses. Also, it's more difficult, just a note for emerging largest, just for the max, considering the approved, additional approved systems that they will have to provide. Systems must also be government approved. Go ahead, Leo. Yeah. I was just gonna say on the, yeah, let's let's go ahead and we'll we'll review the, the solicitation, and then we'll we'll clarify that point about the small business points and the Yeah. Yeah. That would, I think, be helpful. removal of it. We just wanna I think it's a good idea for us to take a second there. So we'll we'll we'll get that, updated and attend to Deltek. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Leo. One thing I wanted to mention, right, in terms of mistakes that get made as part of this part of the process is not submitting the supporting information that the government is asking for. And I can't stress this enough. If you go back and look at protest decisions across a lot of the legacy IDIQs that used this evaluation approach, many companies have been removed for failing to provide the supporting documentation. So I really can't overstate it enough. When they say you need to submit something, it's gotta be there or you're going to be eliminated from the competition. So having a second set of eyes, a third set of eyes, having an external company help you put your proposal together and get that submitted properly, like Baker Kelly, is something that can be really important in terms of your QA process before you submit your your offer. Other documentation that can be helpful, in terms of supporting your claimed points is that if any of your qualifying projects have QASPs, which is a quality assurance surveillance plan. Those plans, which are used a lot in services contracts, layout, so for example, vacancy rates, time to fill rates, schedules, you know, that kind of thing. Oh, thank you, Molly, for moving forward on the slide. They are really helpful in terms of I would share if you've got that kind of documentation. I would include that as part of your proposal package along with the work statement, a copy of the task order, that kind of thing. Share the QASP and say this was included or highlight the QASP as part of the task order that says here's what the government required us to do, and then, share the reports that showed that how you delivered those things. Generally, if you've got a cost, there is monthly monitoring, quarterly monitoring, sometimes an annual result, especially if there's an incentive fee involved. So you've got any of that kind of documentation. I would submit that along with the other documentation that you're gonna be submitting to support the points that you are claiming. So just wanted to kinda double down on that, and it can be a really easy resource, for the government to understand, how you got to the conclusion that you did around the points, that you were scoring. My other tip, based on what I have seen in these source selections, and I really can't overstate this either aside from following instructions, is make it as easy as possible for the government team who is evaluating your offer to see what you are claiming. Highlight it. Do tags, which we've used on, what we used when I was at GSA for, OASIS and OASIS Plus. But take the time to really do a crosswalk to show them how you are supporting your scores for each one of these qualifying projects. So that's that's kind of my my big takeaway there. And, Molly, I think you are up next. Thanks, Stephanie. So in the event of a tie, you know, the army has stated that the government will review the percentage of the tied offers CPARS and or PPQ ratings over the last three years from, the date proposals are due or May 1 for the five NAICS codes under the MAPS acquisition that are rated as exceptional. So I know that, you know, was kind of a a run on thought there, but whichever offer has the higher percentage of exceptional ratings wins the tie. If there's still a tie at that point, the government utilizes a second tie breaker looking at the percentage of very good ratings, you know, kind of under the same same logic, for the CPARS or submitted PPQ element ratings over the last three years. And whichever offeror has the higher percentage wins the tie. Now, there's no third tiebreaker, for large, emerging large and small businesses, but there is a third tiebreaker which I'll cover on the next slide for commercial, which is interesting. So, I'm not sure if that was intentional. You know, maybe the government doesn't anticipate any ties to make it beyond the second tie breaker for the large emerging large and small business sizes, but could be a question worth asking. For commercial sector vendors, the first two tie breaker proceedings are, you know, largely the same. The government will evaluate the percentage of PPQ ratings as exceptional for the three submitted, qualifying projects. Whichever offeror has that higher percentage of exceptional ratings wins the tie. Second tie breaker, same thing, evaluates the percentage of ratings as very good with the higher percentage winning. Now if there's still a tie, the government will calculate the average of the total points for the pass through rate for all submitted QPs, and whichever offeror has the highest average total points wins the tie. So utilizing past performance and pass through ratings in the event of a tie just reemphasizes how important it is to consider both performance and pass through metrics when selecting your qualifying projects. Because not only do those sections carry a great deal of points when you come to the scoring section, but they could also make the difference in the event of a tie if you feel like you're you're kind of on the cusp there. So, again, just really signals why those two areas are so important. Alright. And I think, you know, the last thing I'm gonna talk about here, just because we get a lot of questions in this area, are considerations if you're proposing as a joint venture. So when proposing as a JV, you have to decide whether the JV itself or an individual partner will be submitting the proposal to be the base contract holder, under that specific domain on maps. So this is an either or situation. Members of a JV can propose as either the JV itself or a single offeror, but you cannot propose as both. And this gets back to the only a single legal entity holding a contract under a single domain. In terms of the screening and certification requirements, I did see some questions coming through on this, especially as it relates to CMMC. So whoever's performing the security work should hold the active secret facility clearance, whether that's one, the other, or both. You know, same kind of concept here for CMMC. Each member of the JV that's handling data must hold their own CMMC certification. The JV can rely on a managing or mentoring partner's CMMC certification only if they intend to use solely the managing partner's IT systems to store and process FCI and CUI. So that's really important. You can also rely on your managing partner's ISO 27,001 certification as well. And and didn't appear to be any stipulations there, just that you are able to rely on the managing partner's cert, for the ISO certification. Just one last, you know, important distinction here is that populated JVs must have their own government approved business systems. Only unpopulated JVs can rely on the managing partner's business systems. So that's just a key takeaway here. Depending on how your JV is structured, you'll you'll really wanna pay, you know, close attention to that. And then, you know, kinda lastly, how do we document all of this? Make sure the cover letter explicitly states which systems your JV is operating under. So that's what gets back to that importance of, you know, that first volume. And then something else, you know, I wanted to flag, that was in the solicitation. Should you win an award on MAPS as a JV, In a joint venture that's, comprised of a small business protege and it's mentor mentor approved by the Small Business Administration, the small business protege has to perform at least 40% of the work that is completed by the joint venture, and that work, has to be meaningful. It cannot just be administrative in nature. So something that was explicitly called out in the solicitation we wanted to flag. But with that, I'll pass it back to Tiffany, and she's gonna discuss some historical considerations as we think about, you know, how could the score and results might play out. Thank you Molly. Yeah I thought when we were preparing our discussion it would be helpful to share some context, in terms of how these types of source selections have been used. I mentioned some of this earlier and how they tend to play out, as they go through the source selection process. So if you're interested in in diving into some of these, legacy procurements, as I like to call them, that use this source selection approach approach. GSA OASIS, the first generation was the first contract to use this type of source selection approach and there were lots of lessons learned from that procurement that have been folded into procurements like MAPS. Alliant three with GSA also used this approach. GSA Polaris, those are two IT service contracts, that use this approach. And then, again, earlier, I talked about VA's t four n g two, contract, which I think finally successfully made it through, all of the protests, that they they experienced on on that source selection. And some takeaways from, those procurements, is that successful proposals were almost always engineered to meet the scoring threshold exactly. So what that means is offers took a lot of time to make sure they're qualifying projects after they got through the the gate reviews, really maximize the points as much as possible. Arguable relevance was avoided. So, again, there was no gray space. Right? Like, someone could interpret, this capability to meet the standard that the solicitation was looking for. Basically, it was we're claiming these points, here is exactly what supports us claiming those points, and there was really no gray space left. Right? The evaluators could easily see that. There wasn't a question there. Again, proposals were really made as effortless as possible for the evaluator to concur with self scoring. Again, I can't stress it enough. Make it easy, for the government to see what you are seeing. Small score differences in experience really determined winners. So if you think, hey, five points isn't really gonna make a difference, it does. These are highly competitive procurements and MAPS is going to be incredibly, competitive. So every point matters. Especially when we get down to looking at ties that, Molly just went through. They really play, a role, when it gets down to, you know, the the last, companies on the list that may receive an award. Ties were common. And so the tire breaker hierarchy, which I did appreciate in the in the MAP solicitation, was strictly applied. And I appreciated in this solicitation, like, they talked about, okay, if we have to do one round, two rounds, a final round, this is how we're gonna do it, because it happens. Solicitation and award protests were not only common but ubiquitous across all of these contract programs. So you need to expect, that there will be delays based on protests. If the solicitation does not receive a solicitation protest, I am almost positive that there will be protests at the time of award and you really need to plan that into your marketing strategy and that kind of thing. So even if you are selected as an awardee, you may not be able to move forward with performance until those protests are resolved. It really depends on how the Army is going to handle that. So plan for that. And companies did lose protests and awards over what they thought was a trivial exclusion or a trivial reason why the government excluded their offer from being awarded. And the courts at GAO have pretty much said nope. Those aren't trivial reasons. They told you upfront, this is what they wanted. Here's how they wanted to see it. You didn't support that, and so the government was right in not awarding you a contract. So these these types of procurements are not the same as our traditional best value where there's really room more room for, judgment, and really kind of leaning into what the what they think a contractor is trying to tell them or an offer is trying to tell them. On these types of procurements, that is not the case. You gotta prove it, and you've gotta show it. Okay. In terms of historical results that we've seen for these types of, source selections, after I gave all of that, information about how information about how important it is to document of every point that you are, proposing, you still don't need a perfect score to win. I do think on MAPS in particular for, the emerging large business and large business, for opportunity areas, I think it's gonna be super, super competitive. And having a perfect score will definitely help you. If it's not exactly perfect, you still may be competitive. But, what we see in particular in the small business spaces as well that, companies did not have perfect the highest scoring companies did not have perfect scores, but were still awarded a contract. Still, you need well above average, and you really need to strategically optimize, your scores to win. And what do we mean by that? It means pick, your your best example of qualifying projects for each one of the domain areas that you're going to compete in. Think about your performance on all of your task orders and contracts and which ones were the best. Use those, especially those that you can document, the performance results. Again, a caution. I think as what we've seen is as the industrial base has become more familiar with the source selection approach, competition has really increased. We see that, with the results for Alliant, I think VA's requirement to have very, very high scores where we could actually see them. Where do you find out what those scores are? It's really through case law. If they're not redacted, for some of those procurements, all of the final score results were were, sealed, so we weren't able to see those. But you could see, you know, hey, there was a 100 contractors that proposed and 20 got contracts. So that kinda gives you a sense of how, competitive those procurements were. Also for and what we're seeing on the unrestricted is really you gotta have a score that's at least 90% of the scores that are available, to feel at least fairly comfortable that you may be competitive enough, to win a contract. Also for mid tier and small businesses, really looking at scores here, it was 82 based on historical results. I would increase that for MAPS for sure. So you're looking at probably over 85% pushing 90% of available scores to be the most highly competitive. So when you're scoring yourself, take a look at that. And, you know, these are insights, not answers. Right? Go. ahead, Leo. The the one thing that I want to say too is that, you know, we're looking at prior, you know, results that were made publicly available. You know, the original OASIS did publish the scores. Those were hovered around 60% maybe of the entire scorecard for small businesses and close to 80% for large businesses. This procurement is very different, especially when you when you look at things like pass through rate where, you know, contractors have been encouraged through small business subcontracting plans that may have had high, small business goals to subcontract a lot of their work. And that's basically being used as a negative in this context in things like past the, you know, the time to fill and the vacancy rate, schedule, completeness. Those are all new factors. So it's difficult to speculate as to what the scores will be. I think the main point here is industry has gotten very good at being able to go ahead and put out very, you know, they're they've gotten very good at being able to maximize these scorecards. So, you know, the the idea here is try to try to get as much as you can if you're gonna be submitting one of these offers. Thank you, Leo. Good insights. Okay. So we've got some final thoughts. I wanna talk about, just, the process and kinda what to expect in terms of the evaluation process and what that looks like, for MAPS, which is you're gonna submit your offer, then there'll be a verification and review of, those offers, and I'll start with the screening, and then move into evaluating qualifying projects. And if there are adjustments to your self scores, those will be made. And then if you make it into that final round, there'll be a final evaluation followed by the award. And we laid out some very specific, guidelines, right, in terms of what you can expect in each one of these phases. First, you'll, of course, submit your offers in a portal. There are as a matter of fact, since there was some recent case law around portal submissions, I will give you some advice. Do not wait until the last day to submit your offer, into the portal. Also there are some very strict requirements in terms of the number of people, that you can have registered to submit your offer. So those are things you really should be thinking about now. I would plan at least two business days before proposals are due to submit your offer in the portal. Leo, I'm not sure if you have any other thoughts on that, but I think two two business days is probably a good buffer, to make sure that if there are any technical issues, you're able to work through those, you know, with the government, A 100%. you sit. Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. There's definitely a need for a white glove period is what we call it. And because every single day counts right now, yeah, two two days at at minimum, to make sure there's no issues with the system. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So I think out of those steps, that is one that's of interest. I think there was a recent Court of Federal Claims case actually over a proposal getting stuck, in an electronic tool that the government was using. At that time the government was not successful in defending the protest, but most of the time the government is, and it's on you to make sure that it's in on time. And it's important to remember in terms of the review process that the government is going to go through that gono go screening process first. And companies who do not get through that will not be, evaluated in terms of their qualifying projects. The next round of the evaluation will be looking at really those top 70, or so offers, that they will evaluate. If you don't reach, the that score threshold, your offer won't even be looked at. So it's really important to understand your self score and to maximize that as much as possible because the government may never even see your offer if you're not in the top scoring offers, which is, very different, right, than our traditional, best value trade off procurement. So I just wanted to highlight those things, for you. Okay. And lastly, in terms of areas of or areas for you to consider and for areas of clarification where we're still seeing, a lot of questions is QP selection, which is, of course, pick the best examples that you have and that you can support in terms of your performance in choosing your qualifying projects. You want high performance, and low pass through rates for those level of effort QPs if you choose to use them. And just can't emphasize that enough. I need to be working on that right now. We just talked about the Proposal Submission Timeline. Proposals are due on the first, and but now is the time to obtain certifications from your Contracting Officers for your Qualifying projects in your PPQ forms. Avoid waiting for the last minute. And what we mean by that is the, PPQ forms have to be signed by your Contracting Officer. And you know how busy they are, and so so you need to be picking those qualifying projects and really, like, right now or next week, sending out those forms for your contracting officers to sign off on. Without those, you're not gonna be able to submit a qualifying offer. Past performance evaluation, utilizing CPARS provided at the IDIQ level rather than the task order level. How should this be treated? We're not clear on this, so we have submitted a question in terms of will, the government consider CPARS at the IDIQ level. My recommendation is just to focus on either stand alone contracts that are not IDIQs and task orders, to use as your qualifying projects versus relying on, one of your IDIQs that may also have good performance. Also, calculating your CPARS score correctly, make sure that you're really looking at what the government told you in terms of your CPARS scores. For example, for a QP with a combination rating of satisfactory and very good, the offeror should default to the lowest tier for those points, satisfactory. And as we know, CPARS do not have an overall one rating, so they're gonna be looking at those individual elements. The safe thing to do is to take really that that lowest level, rating in the CPARS in terms of support claiming points for that. Also leveraging affiliate experience. Right now, there is no apparent requirement for a meaningful relationship commitment letter, to be included with your offer, which is different than other prior scorecard RFPs. So again, you know, MAPS is its own procurement, and this could be an advantage, for you as an offer where you're able to leverage your affiliate experience and not have to submit, additional documentation as part of that. On prior scorecard RFPs, if an offer intended to use the experience of affiliate, again, in its proposal, it really had to have meaningful involvement in the contract. That is not the case right now on MAPS. So something to think about if you do have affiliates you'd like to leverage their experience for, when submitting your offer. Okay, Leo. I think you're gonna wrap help wrap it up here in terms of talking about how to prepare the offer. Just got another notice from Gov Nguyen for a a new a new notice. It looks like a few of the documents were deleted, potentially replaced. So, RME is definitely making changes right now. So. we've got about fifteen minutes left. I really want to get to questions. I know that's what a lot of you are here for. Just wanted to highlight here, obviously, Q and A is going to be extremely important. The deadline is the seventeenth. We have already submitted a number of questions. So we have questions as well in a number of areas that aren't clear to us. We're hoping that the Army will clarify that and then hopefully give industry some additional time to prepare proposals because there are a lot of elements in the RFP that are not clear. That said, what we have been working with our clients to do is take as conservative an approach as possible with their scoring. Teams should have already been formulated. If you are looking at a teaming approach, one of the things that wasn't very clear in the RFP is around joint ventures. What are you going to do with a mentor protege joint venture? Could all of the projects for under a mentor protege joint venture come from the mentor? The way that the RFP reads right now, which is silent on that point, is yes. One could reasonably come to that point of view. Is that the way the RFP is going to weigh on that factor? We're not sure. So take a conservative approach in how it is that you're approaching your scoring. And then compliance with SRP is gonna be extremely important. If you have been through a scorecard evaluation before, you'll have some experience to work with. That'll be beneficial to you. A lot of organizations are now familiar with the scorecard construct having gone through the Oasis scorecard process and some others that are out there. But as Tiffany mentioned earlier, it's always beneficial. It doesn't hurt to get a second set of eyes on things. We will be assisting contractors with compliance review, red team reviews, ad hoc support in the final weeks here. So if you need support, let's talk, and we can go ahead and move from there. So with that, I will oh, we also have some resources on the back here on these particular procurements. I'm gonna pass it off to to Carrie to help us get started on the questions. Great. Thanks, everyone. A question that I've seen come through a few times and not to put you on the spot, but I think that everyone on the call oh, can you all mute? Oh, yes. Thanks. Yeah. So a question I saw a few times and a question that I think everyone on the call would appreciate your feedback on is, do you think that the proposal due date is gonna get pushed? And I know you have not seen the latest update that we just sent out. Pure speculation. I mean, I in my opinion, there is there are so many questions around this RP. I think it would be wise for the army to move the due date back a couple weeks to give it industry time to go ahead and carefully consider the impact of things around, you know, how do you interpret CPARS? They didn't put any, any information in there about interim CPARS versus final CPARS or unsigned interim CPARS. They didn't, They didn't mention there was a mention in the RFP around LOE QPs or excuse me, outcome based QPs and the mention of grants and agreements in the RFP, which leads to the question, does that imply that grants and agreements can be included in some part of the QP process? One would think for research and development, grants and agreements are frequently used. Could that be used as a QP? No. No clarification there. You know, things about FPDS reports are often used as verifiable substantiating information for RFPs. There wasn't anything you know, in the in the RFP on how to interpret that. You know, there's there's a lot of, I think some some, you know, questions from industry about vacancy rate, time to fill rate. I mean, it sort of goes on and on. The other one that I think that jumps out to me, Tiffany, and Molly, is teaming. Like, prime sub teams. Nothing in the RFP to talk to how companies are supposed to be thinking about teaming at all. Right now, the RFP does it the way it's silent on it, one would think, alright, I guess there is no Prime Sub teaming that's allowed, but it's not explicit. So, teams may be you know, the companies may be putting teams together right now. And if the army doesn't clarify that and sticks with the current date, then they're gonna be really hard pressed to get proposals in. And does that mean that the army's really getting the best of the best? So in in my opinion, I think it would be wise to move back. But the army has, tight time frames to work with here. Thank you. That's fair. So some other questions we got, what changes in priorities by the current administration will be most prominent in this acquisition process? Yeah. I can answer that one. I I think, you know, seeing the difference in the scoring criteria or at least the screening questions, excuse me, for commercial businesses definitely signals, you know, some of the priorities of the current administration. So, you know, specifically, those without power government contracts being able to bid and and removing some of those tighter screening areas, I think, is definitely a nod in the direction of of where the current administration was headed. Thanks, Molly. Next one up. What are deal breakers perspective bidders need to consider to avoid unsuccessful bids? Deal breakers. Yeah. So, you know, I I would say, you know, this procurement really comes down to, you know, the the qualifying projects. And from from my perspective, when it comes to LOE and outcome based, QPs, you really need to be taking a good look at the at those elements and seeing whether you're gonna be able to, you know, maximize some of the scoring in those areas. If you're struggling on, you know, in those particular scoring factors, I think that might be putting you out of reach on on this procurement. There's just two there's just not that many spots to to to work with. And as we know, there's a it's just gonna be very, very competitive. So that that would be my feedback there. Thank you. Which domain do you think will be the most challenging to show credible substantiation? Do you have thoughts on that one? Yeah. I can take that one. So the requirements really are the same across all domains from a screening and scoring perspective. The variation really comes, into play when you're considering the different business sizes, but past performance is consistent for all scorecards. So, really, the only variations we would see, would be in for the systems and certifications at the size level and then, you know, some variations in the screening questions as well. But, in terms of saying, you know, which one is most challenging, it's hard to say without knowing the true, you know, scope of the competition and and how many offers are planning to bid per domain. Yeah. Okay. Molly, while I have you, you have another question. Can related contracts or task orders be combined if they are part of the same project into a project experience? we kinda went over this, you know, a little bit early in the presentation. As of now, you know, the answer is no based on how they defined QPs. It's a single task order awarded under an IDIQ, you know, basic ordering agreement, FSS contract. We didn't see anything that said that you could combine task orders. And, you know, specifically for relevancy, the guidance that they gave is that you can't even combine your projects, for scoring purposes. So it seems like you cannot combine task orders to make it one project for experience. But. I think going back to the experience of the prior scorecards, it's always been reasonable from the government's perspective to look, especially at single award IDIQs or single award BPAs, being able to combine the experience because, obviously, that was one vendor who was executing work periodically. So that's been recognized in the past. I would encourage industry to ask army questions on that to see if they would allow that. It doesn't sound like they will, but still perfectly reasonable task. And someone's asking for clarification on pass through rates. Yeah. So I can I can take that one as well? So the pass through rate is calculated by the total incurred subcontractor labor dollars divided by the total incurred labor dollars for each QP. Now if you're using a subcontract as your qualifying project, that's where it gets a little confusing based on the language, and that was actually clarified in the second amendment. Labor dollars, so if you performed the work as a sub, the total incurred labor dollars would reflect the total labor performance by you as the offeror, and then that subcontractor total labor dollars should reflect any sub tier subcontracts. And I think I saw some questions. You know, what if there were there was no dollar subcontract? Then, you know, that works in your favor in terms of the rate. So, hopefully, that answered the question. Thanks. Okay. Tiffany, let's switch to you. There's. a question. Do you do you have any examples of things that would qualify as customer recognized efficiency, and what supporting documentation would need to be submitted with the proposal to justify the completeness score. Yeah. I I think, you know, we were talking about costs earlier, which actually do document, efficiencies, in in terms of, you know, they've set this particular performance metric. You've got it in the cost. You deliver x, y, and z performance results. That would be, an area to look. I know a lot of procurements, don't have them. So if you've got examples of cost efficiencies, right, for cost type, QPs, and you hit it out of the park from a savings perspective, or you beat the schedule, and were able to deliver early and you've got documentation of that, for those qualifying projects. Those are really great examples, if that's what the question is getting at, of efficiencies that have been delivered to the government based on your performance. Okay. Tiffany, you said earlier on in the presentation to think of maps as a brand new contract, as. opposed to a recompete, but you got this question. How will the army reconcile the mismatch between RS three's broad multidisciplinary task orders and ITES's narrow IT focused task orders when defining qualifying projects? They're not. And I I think it's really important, at least in terms of my read of the RFP. Again, it's brand new. So this isn't squishing together, the two, legacy contracts to create something new. It is they have a whole new set of requirements. The consolidation analysis, right, that was published, I know a lot of it is redacted, really is the business case around why they needed, this new type of really omnibus IDIQ contract. I don't think they're trying to reconcile what they did before. They're trying to build a new IDIQ contract program to support their future mission needs. So I think it's really important to really delink and divorce yourself, right, from, well, this is what we did before. This is what they wanna do for the future, so let's pay attention to that. Okay. We have time for a couple more questions. What is the number one or top three things prospective bidders should be doing now to prepare for final solicitation release? Alright. You, wanna take Tiffany. that, Leo? The solicitation about I'm. sorry, the solicitation's been issued. So go ahead, Leo. Yeah. No. So I I I think it's number one, you need to be making sure that you pass the screening criteria. Right? If if you don't pass, then there's no point in in considering this RFP. If you've already made that determination, it's going through the the project population. Look look at the high the harder scoring areas to to score at, make some assumptions around some of the other factors to come up with what a rough score would be. And then you also need to be thinking obviously, if you're going to be trying to use any projects, you need to be prioritizing, the ones where you have a good relationship with the CO where you can actually get that signed certification. Because right now, the way the RFP is written, the QP form does need to be signed by the CO for any of the QPs that are being provided. We do have another question into the army. Would they consider the use of the QP form and evidence if it can be provided independently without having to bug the the the CO or perhaps the CO team has changed or something of that nature that has caused some issues with being able to retrieve that? I don't think that the army will say yes. But it is, again, another question that should be asked to make sure and have that crystal clear. Okay, let's do. one last question because I'm sort of surprised that the lack of questions around commercial sector vendors. There's some, but it's definitely not the majority, so I'm gonna throw one sort of in here. How does nonprofit status affect eligibility scoring or lane selection under MAPS, and are there any nuances in how commercial sector vendor or business size classifications apply to nonprofits? Well, this is technically I can take that one. Nonprofits, really for all federal contractors, are treated like And so they don't get a special dispensation. They are not a small business. They actually have to compete against, you know, large businesses or companies that are unrestricted. So if they were gonna compete on this requirement, they would need to choose the large business, fair opportunity area to to submit their their offer under. So they don't even they wouldn't even qualify as a commercial, company because they're not a commercial company. They're a nonprofit. So I think we did submit, Leo, a question back to the army around how you're gonna treat non nonprofits, Yeah. We did. because it is a a unique Universities of the industrial are. big, research and development organizations. That's right. Right? Yeah. Yep. And so for the RDT and E domain, we would expect, especially given the work that the Army does, that there would be interest from the nonprofit sector. So I think getting that clarity out to nonprofits so they understand what the FAR says about their status I think would be a helpful thing for the Army to do. But right now, based on, you know, how it's treated everywhere else, they would have to compete as a large business. Okay. Thank you very much. We're up on time. So thank you so much, Bikers Jelly. This was super helpful, and thanks to all the participants today. As a reminder, you will get a copy of this recording within twenty four hours after the webinar ends. 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