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Business Practices

Business Practices. What Do I Do?. What you do on a project is determined by the contract Contract usually contains a “scope of services” that defines what is to be done and how The contract and the scope are created by the buyer of the services, i.e., a government agency or their delegate

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Business Practices

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  1. Business Practices

  2. What Do I Do? • What you do on a project is determined by the contract • Contract usually contains a “scope of services” that defines what is to be done and how • The contract and the scope are created by the buyer of the services, i.e., a government agency or their delegate • If you work for the government, you may need to write the scope • If you work in industry, you may need to comply with the scope • Both parties need to understand and negotiate the costs

  3. What? • How does the proposal and contract process work? • How do you decide what needs to be done and what it costs? • Depends on nature of project (undertaking) and legal requirements. • Some projects are exclusively for planning: ICRMPs, Predictive models, Historic Contexts, etc • Others include fieldwork, analysis, curation, etc • Requirements that need to be taken into account include: • Laws, e.g., • NHPA • NEPA • Curation regulation • Federal agency regulations and policies • State concerns and regulations • Indian concerns and regulations • General public’s concerns • If you are the government official, you need to figure out what to do, discuss it with the state and tribal officials • Think about goals and methods • Government official should make sure that the gov’t gets good value for its money • It’s very important that the government have professional archaeologists on staff to make sure that the contracts are properly formulated and the contractors do their work properly • If you are the contractor, you need to make sure you can do the requested work for the amount negotiated • The more detailed the plan, the better, given, of course, that you can’t predict everything

  4. What do you need to do? • If you’re the government official • You need to understand the project and what needs to be done • You need to choose or hire a contractor • You need to pick the kind of contract • You need to write a scope of work that • Explains the construction project • Includes the plans and drawings • Specifies exactly what you want the contractor to do, including analysis and preparation of collections for curation • Includes “deliverables” and a schedule • You need to prepare a government cost estimate reflecting your estimate of the costs of the work requested

  5. If you’re the contractor • You need to understand the project and what is being requested • You need to develop a bid for the work based on your knowledge of the area and the work requested • You need to understand the type of contract offered • You need to negotiate enough money to do the job

  6. Types of government contracts • Federal Government contracting is governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Title 48 CFR • Long and extremely complicated regulation • Currently (2014) 1889 pages long • Very few people fully understand it despite extensive classes that are taught about it • Lots of case law • The Contracting Officer is usually a high official • The archaeologist is often the CO Technical Representative • Simple competitive low bid • Best Value contracts • A&E contracts • Indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQ)

  7. IDIQ contracts • Government prepares cost estimate • Write scope of work with background, purpose, work to be performed, deliverables, standards, what the government will supply, and usually some boilerplate, etc • Send scope of work to contractors • Contractor submits bid • The bid preparation is not billable, • It is overhead • Bid includes hours • Bid includes responsive research design • Has to include all costs, up to and including curation • Hourly rates (fully loaded) do not basically represent salaries • They include all the costs of doing business • Then, government negotiates with contractor • Contracts can be modified if the scope needs to change, for instance, if there is an unexpected find or if the plans change • Some contractors try to live off contract modifications • Low ball bidding is awfully dangerous-living on the edge! • How many contracts can you lose money on before you are bankrupt? • Federal contracting officers usually try to use an A&E contract or a “best value” contract rather than a low bid • IF SEALED BID: evaluate technical qualifications, then prices in second step

  8. What do you do in practice to prepare a cost estimate or bid? • Need to visit the site or project area • Need to understand the soils and geomorphology • Why? • Need to do some background research • If the contract calls for visiting and evaluating known sites, you need to know how many are known • How do you find that out?

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