OFPP to standardize program for performance-based contracting

• By Jason Miller
• Apr 08, 2003

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is strongly considering making the seven-step guide to performance based contracting the governmentwide standard.

Chip Mather, senior vice president at Acquisition Solutions Inc. of Chantilly, Va., said he spoke with a senior OFPP official who said the administration is trying to give agencies more tools to understand how this type of contracting works.

'OFPP is coming from an older vision of what performance based contracting is,' Mather said. 'They have to get away from a fixed-price contract with a negative incentive and give vendors and agencies a reason to give incentives for being successful.'

Mather led a discussion today about the ins and outs of performance contracting at the FOSE 2003 conference in Washington.

The seven-step guide was written by an interagency team made up of the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Treasury departments and the General Services Administration and employees from Acquisition Solutions and was released in 2001.

The seven steps include:

Establishing a team

Describing the problem

Examine public and private sector systems

Develop a performance work statement or statement of objectives

Decide how to measure and manage performance

Select the contractor

Manage performance