For Alliant (and Alliant SB), the Contract Access Fee (CAF) is 3/4 of one percent (0.0075) to be applied to the total price/cost for contractor performance as billed to the government.

“The fee is remitted by the industry partner to GSA. The customer doesn’t cut a check or make a separate agreement,” GSA’s Jim Ghiloni told 1105 Government Information Group Custom Media in a recent interview.

On all orders, regardless of contract type, contractors must estimate CAF in their proposals and OCOs may fund CAF as a separate Contract Line Item Number (CLIN).

“What we have done is instituted a cap,” explained Ghiloni. “We expect to get a lot of very large scale projects on Alliant and on a Direct Acquisition contract that cap is $150,000 per order, per year.”

Ghiloni explained the most that a customer would pay to GSA would be $150,000 a year, which translates to a $20 million per year requirement.

“When they hit $20 million a year or more, that’s when they see the benefit,” said Ghiloni. “It works for each Task Order (TO) year from the date of award. You pay the fee and when you reach $150,000 in fees then you stop paying for the rest of the Task Order year. You don’t pay until next Task Order year begins.”

With this cap, over a five year TO the most an agency would pay is $750,000. “I don’t think a customer can do a full and open competition for a TO of that magnitude at that price,” said Ghiloni. “That translates into about 1 and 1/3 FTEs and I don’t think you could do a $100 million TO over five years with 1 and 1/3 FTEs.

“We want to attract the large scale projects because Alliant is uniquely suited to supporting those, so we want to cut our customers a bit of a break,” Ghiloni explained.

For those using Assisted Acquisition Services (AAS) the cap is lower because they are already paying fees to use AAS said Ghiloni. “So we give them a break.”

This makes everyone happy – the user, GSA and the industry partner. “This is a good selling point for larger projects,” noted Ghiloni. “It is a unique selling proposition for us.”

Learn more at www.gsa.gov/alliant.