From conception to close-out Alliant is truly crafted for the customer.

“Right out of the gate Alliant will help GSA customers conceive of their requirements from cradle-to-grave in an OMB friendly format because it is tied to the FEA,” declared GSA’s PM Jim Ghiloni in a recent interview with 1105 Government Information Group Custom Media.

Customers who want funding for their IT initiatives or requirements need to submit an OMB Exhibit 300; necessitating them to conceive of their requirements in context of the FEA in order to get OMB approval.

“With Alliant they can essentially copy and paste 80 percent of their Exhibit 300 right into an Alliant Task Order request and have that continuity throughout the process,” noted Ghiloni.

“Customers are going to realize ‘why I am I going to re-describe my requirements in a different way, why do that twice? I already did  that once for the FEA’. What we’ve done by constructing Alliant along the same model is made it very easy for the customer to translate their requirements directly into an Alliant Task Order and map it to the award,” Ghiloni counseled.

Further this tie to the FEA educates GSA’s industry partners, because they need to understand how this model works and how this ties back to agency requirements, so they can prepare solutions and be ready to meet the government’s requirements.

“They will be able to use this model to conceive of their requirements, to describe their requirements, to acquire the services to meet their requirements – and that’s where Alliant comes in – and then to track them as they move forward all the way to close-out,” said Ghiloni.

Customer Relationship = Customer Service

“GWACs typically get the highest customer satisfaction scores of any of our programs,” said Mary Powers-King, GSA director of GWACs and Schedules in an interview with 1105 Government Information Group Custom Media.

As the flagship of the GSA GWAC fleet, customers should expect no less from Alliant.

“We have a very special and successful relationship with our customers in GWACs and a great deal of reuse of the vehicles,” explained Powers-King.  That relationship is built on the hard work of the Enterprise GWAC Centers. “Current and potential clients are invited to work directly with the Enterprise GWAC Centers to issue and manage Task Orders and provide acquisition consulting and/or award contracts.”

“But first in order to use Alliant, they need to get DPA (Delegation of Procurement Authority) and we are doing everything in our power to make that process as easy and unobtrusive as possible while still ensuring that we are providing the appropriate level of training for the customers,” she said.

“We use that process to build a relationship with our customers,” Ghiloni remarked. “In addition to doing the DPA training, we have a Scope Review process so customers can send us their SOW prior to issuing a Task Order and review that and comment on whether or not it is in scope. We also take that opportunity to talk to the customer about their requirements and mission and better ways they can do their procurement.”

Sharing Best Practices

“We have access in GSA to a large number of best practices in IT procurement,” said Ghiloni.  “We’re going to bring all of those tools, techniques and processes to Alliant.”

GSA takes note of them and shares them. For example: How to tailor evaluation factors to a particular requirement; how to do a multiphase acquisition. On the small business side we can help to do a capabilities assessment and market research.

“We provide data to do cost estimations and we really try to provide a lot of value to our customers above and beyond offering the contracts themselves which has an inherent value in itself,” said Ghiloni.

That also includes Best Practices that record a contractor’s current performance. According to GSA, gathering information periodically during contract performance and discussing the results with contractors is a powerful motivator for contractors to maintain high quality performance or improve inadequate performance before the next reporting cycle.

“Current performance assessment is a basic ‘Best Practice’ for good contract administration, and is one of the most important tools available for ensuring good contractor performance,” said Ghiloni.

Fulfilling Fair Opportunity

When you use Alliant as in any GWAC, there is a requirement to offer fair opportunity to all of the industry partners that are primary contractors to bid on that particular Task Order.

“We’ve done the first cut of competition on Alliant, explained Ghiloni. “We’ve done the full and open competition; we’ve surveyed the entire industry; we’ve done an initial evaluation of their competence, their experience their pricing and their capability to provide solutions; we’ve done all of that.”

Ghiloni went on to describe the second step when an agency has a specific requirement that they are going to seek to meet through Alliant.

“They are required to provide fair opportunity to all of the industry partners to bid. In the purest sense they would send the Task Order request or RFP to all of them giving all the fair opportunity to choose whether they want to bid on it.”

With Alliant, when you issue your TO RFP, giving all the industry partners the opportunity to propose a solution, your agency has fulfilled its fair opportunity obligation. Ghiloni also explains Alliant has the capability to do a multiphase approach, where an agency may want to narrow down the field before they do the formal RFP.

“There are a variety of ways to do that and we can advise agencies on that if that’s an issue.” Agencies must offer fair opportunity unless there is a specific reason not to and they are enumerated in the FAR.

“We expect that that would be a fairly unlikely circumstance,” said Ghiloni. “Generally there would be fair opportunity and that means there is a second level of competition.”

In choosing the 59 industry partners on Alliant, GSA has completed the first level of competition. “The agency does the second level so they are getting the best value and the best solution in the best interest of the taxpayer and the government,” added Ghiloni.

“Using a GWAC gets around the three bids because there has already been a competition to get on the contract,” noted Ghiloni. “There are no requirements to get more. If a customer puts out a TO on Alliant and gets only two requests they can proceed, they don’t have to get a third bid.”

Management, Security and Standard Labor Categories

Alliant has an online management module that supports GWAC TOs. Through it, agencies have real-time access to information on invoices submitted and status of payment. Alliant can also provide reports on how much an agency spent and what the funds were spent on. These analysis tools help managers look at programs and see where resources are going.

“Customers won’t have to keep off-the-cuff records or make phone calls to find out how much they’ve paid, how much an option is worth, when the next installment is due or the burn rate,” said Ghiloni. All that is online so customers can run can run their reports.

For security, flexibility to customize the appropriate level of security needed is the theme. Basic clauses and provisions related to security and IA are in the basic contract according to Ghiloni. A baseline has been built and customers can configure and optimize within their particular requirement the specific security issues they are concerned about. Customers are assured of a foundation and then they build on it the specifics they need.

Alliant has standardized the labor categories that are consistent across all vendors. GSA is gathering data as to how those labor categories are used, which are used most and how they are priced. By having standard definitions for labor categories, customers now have an ‘apples to apples’ method to really compare what Alliant industry partners are offering in the way of services said Ghiloni.

On Alliant all labor categories are defined, as well as the levels of responsibility for each. This makes it more convenient for the agencies who are evaluating to be able to compare those labor costs – and what they are getting for them – directly.

“For example, if an agency gets four bids, each will have a different mix of skills and hours,” explained Ghiloni. “If Company A is bidding 100 hours of a senior network engineer and 1000 hours of a journeyman; and Company B is bidding 500 of each, you have a sense of what means. It allows us to build a database of actual practices. We make that data available to customers so they can use it when doing their cost estimating.”

Ghiloni noted now you can compare those labor categories, because you are comparing essentially the same functions; whereas in the commercial environment the definitions can be different: a senior network engineer can be different at each company because they are using own terms to define that position.