Can you request Final Proposal Revisions from offerors at different times as you complete discussions with each?

By Anonymous on Friday, February 16, 2001 - 09:07 am:

From FAR 15.307 the following is excerpted: "b) The contracting officer may request or allow proposal revisions to clarify and document understandings reached during negotiations. At the conclusion of discussions, each offeror still in the competitive range shall be given an opportunity to submit a final proposal revision. The contracting officer is required to establish a common cut-off date only for receipt of final proposal revisions. Requests for final proposal revisions shall advise offerors that the final proposal revisions shall be in writing and that the Government intends to make award without obtaining further revisions."

I think it would depend upon your interpretation of "common cut-off date." You could define that as the same date, which if you request the final revisions at different times, offerors might claim that they were not treated fairly in that some offerors would have longer to prepare their final revisions than others.

On the other hand, you could say that all final revisions are due 30 days from date of request. This is a common date - it gives all offerors the same amount of time to prepare their revisions.

The questions that I have are what are you gaining by having the staggered requests for final submissions? Are you planning on having your teams begin their final reviews before discussions are complete with all offerors? Why wouldn't you want to end discussions with all offerors on the same date? You may learn things in discussions with one offeror that you might want to address with another offeror that you have already ended discussions with - then what would you do?

By Beverly Wester on Friday, February 16, 2001 - 12:37 pm:

What factors should be considered in setting a reasonable common cut-off date and time for final proposal revisions?

By Anonymous on Friday, February 16, 2001 - 01:19 pm:

Beverly,
Why would you want to request Final proposal revisions at difference times? It seems as though you would want to receive them all at one time to eliminate a protest from another vendor saying that they did not have the same amount of time that John Doe had. That is really dangerous, I suggest you give all offerors the same cut-off-date.

By Beverly Wester on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 02:20 pm:

Can more than one Final Proposal Revision be request, if necessary?

By joel hoffman on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 02:41 pm:

Hope this is not a duplicate - Received an Internal error message when I pushed the button, a minute ago.)
Yes, if necessary, unless an Agency supplement restricts such requests. The previous restrictions in Part 15 have been eliminated. Happy Sails! Joel

By Anonymous on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 02:56 pm:

Pre-Clinger/Cohen used the term BAFO (Best and Fianl Offer) to conclude negotiations. The commercial side had a joke about so many multiple requests for final offers that they termed it BARFO (Best and Really Final Offers).

By joel on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 04:35 pm:

Yep, thats what I called them, too. Happy Sails!

By Beverly Wester on Friday, February 16, 2001 - 12:42 pm:

What factors should be considered in setting a reasonable common cut-off date and time for final proposal revisions?

By susan marie paolini on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 08:22 am:

If time permits, I will ask contractors in discussions how much time they need to work on responses. If time does not, will explain why. Best interest, seems to me, to give people the time to do the job right.