Contractors Sometimes Stretch Their Deals

Iraq Work Done Beyond Scope of Agreements
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 31, 2004; Page E01


The translators were hired under a federal contract category designed for the employment of education and training analysts, not linguists, according to a report by the Defense Department's inspector general. The military contracting officer who approved the deal told investigators he did not check the General Services Administration schedule to make sure that translation services were within the scope of MPRI's contract with the government. "Noncompliance of a GSA schedule is an issue between the GSA and the contractor," the report says.

MPRI, a subsidiary of L-3 Communications Corp., was never disciplined by the GSA, according to company and government officials.

Stretching the boundaries of large federal contracts is commonplace, and one the government has often overlooked, many contracting experts say.




"You're telling the contractor: 'It's very simple, don't do things that are pretty clearly outside the scope of your contract authority without making it clear to the government that the contract has to be changed,' " said Daniel J. Guttman, a fellow at the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. "The assumption is that the government is capable of knowing what's going on, where in fact those in the contracting business know that that is too often is not the case."

The Defense Department report says that contracting officers in Iraq sometimes relied on the companies they hired determine whether they "could or could not comply with the requirements under the GSA schedule."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3505-2004May30.html

:kick:

Jacob B. Pankowski, a government contracting lawyer with Nixon Peabody LLP, said: "I don't know of any cases where a contractor has rejected an order on the basis that it's not within the scope of their government-wide order -- nor would one expect them to. The gist of this threatened action is to require government contractors to become the policemen of government contracting officials' conduct."

Yeah, right.... he's never been in any contract where the government asked the corporation to do something out of scope that would impact the profit margin .... changes to government contracts happen all the time and are renegotiated. Corporations cost the amount of the award at proposal time.

Nope... both the government monitor and the corporation are at fault here.

What kind of crapola is this guy peddling!