Expedited Yearend Contract Award Resulted in Shortcutting Established Regulations and Procedures and Overpricing

GAO reviewed a fixed-price contract awarded by the Air Force as part of a nationwide review of negotiated noncompetitive contracts awarded at fiscal yearend by the Department of Defense activities. The review was performed to determine: (1) whether contracting officers followed regulations in negotiating the contract price; and (2) the reasonableness of the contract price in relation to cost or pricing data available to the contractor at the time of contract negotiations.

To avoid a loss in obligation authority, the contracting officer took substantial shortcuts and did not comply with the procurement procedures normally required. Because of these shortcuts: (1) the contractor's price proposal was incomplete; (2) the contracting officer failed to request a required revised proposal; (3) price proposal reviews were waived; and (4) the contract was overpriced because current, accurate, and complete cost or pricing data were not disclosed.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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