Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Progress of my contract has been slightly disjointed by the activities of last week, which was great exposure to the wider work that the USACE undertakes.  Timing for this contract proposal is not a little tight and therefore I had to ensure that the proposal was with the contractor before I left last week so that concurrent activity could take place (me, on a jolly, him pricing up the proposal).

Whilst I was away the contractor who I am trying to set up the new contract with had a look through my Scope of Work and had got back to me with a few RFIs.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but the Contracting Officer’s Representative (KOR…yes, with a K…) was away on leave until midweek and has such a tight rein that decisions became almost impossible.

The crux of the issue was that I had been asked to develop such a broad scope that there was overlap between an existing contract, which expires shortly but might be extended, and mine.  Understandably, with hindsight, this confused the contractor somewhat who wanted to know if there was an entirely new requirement, which would mean restructuring his organisation or even hiring new personnel in order to source additional manpower, or if this new contract would effectively supersede the old one.  Fair point, well presented.

Now, my supervisor and I both knew that it wasn’t the former; therefore it must be the latter.  However exactly HOW the KOR wanted to skin this was what my supervisor was worried about;  should we supersede the old contract and replace it with a new one (which encompasses everything on the old contract anyway) or re-submit the Statement of Works (SoW) removing the overlaps and have 2 contracts? The contractor didn’t mind either way, but for a while there was a real prospect of having to wait until the KOR returned before making a decision.

What I proposed is, that given we seem fairly content on the KORs intent*, we price up my new Statement of Work in its own right (ie to supersede the old contract) and give a brief to the KOR upon her arrival back to work about what we had done.  (Begging forgiveness in my supervisors eyes – sort of mission command in mine)  I re-sent the amended Statement of Work to the contractor with a covering e-mail which highlighted our position  and followed up with a telephone call highlighting in quite open detail what we were trying to achieve.  He seemed like a fairly good bloke who understood and was grateful that things were progressing.  The contract seems to be worth giving the stupid brit some latitude for error in any case.  (Incidentally he sent me his RFIs and CC’d in the entire world, and their dogs, so my error was in fairly stark contrast!)

On a plus note I submitted the reservation for the $1.8m in good time and am just waiting for the nod that I can have it.  On a super plus note I now have another ID card.  This one gets me onto site, no questions asked, no escort required. Win!  Those who read my last blog should see the implied ‘thing’ here…Foreign or not, I must be a good egg!

On top of this I chaired another meeting between project managers and schedulers and our scheduling contractor in a continued attempt to get the Integrated Master Schedule back up and running.  Last weeks meeting was fairly fruitless because the contractor hadn’t actually managed to input all of the task lines.  This made drawing logic ties between them particularly tricky.  What it did allow me to do though was to identify key players who actually had useful things to contribute, and who was there for their own agenda.  The distribution for this weeks meeting was significantly cut.

And also

We hosted a tacky soiree on our estate, complete with Union Jack, BBQ, Bratwurst and red plastic cups; a real melting pot of cultural ideas.  There was beer aplenty and burnt sausages were being heartily gobbled (not a euphemism) but at around 1430 when I returned from a pressing engagement elsewhere I found my wife, ably assisted by Henrys wife, handing out cups of Tetley tea, (British blend)… much to the confusion of the American contingent.  They still don’t understand 1000hrs T&T either. ..yet.

Truck MPG; Confirmed bad.  18Mpg.

*and because it was less work to reach the some outcome…