CLASS DETERMINATIONS AND FINDINGS

Authority to deviate from FAR 42.15

FINDINGS

FAR 42.1502 requires agencies to prepare an evaluation of contractor performance for each contract in excess of $100,000 upon its completion. 

In accordance with Executive Order 13150 dated April 21, 2000, Federal government agencies must provide employees with transit subsidies.  The Department of Transportation (DOT) provides transit benefit services, to include the purchase and distribution of transit fare media, on behalf of numerous federal government agencies (including all cabinet agencies) via Economy Act agreements.  These services are provided nationwide to approximately 200,000 federal government employees.

DOT has approximately 40 contracts, each with a separate transit agency (such as the Washington Metropolitan Transit Agency (WMATA)), to purchase fare media for various geographic locations throughout the United States.  Obligations under these contracts exceed $100 million annually.  These contracts were all justified and awarded on a sole source basis because only one responsible source (e.g., the applicable transit agency) is authorized to provide transit fare media for a given geographical area (e.g., WMATA for transit rail in the Washington, DC area).

Performing past performance evaluations of these contracts would involve the expenditure of Government and contract resources for little or no benefit to the Government for two main reasons.  One, the nature of the requirement (the procurement of commercially available transit fare media) does not mandate the level of contractor performance that would allow the Government to perform a meaningful evaluation (e.g., no real technical performance, no meaningful contract administration on behalf of the contractor, no key personnel).  Second, the contractors provide a single, unique  “product” so there is no likelihood that any evaluation would be used by another agency for a source selection, which is the primary purpose for the FAR 42.15 requirement.  In other words, the Government would likely never utilize whatever minimal information could be gleaned from performing the evaluation.

DETERMINATION

On the basis of the above findings, I hereby determine that conducting contractor performance evaluations on DOT contracts for the procurement of transit fare media would entail the expenditure of Government resources with little to no corresponding benefit and approve a class deviation from FAR 42.15 for all such contracts.  This determination will be reviewed every five years to confirm the basis of the determination remains unchanged.

The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council chairperson was consulted on this class deviation in accordance with FAR 1.404(a)(1).

	January 23, 2003
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David Litman DOT Senior Procurement Executive	Date