1. Business Practices

2. What Do I Do? What you do on a project is determined by the contract
Contract usually contains a “scope of services” that defines what is to be done and how
The contract and the scope are created by the buyer of the services, i.e., a government agency or their delegate
If you work for the government, you may need to write the scope
If you work in industry, you may need to comply with the scope
Both parties need to understand and negotiate the costs

3. What? How does the proposal and contract process work?
How do you decide what needs to be done and what it costs?
Depends on nature of project (undertaking) and legal requirements.
Some projects are exclusively for planning: ICRMPs, Predictive models, Historic Contexts, etc
Others include fieldwork, analysis, curation, etc
Requirements that need to be taken into account include:
Laws, e.g.,
NHPA
NEPA
Curation regulation
Federal agency regulations and policies
State concerns and regulations
Indian concerns and regulations
General public’s concerns
If you are the government official, you need to figure out what to do, discuss it with the state and tribal officials
Think about goals and methods
Government official should make sure that the gov’t gets good value for its money
It’s very important that the government have professional archaeologists on staff to make sure that the contracts are properly formulated and the contractors do their work properly
If you are the contractor, you need to make sure you can do the requested work for the amount negotiated
The more detailed the plan, the better, given, of course, that you can’t predict everything

4. What do you need to do? If you’re the government official
You need to understand the project and what needs to be done
You need to choose or hire a contractor
You need to pick the kind of contract
You need to write a scope of work that
Explains the construction project
Includes the plans and drawings
Specifies exactly what you want the contractor to do, including analysis and preparation of collections for curation
Includes “deliverables” and a schedule
You need to prepare a government cost estimate reflecting your estimate of the costs of the work requested

5. If you’re the contractor
You need to understand the project and what is being requested
You need to develop a bid for the work based on your knowledge of the area and the work requested
You need to understand the type of contract offered
You need to negotiate enough money to do the job

6. Types of government contracts
Federal Government contracting is governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Title 48 CFR
Long and extremely complicated regulation
Currently (2014) 1889 pages long
Very few people fully understand it despite extensive classes that are taught about it
Lots of case law
The Contracting Officer is usually a high official
The archaeologist is often the CO Technical Representative
Simple competitive low bid
Best Value contracts
A&E contracts
Indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQ)

7. IDIQ contracts Government prepares cost estimate
Write scope of work with background, purpose, work to be performed, deliverables, standards, what the government will supply, and usually some boilerplate, etc
Send scope of work to contractors
Contractor submits bid
The bid preparation is not billable,
It is overhead
Bid includes hours
Bid includes responsive research design
Has to include all costs, up to and including curation
Hourly rates (fully loaded) do not basically represent salaries
They include all the costs of doing business
Then, government negotiates with contractor
Contracts can be modified if the scope needs to change, for instance, if there is an unexpected find or if the plans change
Some contractors try to live off contract modifications
Low ball bidding is awfully dangerous-living on the edge!
How many contracts can you lose money on before you are bankrupt?
Federal contracting officers usually try to use an A&E contract or a “best value” contract rather than a low bid
IF SEALED BID: evaluate technical qualifications, then prices in second step

8. What do you do in practice to prepare a cost estimate or bid?
Need to visit the site or project area
Need to understand the soils and geomorphology
Why?
Need to do some background research
If the contract calls for visiting and evaluating known sites, you need to know how many are known
How do you find that out?