PSC Seeks to Curb Cascading Procurements
PSC Seeks to Curb Cascading Procurements
The Professional Services Council (PSC) called on the Administration to take immediate action to stem the growing use of cascading in federal acquisition strategy. PSC also specifically raised opposition to the acquisition strategy proposed by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to use cascading as an evaluation technique in a professional, administrative and management support services Request for Proposal.
Cascading appears to be primarily a tool of convenience for agencies to determine whether certain types of firms are capable of performing a given requirement, but it is a poor proxy for the required market research, said PSC President Stan Soloway in a letter to Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator David Safavian. We strongly urge the Administration to take immediate action to stem a growing sentiment in the government to use cascading as an acquisition strategy.
A cascading procurement is one in which all interested offerors submit their proposals at the same time and the evaluation process is tiered by socioeconomic category (i.e. HubZone firms are evaluated first, followed by 8a firms, and so on). When a winner is identified at any phase of the tiered evaluation process, the competition comes to an end. Fundamental procurement policy requires all bidders be evaluated fairly, at the same time, and on the same criteria.
We are not aware of any company, large or small, that supports cascading. Smaller companies in particular are more significantly affected because their bid and proposal resources are limited, said PSC Senior Vice President and Counsel Alan Chvotkin in a letter to HRSA. We strongly oppose the use of this technique and recommend that HRSA reconsider its evaluation strategy before issuing its solicitation.
PSC is a national trade association that represents more than 185 companies of all business sizes providing professional and technical services to virtually every agency of the federal government, including information technology, engineering, logistics, operations and maintenance, consulting, international development, scientific, environmental, and social sciences.
