Lack of timely negotiations contributed significantly to DOD's decision on how to address the questioned costs—all 10 task orders were negotiated more than 180 days after the work commenced. As a result, the contractor had incurred almost all its costs at the time of negotiations, which influenced DOD's decision to pay nearly all of the questioned costs.
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While the award fee plan required regular award fee boards during the life of the contract, DOD did not conduct a formal board until nearly all work on the contract was complete. As a result, DOD was not able to provide the contractor with formal award fee feedback while work was ongoing, which federal regulations state should be done in order to motivate a contractor to either improve poor performance or continue good performance.
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DOD also was unable to give us enough documentation for a full assessment of its compliance with other parts of its plan—it did not, for example, provide the scores the award fee board assigned to the contractor on the individual award fee criteria, so we could not see if the award fee board had followed contract criteria and weighting in evaluating performance.