Contractor Performance From Award to conclusion

Contract Performance from Award to Conclusion
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Just as consumers usually want quality products and services, so does the government. For this reason, whenever the government purchases a product from any company, the company is typically subjected to a very rigorous standard of quality, which the company is often required to meet. For instance, the federal government usually expects the contractors to meet the comprehensive quality requirements whenever the product required is complex, and this is because such products require complex measurement and testing so as to determine whether the product abides by the contract requirements (Keyes, 2003). The type and level of quality of standard that a company may be necessary to meet may depend on the kind of service or products that are being purchased. For example, an exhaustive quality stipulation would probably not be imposed if the company is producing non-complex products, since simple tests or measurements, may not be able to determine whether it abides by the contract regulations (Keyes, 2003). For a company to assure the government and other prospective customers that the firm will deliver quality goods or services, the company has an obligation to come up with a well-documented program for quality assurance. In this case, the program should contain a systematic approach that will be used for evaluation, calibration, testing, inspection or the object that needs monitoring and assure the product quality.

In order for the government to encourage a performing contractor and ensure that the contractor can comply with the contract requirements when working on a complex acquisition, the government uses various means such as;
Incentives and remedies
The government may use incentives to motivate contractors to comply with contract requirements and in the process deliver the best results. Contractors who fail to meet certain set specifications may not be paid (Keyes, 2003). The government also collects, maintains and uses information on the performance of past contracts to award a new contract. By so doing, contractors are encouraged to comply with contract requirements in order to please the government so that they can be assigned other contracts in the future. In government, a contract is described as any clause or agreement in the form of liquidated redresses, which may act as an incentive to the contractors. Through such agreement, when the government incurs any loss as a result of the contractor’s poor performance or due to lack of compliance with the contract agreements, the contract is legally culpable to compensate the government as per the contract agreement that was agreed upon before the inception of the project (Black, Henley & Clute, 2014).
Government contracts also specify procedures and remedies for price reductions whenever the service rendered do not meet the requirements as stipulated in the contract. Apart from reducing prices for contracts that do not comply with the demands, the government in some cases may agree with the contractor to work on the project again and ensure the required quality is attained at no extra costs (Keyes, 2003).
The government can employ certain incentives to promote a better quality performance by a contractor and this may either be negative, positive or a combination of the two (Black, Henley & Clute, 2014). The Government should ensure that the established incentives are applied in a selective manner so as to motivate the efforts of the contractor, which may not be emphasized, and to avert inefficiency. Those incentives that have been established by the government should be implemented to the necessary facets of the task, rather than to the individual tasks. In case there is a negative incentive employed in a particular area, then the deductions should depict as close as possible the service value that has been incurred. The amount is calculated by determining the percentage of the contract costs, which is linked with each task. Incentives are usually significant in complex efforts, and they maintain a performance history of themselves or have cost innundate issues (Keyes, 2003). The government should ensure that the incentives are established to correlate with the outcomes. The government agencies should avoid rewarding the government contractors for just meeting the minimum standards of the contract performance, and come up with a better balance between the costs, schedule and performance incentives. In this case, the incentive amount should equate to the difficulty of the required task, but should not more than the beneficial value that the government gets (Black, Henley & Clute, 2014). The agencies should, therefore, do some follow-up to ensure that the intended outcomes are achieved.
Contractor performance management
The government uses quality assurance to determine whether the contractor has complied with the contract requirements. However, in the recent past, it has been discovered that quality assurance alone does not accurately capture the real essence of service acquisition based on performance as most contractors do not assure quality. Most governments today create a performance-based environment where the contractor is held contractually responsible for quality assurance. The government further uses incentives like award-fee as well as past performance assessments to motivate the contractor to fulfill the contract obligations (Black, Henley & Clute, 2014). Through this, contractors are made responsible for ensuring that they are paid for what they deliver by using appropriate assessment techniques to evaluate performance.
Contract administration and other considerations
After awarding the contract, the government does not just sit and watch, but rather they are actively involved in administration (Keyes, 2003). This entails management of the contract by government officials from the contractual as well as the technical point in order to ensure that the contractor complies with the contract requirements. The government engages its staff members who have the technical knowhow on the service being delivered in making sure that all goes well. Effective contract administration entails conducting surveys from the public to obtain feedback that might help improve the service offered.
Developing a performance-based work statement and establishment of measurable performance standards
To ensure that the contractor complies with the contract requirements, the Government should develop a work statement based on the fulfillment of the service. The government does this by describing the contract requirements as outcomes as opposed to the description based on how the requirement is to be accomplished (Black, Henley & Clute, 2014). This development entails a series of analysis-oriented steps that enables easy identification and definition of the contract requirements.
From a government’s perception, the primary objective of a quality program is to provide criteria of assuring that a product is produced as per the contract’s requirements (Keyes, 2003). From the company’s point of view, the objective is twofold: this is likely to assure and attract the government buyers, and also helps in saving the costs by providing the company with the essential tools and indicators to identify the problem areas and the necessary solutions to the highlighted problems. This is likely to make the business look at every aspect and phase of its operation and manufacturing processes as well as the outcomes of the processes. If the process used leads to reduced output, then the company will be able to identify the necessary changes that need to be undertaken so as to produce a high-quality product that can be acceptable to the government (Keyes, 2003). Moreover, the government should ensure that all the contractors working on the government projects are ISO certified to ensure that the services provided are up to the international standards.

References
Keyes, W. N. (2003). Government Contracts Under the Federal Acquisition Regulation. West Group Publishing.
Black, S., Henley, J., & Clute, M. (2014).Determining the value of Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) narratives for the acquisition process.NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA.