Summary of Preaward Reviews of VA FSS Nonpharmaceutical Proposals, FYs 2018–2020

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviews nonpharmaceutical proposals submitted to the VA National Acquisition Center (NAC) for Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contracts valued annually at $10 million or more for high tech medical equipment, $3 million or more for all other FSS contracts, $100,000 or more based on manufacturer sales under dealers or resellers, or as requested by the NAC. These preaward reviews help contracting officers negotiate fair and reasonable prices for the government and taxpayers. The reviews are not published because they contain proprietary commercial information protected from release under the Trade Secrets Act. To promote transparency, this report summarizes the 103 preaward reviews of the NAC’s nonpharmaceutical proposals conducted by the OIG during fiscal years 2018–2020. The 103 proposals had a cumulative estimated contract value of about $8.1 billion and included 129,390 offered items. Contracting officers have completed negotiations on all these proposals. The OIG determined commercial disclosures were accurate, complete, and current for only 24 of the 103 proposals reviewed. This means 24 proposals were reliable for determining negotiation objectives and fair and reasonable pricing. The remaining 79 could not reliably be used for negotiations until the noted deficiencies were corrected. The OIG recommended lower prices than offered for 76 proposals. The OIG’s lower pricing recommendations resulted in the NAC awarding contracts or modifications with cost savings of about $242.4 million over the life of the contracts. For the 103 proposals reviewed, the OIG determined the proposed tracking customers for 35 were inadequate. Where possible, the OIG recommended different tracking customers, generally among the vendor’s largest commercial customers or the “All Commercial Customers” category. The OIG did not make any additional recommendations.