Our objective was to assess the extent to which the company has effective processes and controls during the pre-award phase to ensure contracts it awards are in its best interest.
We found that certain pre-award contracting activities generally worked well, but we identified two areas where weaknesses place the company at greater risk of paying more than it should for goods and services. First, the company could better ensure its employees adhere to its requirements for contracts requiring cost estimates and technical evaluation committees. Second, consistent with considerations from our prior work, the company has opportunities to better identify and mitigate fraud risks that can occur during the pre-award phase of its procurement process. This includes collecting and analyzing data to detect contract and procurement fraud and identify suspicious patterns across solicitations
We recommended that the company’s Procurement department (1) develop and implement a process to assess ongoing solicitations to determine their compliance with company requirements, (2) develop additional guidance for contracting officers regarding cost estimate details, (3) collect and analyze pre-award data to identify fraud indicators, and (4) develop and implement additional recurring fraud training for employees involved in the pre-award phase.
