Contracting for Services in State and Local Government Agencies: (Public Administration and Public Policy)

This second edition of Contracting for Services in State and Local Government Agencies provides state-of-the-art tools for best practice in the procurement of services at state and local levels, from initial stages through to completion. Including lively case studies and research conducted with state and local agencies across the United States, this book provides management advice and tips on compliance to reduce costs, select the best-qualified contractors, manage contractors’ performance, and prevent corruption and waste. Utilizing the results of new research in all fifty states, author William Sims Curry offers updated best-practice documents, methodologies, and templates including: a Request for Proposal (RFP), a scorecard for proposals to select the best-qualified contractor, a toolkit for meeting socioeconomic contracting goals without compromising price, quality, or on-time delivery, and a Model Services Contract (MSC). Special consideration is given to obtaining services and products in states of emergency. Several additional resources for practitioners are available online, including sample contracts and a straightforward, inexpensive tool for tracking contractors’ progress and cost management. The roadmap and templates contained in this book and available online to readers will prove essential to state and local government agency contracting professionals and other officials and employees called upon to participate in the drafting of solicitations, writing sole source justifications, writing scopes of work, serving on advance contract planning and source selection teams, recommending award of contracts, or assisting in the management of those contracts.

Table of Contents:
1. The Contracting Cycle and Advance Contract Planning 2. Competition and Socioeconomic Contracting 3. Solicitation Documents: Information for Prospective Contractors 4. Solicitation Document: Proposal Requirements and Preparation Guidelines 5. Management of Pre-Proposal Communications and Evaluation of Proposals 6. Protests 7. Contract Negotiations, Ethics and Conflicts of Interest 8. Contract Document 9. Contract Terms and Conditions 10. Short Form Contracts, Short Form RFPs, Emergencies and Letter Contracts 11. Contract Review, Execution and Audit 1 2. Contract Administration and Closeout Appendix A Glossary of Terms Appendix B Best-Practices Research Project Appendix C Best-Practices Request for Proposals (RFP) Appendix D Best-Practices Model Services Contract (MSC) Appendix E Proof of Anomalies in Formulas for Weighing Objective Values and Subjective Scores Appendix F Estimate at Completion Appendix G Sole Source Justification/Approval Form Appendix H Reference Checklist Appendix I Short Form RFP with Short Form Contract Appendix J Form for Evaluation of Proposals in Response to RFP Appendix K Formulas for Weighing all Criteria Including those with Optimal or Suboptimal Values Appendix L Sample Show Cause Letter Appendix M Sample Letter Contract Appendix N Contract Amendment Appendix O Short Form Contract Amendment Appendix P Contractor Performance Report

About the Author :
William Sims Curry is President of WSC Consulting, a small business specializing in consulting on government contracting. Curry served as an Air Force systems procurement officer and was employed in purchasing management for prime contractors on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, DOE’s Positron Electron Project, and numerous DOD programs. He has authored three books and numerous articles and research papers on government contracting. Curry is a Certified Professional Contracts Manager (CPCM) and a fellow by the National Contract Management Association (NCMA).

Review :
"Curry has written a book of both practical and academic importance. He provides a how-to for state and local government managers that takes into account the best practices in government contracting and procurement. The text includes templates and planning documents for many of the important stages of the contracting process. For scholars, Curry unpacks a complex process that will encourage more than a decade of thoughtful investigation and lead to useful theoretic insights." –Jessica N. Terman, George Mason University, USA "With the relative paucity of state and local guides for service contracting out there, Curry does much more than justice to the contracting field in those two venues. As someone with twenty-five years in federal contracting, I suggest that federal practitioners might also use this publication in the conduct of their craft. I used the previous edition for teaching contracting students and found it full of exemplars, documentation and practical examples which could be applied to any CO’s particular situation and infused with federal contract law to assist federal practitioners in understanding why. I find this new edition even more useful in this way. Thank you Mr. Curry for the update of a timely, comprehensive and extremely useful publication!" – Frank Spampinato, Old Dominion University, USA