ATTACHMENT 9 PCAG SITE VISIT

This can be a very useful tool in the PCAG process and is provided as an additional example for consideration in significant source selections if the resources and funding are available.  

Purpose of site visits was to have face-to-face meetings with customer representatives, no offeror contact.  Contacts were technical program managers, contracting officers, users, and internal customers.  Some limited tours were conducted but not by the offeror.  The site visits were conducted by the total PCAG team after the past performance volumes had been analyzed, questionnaires answered and analyzed, and initial relevancy, positive/negative aspects and confidence assessment accomplished.

Site visits were made to the highly relevant contract customers of all offerors in a particular region of the United States.  As time and location permitted, the PCAG also conducted site visits on moderately relevant contracts when concerns on performance were generated based from data received.  Although the PCAG made over 25 site visits in six weeks, they did not feel compelled to visit the same number of locations for each offeror.  They believed follow-up telephone conversations sufficed where there were only minor concerns.

Before departing for each trip the PCAG prepared a travel guide which included a solicitation requirements' overview, detailed travel schedule, completed surveys, positive and negative aspects, color matrices (internal charts for PCAG to portray data), and control log which contained contract number, program title, customer, points of contact and telephone numbers.  A travel book was prepared on each offeror that the PCAG would visit its' customers.  The PCAG documented each site visit with a "trip report."  

People who participated in the PCAG provided the following comments on the advantages of site visits:

(1)  Ability to see where work was performed and make better analysis of relevancy of work

(2)  Meeting people face-to-face provided the best interchange of information and led to a better understanding of the offeror's past performance

(3)  Identified additional relevant contracts and customers for consideration

(4)  Clarified information provided in questionnaires and telephone interviews

(5)  Lesson learned--get more insight from the contractor's customers in specific initiatives that apply to the instant acquisition.  Requires early involvement between the PCAG and technical evaluation teams so the PCAG is aware of the initiatives being proposed so they can then validate the contractor's claim of successful implementation.