What is a Contractor Team Arrangement?
GSA allows several GSA contractors to team together in order to develop a total solution. Such an opportunity is called Contractor Team Arrangement or CTA. This allows contractors that solely cannot meet the customer requirements to team with other vendors to fulfill the terms and conditions of a contract. Contractors can combine their products or services and hereby satisfy the RFQs and reduce individual risks for themselves.
Unlike subcontracting, CTA requires every team member to have a GSA Schedule contract, implies shared responsibility for completing the contract with other team members, and buying entities are invoiced at each member’s unit prices and hourly rates instead of those of the prime contractor.
What are the benefits of a Contractor Team Arrangement?
As mentioned above, Contractor Team Arrangement allows certain benefits to GSA Schedule holders over individual contracting or Prime/Subcontracting. Here are some:
- Contractors are able to compete for RFQ/RFPs that were previously unavailable for them, because they could not qualify for the requirements individually.
- Two or more GSA contractors working together can be more competitive and win a larger share of the market.
- Unlike Prime/Subcontracting, risks and responsibilities are shared between all team members.
- With other team members at your disposal, you can focus on what your company does best.
- Small or disadvantaged businesses can benefit from the CTA a lot. Not only does GSA sets aside a number of contracts for small and disadvantaged businesses, but it also prefers to select such businesses with everything else being equal, as long as other specifications are met.
- As a part of the CTA program you can handle larger projects than you would qualify for alone, and figure on higher yield.
- The CTA allows contractors to perform beyond the scope of their Schedules, thanks to other members of the team.
How do I form a Contractor Team Arrangement?
There are no particular requirements to forming a Contract Team Arrangement. Vendors can team at any time and are responsible for creating agreements between each other. The text of an agreement can be composed freely, and there are no obligatory templates to follow. However, the GSA does provide some recommendations to include certain parts to the document:
Duration of the agreement. You surely want to determine how long your cooperation you’re your team members will last. Make sure to state all additional conditions, terms and options.
Team Leader. The team leader is a person who should lead the team forward. The agreement should define team leader’s responsibilities, benefits and burdens. You should describe ways to change the team leader if necessary and reasons to do this.
Team Members. Each member of the team should have a range of responsibilities possibly based on the Schedule they possess.
Communications. The agreement should explicitly mention direct contacts channels with all Contractor Team Members.
Invoicing and Payments. The document must identify the method of payment, and all members of the CTA must agree with that method. Also, the agreement between Team Members must imply that.
All disputes between Members should be resolved without the GSA, the government or the federal agencies being involved in the process. Also, the Team Leader and Team Members should arrange how the payment is distributed between them.
Legal Relationship. Joint ventures are not allowed under the CTA. Each member of the ATA is considered a prime contractor within the scope of work it performs with all subsequent responsibility arising from that.
Delivery responsibility. You should clearly state who is responsible for delivery of each fragment of the work.
Confidential information. If your work requires using of some proprietary or patented techniques or information, the CTA documents should specify that along with the way such information is to be managed.
Conflicting Terms. The CTA Agreement cannot override nor have higher priority than individual GSA contracts of each Team Member. Any such conflict is resolved in favor of the Federal Supply Schedule contracts.
Specific team activities. The essence of the CTA agreement is what types of activities are a part of the contract team arrangement, and how those activities are distributed between Team Members.
Replacement of team members. Make sure to include procedures for replacing Team Members into the document. Surely, you must also identify circumstances and conditions for this.
Performance evaluation. FAR 8.406-7 requires evaluation of contractors performance at least once per year, so the document must identify how this evaluation should be done.
Reporting of sales and Industrial Funding Fee (IFF) payment responsibility. Each member of the team is responsible for reporting sales and paying IFF.
Pricing. The pricing section should identify rates and prices, calculation methods, pricelists, as well as pricing for task management by the Team Leader. The document must also clearly say how fees and incentives are distributed among members.
Liabilities. The agreement between Team Members should clearly establish each Member’s responsibilities, quality and performance requirements, as well as liability.
Ordering procedures. Specify how the orders from federal agencies are processed specifically.
In conclusion
Surely, Contractor Team Arrangement is a complex measure, but thanks to expert assistance you can render it much more straightforward fashion, yet retain the benefits of CTA in full. Please don’t hesitate to contact Price Reporter if you need help entering GSA Schedule, whether through the Contractor Team Arrangement or without it.
