¶ … Contracts and Performance-Based Acquisition
A contract is a planned and legal agreement made between two or more parties with intent. It could be oral or written and may involve business individuals, employers and employees, or tenants and land lords. Relations built through contracts emerge from offers given, reception, intentions, considerations and genuine consent, and legal agreement from which the contract began. Every person involved in a contract gains responsibilities and rights similar to those of other individuals in the contract. Legally, all parties benefit equally from the contract, meaning all members are entitled to equal rights whatsoever. While contracts remain enforceable whether they are spoken or written, a written contract ensures legal security to all parties involved. This is because a spoken contract will only depend on the loyalty of people involved but with not future reference whatsoever. A written contract on the other hand will have recorded details on the conditions and agreements, which can be useful for future reference at any given time (Steven 2011).
For a government employee receiving a proposal from a contractor to sell vehicles for security purposes, a written contract would be essential for future reference and recommendations. There are different types of contracts such as fixed-price contracts and cost-reimbursement contracts. The type of contract selected will automatically determine the plan of acquisition for all parties involved. This means that the selection must involve all parties such that everyone is in agreement with the choice made. It requires careful planning and precise definition and understanding of responsibilities. There are policies governing the selection of contract type such as the recording of the contract type in the acquisition plan and negotiations. The negotiations and the acquisition plan must be closely related in a way that all parties will be motivated to work towards achieving economical and efficient results in performance. In this case, where the government is entirely responsible for the security of a country, the cost-reimbursement contract is necessary. This is because with this kind of contract, the contractor has minimal responsibility for the performance cost. This means that the government gets to play its role in ensuring the security of the people and take responsibility whenever there is a breakdown (Ralph 2012).
While selecting this kind of contract, the government has to assign responsible and accountable personnel to assess the past performance of the goods offered and the value of services offered. This can be through researching on the contracted goods and services before making any major decisions. However, the contractors should also ensure quality and unique services in order to stand out in offering security for the public. This means that they should provide a detailed analysis of their performance rate and proper assessment of the quality of their goods and services before offering them to the government. This is simply to ensure there are no legal cases of life threatening situations for both the government and contractors. This way, if the goods and services offered are of unique and high quality, the government will work hard to ensure they maintain the kind of standards set by contractors for other security firms. According to Feldman, the fixed-price contract is good but does not favor the contractor in that he has full responsibility for the performance cost (Ralph 2012).
This will not entirely help in evaluation of services and goods offered because the acquisition plan should involve performance of both the government personnel and contractors. On the other hand, time and materials, letter contracts and indefinite delivery contracts will not be entirely beneficial for such a proposal because they do not offer all elements of a good contact. For example, all these contracts are limited towards serving the government temporarily in that they are not open to change. The cost-reimbursement contract is good for this kind of proposal because it gives room for change in case of arising issues...
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