GSA Introduces New CALC Tool: Accurate or Subjective Pricing Data?

The General Services Administration has launched a new tool to make it easier for agencies to figure out the hourly rates for various labor categories. But, what does this really mean to contractors?

The Contract Awarded Labor Category (CALC) tool allows contracting officers to conduct market research and price analysis across awarded prices on 48,000 labor categories from more than 5,000 recent GSA contracts.

Need to know the hourly rate for a financial analyst with a bachelor’s degree and five years of experience? Or a lab director with a Masters degree and 10 years of experience? The CALC tool cuts down on time and effort by helping contracting officers crunch the data instead of having to comb through contract data by hand, according to GSA.

CALC currently searches the awarded prices on several of GSA’s professional services schedules, including Mission Oriented Business Integrated Services (MOBIS), Environmental, Logistics Worldwide (LOGWORLD), Professional Engineering Schedule, Language, Advertising and Integrated Marketing Schedules (AIMS), and the Consolidated Schedule.

For contractors who currently seek to qualify for a GSA Schedule, submit modifications for price increases, add new labor categories or bid on service contracts, this makes the process a bit more subjective and murkier.

Price comparisons based on a title, years of experience and education vary from one company to another. It’s never an apples to apples comparison and strikes at the heart of the GSA Schedules program which was formed based on evaluating a company’s individual commercial practices. Leveling the playing field through price comparisons of the masses vs. assessment of individual vendor performance hurts and chases away top-quality vendors from competing and working with federal customers.

According to developer, 18F, future versions of the CALC tool are likely to include the ability to input a proposed price for a particular labor category to see where it falls against comparable awarded rates, as well as additional ways to control and visualize the labor data.

From our perspective, it remains to be seen if the CALC tool can evolve with algorithms which take into account the ‘intangible’ things that go into pricing for services by vendors.

For more information on how ClearCoast can assist you with your government contracting needs, please contact us at info@clearcoastusa.com.