KBE Software’s Award Fee system, AWF®, automates aspects of the administration and evaluation of government contracts that include award-fee provisions for incentivizing contractor performance. The system provides to organizations that use award fee contracting the means to significantly streamline the process. Its design takes into consideration feedback from earlier implementations of the system by several government organizations, recommendations from officials who have served on award fee review boards, and pertinent documentation, particularly the “Department of the Air Force Award-Fee Guide” dated March 2002. Developed by an Air Force Integrated Product Team charged with providing Air Force-level guidance on the appropriate use of award fee, the guide includes detailed samples of typical performance categories, rating schemes and evaluation criteria for use as guidelines when preparing award fee plans. Much of this information is incorporated into the AWF system and is easily adapted to award fee plans that need to be developed for specific contracting situations.
The AWF system is a Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 web application written in the Microsoft C# .NET programming language and is designed to run in a Microsoft Windows Server environment under Microsoft Internet Information Server
(IIS). It contains two components: the ASP.NET web application and a SQL Server database. AWF users interact with the system using
a web browser. Implementation options include the use of either the publicly available AWF system hosted on a web server at KBE Software’s facility in Centerville, Ohio or
custom installation of the system in a user’s private web server environment.
An AWF administrator enters contract information into the database, structures award fee plans, and sets up user accounts for individuals assigned to various roles in the award fee process. Role assignment determines the functionality of the system that is available to a particular user. A performance monitor, for example, can only access functions related to adding contractor evaluations to the database, while a member of the Award Fee Review Board can generate detailed reports covering all aspects of the process, including reports that allow near real-time review of comments as they are entered into the database by the performance monitors.
An AWF evaluator (performance monitor) enters comments and scores into the database – this represents an assessment of the contractor performance. Evaluators include government performance monitors and also contractor personnel who can perform self-evaluations for consideration by the review board.
At the end of a contract performance period, the AWF system provides reports that present the findings of evaluators in various levels of detail. The voting members of the review board can consider this information and make individual recommendations as to the percent of the award fee that should be awarded to the contractor for the period. The system uses this information to calculate a final recommended fee, which can then be used by the Fee Determining Official to help determine the actual fee to award for the period.
The AWF system can support an organization’s simultaneous administration of multiple award fee contracts. Security features assure that each contract’s data can only be accessed by the individuals who are assigned award fee roles for the contract.
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