>Ken,
>I agree it's not always possible to land time, labor and material, I'd go as far to agree it's rare but I disagree on the 'prudent' part because as a contractor it's prudent to have them, if you can, since your profit is guranteed as opposed to overrunning your cost in staffing and schedule in FP Contracts. You have to consider why it's in the Gov. best interest to award Fixed Price Contracts. It's because it minimizes their risk and almost automatically increases yours.
>
>Having said that, it's also very common that the Simple Procurement Purchase or Solicitation will identify the Contract as FP leaving you no choice as a Contractor. It's a Customer driven issue BUT if you have the option somehow, then what you talk about is worth analyzing furthermore.
>
>I only wanted to highlight the pros and cons for each type of Contract to the Gov. and the Contractor. I developed in the past Procurement Software for few Gov. agencies and worked closely with a lot of Contract Officers and that is driving where I am coming from to a large extent.
>
>Let me know what you think. My 2nd 2 cents<g>.

I haven't done much government work but from what I understand you pretty much have to "take it or leave it" as there is little room for negotiation unless you have worked for that agency before and can somehow skirt the normal purchasing/bidding hassle.

The way we work is to get as good an idea as we can about a project then propose to the client that we write a functional spec at an hourly rate. Included in that proposal is a "rough guess" at the cost of the app. That rough guess serves as a "sales qualifier" to see if the client is serious and understands what a custom app will cost. If they bite, we do the functional spec and give it to them with a firm fixed price quote for the app as specified with the understanding that changes to the spec may alter the fixed price. Our estimate of the fixed price begins with our estimate of the effort involved and our availability. Then we factor in what the value is to the client (using info we got during the functional spec preparation).

If the effort exceeds the value, it is a no brainer.. ditch the project. But if there is sufficient margin, we then try to assess the competition and arrive at a winning bid. Since we wrote the spec, competition is usually non-existant.

Finally, if there is any part of the development process that is dependent on the clients participation (i.e. testing and training) we quote an hourly rate for that and explain to the client that since we cannot control the availability of their staff, we cannot quote a fixed price. We do tell them, however how many actual hours of work that portion of the project should take.

Now I am up to $.04

Ken