A proposed rule tries to clarify regulations that limit the use of time-and-material contracts.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation councils responded to a Government Accountability Office finding that many contracting officers don’t understand the rules governing those contracts, which are considered to have a high risk of cost overruns.

GAO found that contracting officers had the mistaken impression that time-and-material/labor-hour contracts qualified as fixed price type contracts because labor rates were fixed. The proposed rule says explicitly that that’s not so.

The 2004 Defense Authorization Act requires that time-and-material and labor-hour contracts be used in acquiring commercial services only where no other contract type was suitable. But GAO found many contracting officers were not aware of that and were not executing the required determination and finding to explain why they chose a T&M contract. The FAR councils added, “There was a failure of management to detect the lack of compliance with these safeguards.”

The proposed rule would add new language making clear that a determination and finding is necessary.

The proposed rule is FAR case 2009-43 in the Sept. 27 Federal Register. Comments are due Nov. 26.

The Defense Department says small businesses will benefit from a proposed rule encouraging electronic posting of task and delivery orders.

Under the proposal published Oct. 1, the orders would be posted on a central website that all contractors could see. DOD already has that capability, but the rule would create a standard procedure for electronic ordering.

“The benefit of this rule to small business is that it will make electronic distribution procedures a routine part of order issuance,” DOD said. “This change will ultimately help improve the management and promotion of electronic Government services and processes, and establish a framework to improve public access to Government information and services.”

The rule is DFARS Case 2009-D037 in the Oct. 1 Federal Register. Comments are due Nov. 30.

A Senate committee has recommended legislation to beef up the Federal Protective Service, which supervises private security guards for 9,000 federal buildings.

Repeated investigations have found what senators called alarming lapses in building security. Guards were discovered sleeping at their posts, they failed to detect bomb-making materials in undercover tests and some were not trained to operate X-ray machines and metal detectors.

The bill approved by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee would authorize hiring 500 new employees. FPS now has about 1,200 employees overseeing 15,000 contract guards. It would set stiffer training requirements for the contract security force.

Committee chairman Joe Lieberman, Ind.-CT, said FPS’s “mission is now in grave peril.”

With Congress returning for a busy lame-duck session in November, passage of the bill this year is doubtful.

The Defense Department’s plan to move 6,400 workers into a new mega-building just outside Washington is in doubt because of concerns about traffic congestion. The move, part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure plan, would consolidate many scattered DOD offices at a single location in Alexandria, VA.

The newspaper Federal Times reports that Virginia’s members of Congress are trying to put on the brakes because of the impact of increased traffic on already-congested roadways. The building is not close to rail stations.

Amendments pending in Congress would sharply restrict the number of parking spaces at the building, preventing it from being fully occupied until a satisfactory transportation plan is agreed upon by the military, the state, city and community groups.

In the first 18 months of Recovery Act spending, the government has obligated more than $444 billion, or over 88% of the Act’s originally estimated $499 billion in spending, according to a report by Vice President Biden.

The Obama administration estimates that spending under the Act had created or saved 3.05 million jobs by the time of the most recent report on June 30. The goal was 3.5 million by the end of 2010.

Biden said active fraud investigations amount to only 0.2% of grant and contract awards.

The rest of the money appropriated under the Act must be spent by Dec. 31.