Our Services
The backbone of our firm is to provide customized cost and price strategy consulting solutions that range from opportunity-specific competitor targeted Price to Win services, to conducting an independent SME level Cost Volume reviews.
Our dedication to the art of pricing is validated by the growth achieved by our clients with over $30 Billion dollars over the span of 15 years.
Cost & Price Strategy
Cost Strategy:
Effective cost leadership and cost management are the two most commonly found financial traits within a successful business. This statement holds more true when doing work with the Federal Government. With the procurement pendulum swinging towards Best Value and Lowest Price contracts, the focus on tax payer dollars is scrutinized more than ever before. From Direct Labor to Business Meals to Rent, our cost strategy consulting offering focuses on evaluating current cost structures to help your business improve or maintain cost competitiveness.
As part of our Cost Strategy support, we also offer solutions in constructing and/or revising your Indirect Rate budgets to ensure a consistent application and build of your Fringe, Overhead and General & Administrative rates. Our resource level model provides you with budgetary details (pools and bases) to your rates as well as all your forecasted financials, which include your income statement, employee costs, project costs, subcontractor costs, and other direct costs.
Price Strategy:
What is the final price you plan to offer your Government Customer? How did you arrive at it? Does it answer the Government’s requirement of price reasonableness and realism? How did you evaluate your subcontractor’s prices? These are few of the many questions we will help you answer through our FAR 15.404 backed price strategy consulting support. As part of this offering we provide our customer-centric Price to Perform(P2P) service, that ensures long-term sustainability and profitability for prices you submit to the Government.
Our services also cover the ability to understand, compete and win the ever-confusing Best Value contracts. If you are incumbent, with a severe case of “incumbentitis”, we have the cure via a methodological prescription that focuses on evaluating the opportunity, the agency, your competitors and your internal financial capability.
Best Value Strategy
Best Value – Trade Offs
The quote above is from a sticker on the back of a Landscaping truck, and it is so apt for the current procurement trend of soliciting Best Value contracts. The irony of this type of procurement (which is here to stay) is unfortunate, and the question that begs to be asked is: are Trade Offs and LPTA contracts truly “Best” value to the Government and the tax payer? My answer is: it can be! When clients see Best Value, specifically within the Trade Off environment, they immediately think price, forgetting the other pertinent and relevant sections of the proposal. However, in our experience, our clients who have won Trade Off procurements, have been (on average) 10-15% higher than the lowest bidder.
Best Value – Lowest Price Technically Acceptable
For incumbents, meeting the “Technically Acceptable” component in an LPTA environment is often a difficult exercise. “But the Government loves my PM” and “my current personnel are critical to the success of the Government’s mission” are comments I hear too often. In an LPTA environment, your goal is to be compliant and provide people and price that are reflective of doing so – nothing more, nothing less. Our consulting services makes tough recommendations and offers strategies to reduce your cost exposure post award. As with all our services, our recommendations are always based on facts and data, rather than intuition and assumptions. Our direct and indirect rate assessments for LPTA procurements take a deep-dive to ensure competitiveness and long term success.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Has your business lost contracts because of price in the last 24 months? Do you have trouble understanding the bidding behavior of your competitor? Does the purchasing behavior of your acquisition agency confuse you? If you answered a resounding “YES” to any of the questions above, you will be glad to reach out to us to help you with your next competitive analysis task. Our repeatable and proven methodology has dug into the soul of companies and agencies to map awarding and bidding strategies. We scour and use a multi-faceted, yet simple, approach to understand the competitive market, enabling you to compete smarter.
Price to Win (PTW)
In this current phase of Best Value procurements, it is critical to not only understand the work and agency you are bidding to, but also the competitors you are bidding against. Using pertinent components of our Competitive Analysis, JACOBS provides you with a bottoms up approach to the most-likely price your competitor will submit. Bidding an LPTA contract? Our signature PTW approach provides you with a data-driven and client-intrinsic model that is relies on facts, rather than assumptions.
Audit Support
Preventive Controls
At JACOBS we believe in a proactive approach to ensuring that all your Business Systems are both complaint and consistent in their use of application. Using the Business System Rule per DFAR 242.70 as our penultimate baseline, we document, review and reconcile processes and “systems” to ensure your business is meeting the mandatory requirements as applicable. Furthermore, as a software agnostic firm, our recommendations rely on documented fundamentals and regulations, rather than advertised best practices.
Incurred Cost Submission:
As with most all of our offerings, our methodology for supporting the development of your Incurred Cost Submission(s) (ICS) involve a knowledge-based approach, whereby we document and detail all data inputs, outputs and schedules – pre-submission and post submission. Our clients are then able to at least attempt their next ICS, or ask questions and collect data that are pertinent, in the event of an onsite Audit request by DCAA. We leave no schedule un-turned while detailing the submission document and our experience with managing and developing over 100 audited ICS’s is sure to leave you wanting to do more….ok, perhaps just one a year!
Cost Proposal Management
Cost Proposal Support
With experience in managing and developing 100+ compliant Cost Proposals, our services follow a methodological process in supporting your next proposal effort. From compliance matrices to developing sealed envelops, our services provide a full rounded and cost effective solution to your Cost/Price proposal needs. A few of our other services include:
1. Developing dynamic price models to support your cost and pricing efforts.
2. Developing customized narrative for all sections of the cost proposal which include but not limited to: Accounting Systems, estimating methodology, assumptions, direct costs, indirect costs, purchasing systems, basis of estimates, uncompensated overtime, realism, reasonableness, and unbalanced pricing.
3. Managing subcontractor cost and pricing proposal requirements. We provide outlines, manage data calls & deliverables, and are your point of contact for all subcontractor-related questions.
Project Management
Integrated Project Management Office Solutions:
Most often businesses try to employ the “one-size-fits-all” technique when addressing Project Management, or spend too much time focusing on the tools and methodologies that produce limited results. We believe that projects of different sizes, complexities, and types require their unique management process, based on the five founding principles of traditional project management, namely: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Control and Closing. By providing a centralized approach to improving overall project efficiency by managing projects through a standardized process, our methodology and knowledge-based solution ensures we provide a best-in-class PMO capable of supporting your company’s business objectives and timelines. We keep your employees at the forefront of this process by offering one-on-one training to ensure they understand the ROI their processes and decisions, while ensuring a efficient and effective management office. Therefore, by allocating the “right” employees to the “right” project, the PMO is able to create value for the organization.
Project Forecast Modelling
Our Project forecast model tool kit is an ideal PMO supplement for businesses looking for a dynamic and easy-to-use tool to assist in evaluating if their costs and resources are being adequately utilized during project execution. This Excel based model, tailored to service-based contracts, is an ideal solution for Project managers who require a data-based mechanism that provides for the following:
1. A documented approach for developing the scope of work, including, resource selection, baseline cost estimates and delivery schedule.
2. A centralized repository of both historical (actual) and future what-if scenarios that impact the project (turnover, scope creep, schedule/cost variance, utilization, overtime, sequestration, funding, etc).
Training
Deliverable based Training:
Our unique approach to training does not involve us standing in front of a podium, but is focused on providing value with actual deliverables, such as a working Cost Model or Project Management tool. We engage our training on a one-on-one or team-by-team basis, working through an active task, thereby introducing and teaching concepts via applicability and technicality. Our training range from developing and building Price to Win models to Government Contracting basics to Building Your Indirect Rates.
Group Training:
Conforming to traditional training formats, we also provide group training sessions in the following subject matters:
1. A Primer to Federal Cost and Pricing
2. Price to Win (PTW) and Competitive Analysis
3. Price to Perform (Sustainability of Bid Rates)
4. Cost Volume Development
5. A Primer to Indirect Rates (Fringe, Overhead & G&A)
6. Project Management for Small Businesses
7. Incurred Cost Submissions.