JP Alignment Consulting, Inc.

05/21/2022

JP Alignment Consulting (JPAC) "Phases of Developing a Cost Proposal".

04/03/2022

April 2022: Welcome to “Financial Literacy Month”

03/26/2022

Evaluation for Cost Type Contracts:

Generally, when the Government performs a review of Cost Realism, the analysis is divided into two subcomponents, which are:

1. Resources Realism – the resources (labor and non-labor) that the contractor is proposing
2. Rate Realism – the associated cost for the resources the contractor is proposing

03/21/2022

Knowing the Government will review “assumptions” as part of their evaluation of cost realism, I offer the following for your consideration as you develop your assumptions:

03/20/2022

A Government Perspective on Evaluating Cost Realism:

According to the Government, when evaluating a contractor’s proposal for cost realism, a good starting point is a review of their assumptions to determine if they are acceptable. This means, as a government contractor, you should understand the purpose and significance of the assumptions you include in your cost proposal.

Remember this when developing your next Cost Estimate:

11/11/2021

On behalf of JP Alignment Consulting, I want to thank our veterans for their military service and sacrifice.

11/06/2021

JP Alignment Consulting offers full-cycle GovCon services. We believe that successfully contracting with the Government requires more than developing strategies related to identifying opportunities and winning contracts. Understanding the “whole” of what is required to contract with the Federal Government is paramount to the successful Government Contracting business owner. To that end, throughout the remainder of this year, I will be posting information on diverse concepts related to contracting with the Government. I’ve partnered with various GovCon SMEs to hear about their unique contributions to the GovCon ecosystem. Today, I share a basic concept related to Cybersecurity:

The CIA Triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability: These three principles are often exploited through diverse degrees of exploits/attacks.

• Confidentiality focuses on the principle of ‘least privilege.’
• Accesses should be granted only on a need-to-know basis.
• Integrity is intended to ensure that the information is not tampered with whenever it travels from source to destination or even stored at rest.
• The focus of the availability concept is to ensure that the services of an organization are available.

09/01/2021

By request, we’ve added Fundamentals of Reading Financial Statements to our GovCon course offerings. An entrepreneur should know how their company is performing for numerous reasons. Having a data-driven picture of your firm’s financial position can help you make informed decisions. We will post excerpts from our training throughout the month of September. Contact us for details regarding the training.

08/01/2021

Tip:

Federal government contracting rules, regulations, and procedures dictate how to do business with the federal government. Understanding the principle laws and regulations that affect the federal procurement environment is key to succeeding in government contracting. There are numerous laws and regulations that have an impact on government contracting. For our Defense Contractors, JP Alignment Consulting generally recommends becoming familiar with:

FAR
DFARS
DFARS PGI

08/01/2021

The NSM:
• “Directs the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with other agencies, to develop cybersecurity performance goals for critical infrastructure.

o We expect those standards will assist companies responsible for providing essential services like power, water, and transportation to strengthen their cybersecurity.

• Formally establishes the President’s Industrial Control System Cybersecurity (ICS) Initiative.
o The ICS initiative is a voluntary, collaborative effort between the federal government and the critical infrastructure community to facilitate the deployment of technology and systems that provide threat visibility, indicators, detections, and warnings.
- The Initiative began in mid-April with an Electricity Subsector pilot, and already over 150 electricity utilities representing almost 90 million residential customers are either deploying or have agreed to deploy control system cybersecurity technologies. The action plan for natural gas pipelines is underway, and additional initiatives for other sectors will follow later this year.”

Protection of our Nation’s critical infrastructure is a responsibility of the government at the Federal, State, local, Tribal, and territorial levels and of the owners and operators of that infrastructure.  The cybersecurity threats posed to the systems that control and operate the critical infra...

08/01/2021

NSA offers best practices for securing devices when conducting business in public settings.

07/31/2021

https://www.sba.gov/article/2021/jul/28/federal-government-awards-record-breaking-1457-billion-contracting-small-businesses

According to the “Scorecard”:

- “In FY20, the federal government exceeded the service-disabled veteran-owned small business and small disadvantaged business goals of 3 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

- Although dollars awards increased to new records from previous years in all small business categories, the federal government fell short of meeting the goals established by Congress for women-owned small businesses and HUBZone small businesses. The government spent over $27 billion with women-owned small businesses and over $13 billion with HUBZone businesses, figures that both exceeded the prior year’s spending by over $1 billion.

- The federal government also exceeded its subcontract goals for awards to small businesses and women-owned small businesses. In all, the government awarded almost $83 billion in subcontracts to all small businesses.

- Despite the overall increase in the value of small-business awards, the number of small businesses receiving prime contracts with the Federal government decreased.”

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