Overview
This section prescribes the requirements for including government-defined commercial contract financing terms in solicitations and outlines the constraints on how those terms affect the evaluation and award process.
Key Rules
- Solicitation Requirement: Financing terms must be explicitly included in the solicitation if they are to be provided.
- No Evaluation Impact: Contract financing cannot be used as an evaluation factor, nor can proposed prices be adjusted based on the presence or absence of financing.
- Rejection of Alternatives: Proposals offering alternative financing terms must be rejected, though the government may choose to amend the solicitation to all offerors.
- Optional Participation: Offerors may decline the specified financing terms without being rendered nonresponsive or disadvantaged in the evaluation.
- Contract Exclusion: If a winning offeror declined the financing terms during the proposal stage, the financing provisions must be excluded from the final contract.
Practical Implications
- Contractors should ensure their proposed pricing reflects their internal cost of capital, as the government will not normalize prices between offerors who use the financing and those who do not.
- Contracting officers are prevented from using financing as a "tie-breaker" or qualitative differentiator, ensuring that award decisions are based strictly on other stated evaluation criteria.