Blog - page 341

For purposes of CAS (Cost Accounting Standards), Government contractors fall into one of three categories, exempt, modified coverage, and full coverage (see CAS Coverage, Full, Modified, or Exempt). Only one percent of contractors fall under modified or full CAS coverage (see Only 1 Percent of Contractors are CAS Covered). The remaining 99 percent are exempt. But that statistic is a bit misleading to the 99 percent. Since the last last CAS Standard was promulgated 37 years ago, most of the CAS standards have been incorporated into the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations) either directly or conceptually.

Source: PNWC’s Government Contracting Update: Does CAS (Cost Accounting Standards) Coverage Matter?

Back in the 1980s, the Government brought down a huge “pay to play” enterprise in the San Francisco bay area. Buyers (purchasing agents) for several large defense contractors required prospective subcontractors (in this case, machine shop proprietors) to pay up if they expected to get any business from these primes. The machine shops had to invite the buyers over for friendly neighborhood poker games and were expected to lose large sums of money to the buyer. The size of subsequent machining orders were based on the size of their poker losses. “Do you play poker” became the code word for the buyers’ expectations. One machine shop decided not to play and blew the whistle to Government investigators. The Government was never able to calculate the full impact of the scheme but cost-type contracts were increased by millions of dollars.

Source: PNWC’s Government Contracting Update: “Pay to Play” Schemes