Here’s the OTA section - can you point out what’s incorrect here in your experience?
“ Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) are a special streamlined contract mechanism design to allow more rapid acquisition. OTAs are typically awarded through consortia that require an application process and membership dues for management. They can be quite a bit larger (I’ve seen billion dollar OTAs before), but are usually more one time shortcuts for an interested customer than a permanent program of record. In fact, if you read the OTA criteria for selection they are specifically intended for prototyping, with some wiggle room for production follow on. 1/3 of the contract must be awarded to a Non-traditional defense contractors (NTDC), meaning they haven’t been awarded a Program of Record before. This last part is crucial: each company can really only run this play once to full PoR on their own before they have to find another NTDC contractor they have to bring along for the ride.”
Other Transaction Agreements (OTs... OTA actually stands for Other Transaction Authority, which is the underlying statute 10 USC 4022) only require significant contributions from non-defense contractors (NDCs), not any numerical contribution. The definition of significant contribution is purposefully undefined and at the discretion of the Agreements Officer. Full disclosure, I am an Agreements Officer who works for SDA. Traditional Defense Contractors may participate in OTs without partnering with NDCs if they contribute 1/3 cost share, which might be the source of your error. Furthermore, an NDC is a company not subject to full Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) for an entire year... basically they do not take cost or Fixed Price Incentive contracts. For example, SpaceX does quite a bit of defense work, but refuses to take cost contracts and therefore is an NDC. Also, the same NDC may pair with a traditional defense contractor any number of times and this happens often. Finally, OTs may be awarded directly to traditional defense contractors with at least one NDC making a significant contribution.
Thanks - now its coming back to me. I was admittedly threw this in here as almost a sidenote (since it's hard to do the bottoms up estimates without understanding the contract types) so I may have written some of it from memory or mixed up some of the nuanced provisions. You work with this stuff everyday so I appreciate the input.
The CAS compliance piece is an important distinction though. I had forgotten about the "cost sharing" exception.
Big picture though, is that it is fantastic analysis. If anything, it understates how misleading SBIR/STTR awards can be because we have 3.65% of our DoD R&D budget fenced off for those awards... I am legally required to spend that money, which lowers the bar for winning an award, especially in the case of STTRs because of the coordination issues of finding a university partner.
fantastic analysis
Great article, but the OTA section is factually incorrect.
Here’s the OTA section - can you point out what’s incorrect here in your experience?
“ Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) are a special streamlined contract mechanism design to allow more rapid acquisition. OTAs are typically awarded through consortia that require an application process and membership dues for management. They can be quite a bit larger (I’ve seen billion dollar OTAs before), but are usually more one time shortcuts for an interested customer than a permanent program of record. In fact, if you read the OTA criteria for selection they are specifically intended for prototyping, with some wiggle room for production follow on. 1/3 of the contract must be awarded to a Non-traditional defense contractors (NTDC), meaning they haven’t been awarded a Program of Record before. This last part is crucial: each company can really only run this play once to full PoR on their own before they have to find another NTDC contractor they have to bring along for the ride.”
Other Transaction Agreements (OTs... OTA actually stands for Other Transaction Authority, which is the underlying statute 10 USC 4022) only require significant contributions from non-defense contractors (NDCs), not any numerical contribution. The definition of significant contribution is purposefully undefined and at the discretion of the Agreements Officer. Full disclosure, I am an Agreements Officer who works for SDA. Traditional Defense Contractors may participate in OTs without partnering with NDCs if they contribute 1/3 cost share, which might be the source of your error. Furthermore, an NDC is a company not subject to full Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) for an entire year... basically they do not take cost or Fixed Price Incentive contracts. For example, SpaceX does quite a bit of defense work, but refuses to take cost contracts and therefore is an NDC. Also, the same NDC may pair with a traditional defense contractor any number of times and this happens often. Finally, OTs may be awarded directly to traditional defense contractors with at least one NDC making a significant contribution.
Thanks - now its coming back to me. I was admittedly threw this in here as almost a sidenote (since it's hard to do the bottoms up estimates without understanding the contract types) so I may have written some of it from memory or mixed up some of the nuanced provisions. You work with this stuff everyday so I appreciate the input.
The CAS compliance piece is an important distinction though. I had forgotten about the "cost sharing" exception.
Thanks for helping to clarify. Updating now.
A very savvy approach I have seen space startups use is to treat SBIR awards as levers to access VC capital for better terms.
Big picture though, is that it is fantastic analysis. If anything, it understates how misleading SBIR/STTR awards can be because we have 3.65% of our DoD R&D budget fenced off for those awards... I am legally required to spend that money, which lowers the bar for winning an award, especially in the case of STTRs because of the coordination issues of finding a university partner.
Would you mind sharing specifics of where you think it’s incorrect and I’m happy to update?