The General Services Administration has launched a new tool to make it easier for agencies to figure out the hourly rates for various labor categories.
The Contract Awarded Labor Category (Calc) tool allows contracting officers to conduct market research and price analysis across awarded prices on 48,000 labor categories from more than 5,000 recent GSA contracts.
Need to know the hourly rate for a financial analyst with a bachelor's degree and five years of experience? Or a lab director with a Masters degree and 10 years of experience? The CALC tool cuts down on time and effort by helping contracting officers crunch the data instead of having to comb through contract data by hand, according to GSA.
CALC searches the awarded prices on several of GSA's professional services schedules, including Mission Oriented Business Integrated Services (MOBIS), Environmental, Logistics Worldwide (LOGWORLD), Professional Engineering Schedule, Language, Advertising and Integrated Marketing Schedules (AIMS), and the Consolidated Schedule.
Future versions of the CALC tool are likely to include the ability to input a proposed price for a particular labor category to see where it falls against comparable awarded rates, as well as additional ways to control and visualize the labor data.
"This comparison is an important piece of information that contracting officers can use to inform their decision about which contracts should receive Requests for Quotations (RFQs), and in turn ensure the government is spending taxpayers dollars wisely and in the most efficient way," according to 18F.
