A Sole Source contract award is when the government awards a contract without competition. The standard procedure in GovCon is to use competition to compete requirements, therefore awarding a sole source contract is a “non-standard” procedure.
There are a variety of factors that impact the decision to use a sole source strategy to acquire goods and services. To effectively use this sole source authority, it’s critical for both government and industry to understand when a sole source contract would/should/could be the best option to meet the government’s mission.
Since this is a “non-standard” procedure, the government team has to justify why awarding a contract without competition makes sense in a specific acquisition.
In this episode, we outline the basic regulations around how that justification is made. We also describe how and why the government team, and the contracting officer in particular, can determine a “reasonable basis” for a sole source award.