Performance-based service contracts rest on a simple bargain. The contractor promises to meet defined standards and is responsible for checking its own work. The government, in turn, decides how it will verify that the standards are met. The contractor’s side of that bargain is the quality control plan. The government’s side is the quality assurance surveillance plan, or QASP. Understanding how the two documents fit together makes both easier to write and to live with.
Quality control belongs to the contractor
The FAR places responsibility for quality on the contractor, and most service solicitations require a quality control plan as part of the proposal or shortly after award. The plan describes how the firm will make sure its work meets the performance standards before the government ever looks at it. A useful plan is specific to the contract. It identifies each standard in the performance work statement, says how the contractor will inspect or measure against it, how often, by whom and what happens when a deficiency is found.
Evaluators can tell the difference between a plan written for this contract and a corporate template with the agency’s name inserted. The former references actual performance standards and names actual methods. The latter talks about commitment to excellence.
Quality assurance belongs to the government
The QASP is the government’s document, usually drafted during acquisition planning and often included as an attachment to the solicitation. It explains how the government will monitor performance: which standards will be surveilled, by what method, how frequently and what the acceptable quality level is. It also describes what happens when performance falls short, from documented discrepancies to withheld payment or reduced fee under incentive arrangements. The contracting officer’s representative usually carries out the surveillance and records the results.
Common surveillance methods
QASPs generally rely on a handful of approaches, and knowing them helps you design a quality control plan that anticipates them:
- Random sampling, used when a service is performed many times, such as processing transactions or cleaning rooms
- Periodic inspection, scheduled checks of specific outputs or sites
- 100 percent inspection, reserved for high-consequence or infrequent deliverables
- Customer feedback, including complaints and satisfaction surveys, usually validated before being counted
- Review of contractor reports and metrics, which makes the accuracy of your own data part of the evaluation
Writing a plan that works with the QASP
When the QASP is available, build your quality control plan to mirror it. If the government will sample ten percent of help desk tickets each month against a response-time standard, your plan should sample at least that often and catch problems first. If the government will rely on customer feedback, your plan should include a way to collect and act on feedback before it reaches the contracting officer’s representative. Include a corrective action process with root cause analysis, assigned responsibility and verification that the fix held. State how quality results will be reported to the government, and how often.
Where no QASP is provided, propose a measurement approach for each standard and say so plainly. Agencies sometimes adopt a contractor’s approach after award.
Life after award
The quality control plan becomes a working document, not a proposal artifact. Keep the records it promises, because surveillance findings and your own data will both feed your performance evaluations. When a discrepancy is documented, respond promptly, in writing, with the cause and the correction. Contractors who treat the QASP as a shared tool for keeping the contract healthy, rather than as a threat, tend to have the smoothest relationships with the government staff who administer it. Quality, in the end, is a conversation that both documents are designed to structure.