Disadvantages Of Bpa

As made apparent by the regulations and procedures governing the use and establishment of BPAs, there are several advantages to using BPAs over traditional contracts. BPAs have a lower administrative burden over other contracting methods. A FSS BPA requires less paperwork during the sourcing process because there is no need for open market research, such as the “search for sources, need to prepare solicitations, and requirement to synopsize the acquisition” (GSA, 2015). BPAs also reduce procurement lead times (the time between identifying a need and making a purchase) by streamlining the ordering process and eliminating repetitive acquisition efforts. For example, it is much faster to use a BPA to order office equipment, rather than negotiate a new contract for each office that requires a new machine. Finally, as stated earlier, BPAs provide agency the ability to negotiate improved discounts over catalog prices, when buying in bulk. Agencies can leverage this buying power by coordinating several of its activities procurement needs into regularly scheduled large purchases. …show more content…
An example of these cost savings is when the DoD transitioned to use BPAs to fulfill information technology (IT) requirements. The BPAs eliminated the “need for new contracts and costly full-scale competition (which used to take three to four months)” each time IT equipment was purchased (Rhea, 1999). The administrative requirements are considerable less with the BPAs used by DoD to purchase IT equipment. Traditional IT contracts used to “run 50 pages…BPA contracts are about two pages long and allow for daily price changes” (Cahlink, 2001). Traditional contracting methods cost the DoD about “$18 million to draft and oversee…BPAs have reduced price negotiations to an average cost of $26,000” (Cahlink,