What an evaluator is really reading for
A quality control plan for a facilities maintenance contract answers one question: when something goes wrong on a Tuesday night, what happens next, and how would anyone know. Plans that answer that question convincingly read as an operating system the firm already runs. Plans that do not read as a promise written for the proposal, and evaluators can tell the difference in a page.
This guide separates the contractor's plan from the government's, sets out what evaluators expect to see, and shows how to write a plan that sounds like it has been working for years.
Your plan and the government's plan
Two documents with similar names do opposite jobs, and proposals often blur them.
| Quality control plan | Quality assurance surveillance plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes it | The contractor | The government |
| What it covers | How you inspect your own work and fix problems | How the government checks that work conforms to the contract |
| Who performs it | Your people | Government surveillance personnel |
| What it produces | Inspection records, corrections and trends | Surveillance results and acceptance decisions |
The FAR Overhaul model text says quality assurance surveillance plans should be prepared in conjunction with the statement of work and should specify all work requiring surveillance and the method of surveillance. Agencies have been putting that text in place through class deviations, so read your own solicitation for the language it uses.
If the government attaches a surveillance plan or a performance requirements summary, treat it as a gift. It tells you exactly what the government will check and how, and your own plan should inspect those same things sooner.
Know where the government's quality language lives in your solicitation. Under the uniform contract format, Section E holds inspection, acceptance, quality assurance and reliability requirements, and the performance work statement usually holds the standards themselves. Attachments often carry the surveillance plan or the performance requirements summary. Read all three together before you write a single page of your own plan.
What the contract requires of you
On fixed-price service contracts above the simplified acquisition threshold, currently $350,000, the contracting officer must include the inspection of services clause. It requires you to provide and maintain an inspection system acceptable to the government, and to keep complete records of all inspection work, available to the government during performance and for as long afterwards as the contract requires.
The clause also explains what happens when work falls short. If services do not conform, the government may require you to perform them again at no increase in contract amount. When defects cannot be corrected by reperformance, it may require action to ensure future conformance and reduce the price to reflect the reduced value. If you fail to act promptly, it may have the work done and charge you the cost, or terminate for default.
The clause speaks of an inspection system. The quality control plan is how solicitations usually ask you to describe it, and it can carry a required format or content list. A plan that follows the solicitation's list in the solicitation's order is the plan an evaluator can score quickly.
The elements evaluators want
Whatever the format, a credible plan covers the same ground. Read this list against your draft.
- Scope: every building, system and service the plan covers, matched to the work statement
- Organization: who runs quality, whom they report to, and their authority to stop work
- Inspection schedule: what gets inspected, how often, by whom, using what checklist
- Deficiency handling: how a problem is recorded, assigned, corrected and verified
- Metrics: measures tied to the contract's performance standards
- Records: what is kept, where, for how long, and how the government gets access
- Communication: how and when you report to the contracting officer's representative
- Training: how technicians learn the standards and the inspection procedures
Build the inspection schedule from the performance standards
The model text says performance work statements must, to the maximum extent practicable, include meaningful and measurable performance standards. Start there. List each standard, and for each one say what you will inspect, at what frequency, and with what sample size.
Match the frequency to the risk. Life-safety systems and work orders with a tight response standard earn more frequent inspections than a routine task with low consequence. For a preventive maintenance program, inspect a sample of completed work orders against the task steps and the equipment's condition, and do not rely on a closed ticket as proof that the work happened.
Write the sample size down. "We inspect work regularly" scores nothing. "The site quality lead inspects a sample of completed preventive maintenance work orders each week, drawn from each building and each trade" tells the evaluator how the system runs. Set your own numbers based on the contract's volume and defend them.
Who inspects matters
An inspection by the person who did the work is a self-assessment, and evaluators know it. Name a quality lead who does not report to the production supervisor, or explain how you separate those duties on a smaller crew. If you are a small firm with one site manager, use a second person from another site, a periodic visit from your operations leader, or structured peer inspection across trades.
State this person's authority in plain words: the authority to hold a task open, to require rework, and to escalate to the owner. A quality role that cannot stop anything is decoration.
A quality role that cannot stop anything is decoration.
Deficiency handling is the heart of the plan
Describe the life of a deficiency from start to finish, using the words your people actually use. A single flow, written once, does more than pages of general assurance.
| Step | What happens | Record it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Find | An inspector, technician, occupant or the government identifies the problem | Deficiency entry with date, location, standard and photo |
| Assign | The supervisor assigns an owner and a due date tied to the contract standard | Assignment in the work order system |
| Correct | The technician performs the correction | Completion note, parts used, time |
| Verify | Someone other than the technician confirms the fix | Verification entry and signature |
| Find the cause | For repeat or serious problems, identify why it happened and change the process | Root cause note and corrective action |
| Report | Summarized to the government on the agreed schedule | Monthly report |
Say what happens when the government finds a problem before you do. Feed the surveillance result into your own system: log it the same way, assign it the same way, verify it the same way, and answer the contracting officer's representative in writing with what you fixed and what you changed. Evaluators want to see that you treat a government finding as your own, and that it gets closed the same way as a problem you found yourself.
The final two steps separate a quality system from a repair log. Repeat deficiencies, tracked and traced to a cause, are what an evaluator hopes to see and rarely does.
Metrics tied to the performance standards
Measure what the contract measures. If the performance requirements summary sets a standard for emergency work order response, track your response time against that standard. If it sets a completion rate for preventive maintenance, report that rate. Generic measures such as "customer satisfaction" add little unless the contract asks for them.
A short set works better than a long one: work order response against the standard, preventive maintenance completion, first-time fix rate, repeat deficiencies, inspection completion against the schedule, and safety. Report each one over time, with a trend, and say what happens when a measure slips. A number that triggers an action shows a system. A number that nobody reviews does not.
When the solicitation is a statement of objectives and you are proposing the standards yourself, the rule says agencies must evaluate whether the proposed standards meet their needs, identify methods for assessing performance against them, and incorporate the accepted standards and methods into the contract. So choose numbers you can actually hit. Whatever you propose, you may be held to.
Making it read as a system already running
The difference between a real plan and an invented one shows up in specifics. Use the names of your forms. Say which software holds the work orders. Show a sample inspection checklist, a sample deficiency entry and a sample monthly report, with no client names, if the page limit allows. Use present tense for what you do today, and be precise about what you will do here for the first time.
- Quoting the inspection clause back and calling it a plan
- Naming a quality manager whose hours are not in the staffing plan
- Promising a 100 percent inspection rate that the crew size cannot support
- Listing metrics that do not match the contract's performance standards
- Leaving out how the government sees the records
- Writing a plan that could apply to any building in the country
Finally, reconcile the plan with the rest of the proposal. The hours for inspection and verification have to exist in the staffing plan and the price. Past performance evaluators look at a record of conforming to requirements and to standards of good workmanship, and on the day after award this plan becomes how you build that record.
Frequently asked questions
No. The quality control plan is yours and covers how you check your own work. The quality assurance surveillance plan is the government's and covers how it checks you. Good contractors read the government's plan and make theirs inspect the same things first.
Follow the page limit and any required content list. A few specific pages with a schedule, a deficiency flow and metrics tied to the standards score better than a long general manual.
Yes. Assign the role to someone who does not perform the work being inspected, use peer inspections across trades, and use a periodic review by a senior person. Show the arrangement plainly.
The inspection clause requires a system acceptable to the government, so expect review. Many solicitations also ask for a final plan shortly after award. Read how yours handles submission and approval.