Preaward determination concerning the inapplicability of section 1605 of the Recovery Act or the Buy American statute
Offerors can request a preaward determination to waive Buy American or Recovery Act requirements for specific construction materials if domestic options are unreasonably costly, based on defined thresholds.
Overview
FAR 25.604 outlines the process for determining, before contract award, whether section 1605 of the Recovery Act or the Buy American statute does not apply to specific construction materials in a federal acquisition. Offerors may request such a determination by submitting required information and supporting data as specified in the solicitation. The contracting officer must evaluate these requests using the provided data and any other readily available information. The regulation establishes specific cost comparison thresholds: for manufactured construction materials, if using domestic materials increases the contract price by more than 25%, the cost is deemed unreasonable; for unmanufactured materials, the threshold is 20%. If these thresholds are met, the contracting officer may determine that the domestic material requirement is inapplicable for those items.