work force increase, etc. Over-bundling makes it easy for contracting, but many times, especially for complex acquisitions, does not deliver the results expected by the customer or war fighter for complex acquisitions, especially acquisitions that the acquisition command in question has little experience with or has substantial turn over of personnel during the life of the acquisition. Small business acquisitions have mandatory restrictions on over-bundling. However, non-small business acquisitions are not subject to the same rules. Example of how over-bundling causes big problems (permutations and evaluation of total price in source selection): Lets say a requiring activity wants to get polling services. Acquisition planning reveals there are five polls in ten different regions. However, it turns out that the Government will only be ordering one of the five polls in any real numbers and that particular poll is much more expensive in actual cost than the other four. If a weighting scheme is not applied to this bundled requirement, a vendor can make the four lightly ordered polls very cheap in their offer and the high volume poll very expensive, based on their knowledge of the ordering patterns of the Government in past acquisitions. Thus, on its face, the overall price of a bid when each poll is added together to arrive at a total price (used in source selection) would look attractive but in practice, the Government will burn through its budget very quickly given the vast majority of the actually ordered polls are extremely expensive (even though the actual cost of the most frequently ordered poll is far less than what was in the offer). To avoid the headache of a weighting scheme, all five polls should be broken apart and contracted for separately so they can be judged on their merits. This is an example of what is frequently done on major indefinite duration, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts and explains why some acquisitions are appallingly expensive and require additional funding to achieve the requiring activity's objectives. Statement of work The statement of work (SOW) is a formal document submitted along with the request for proposal (RFP) to a vendor that defines the work to be performed, the location of the work, the deliverable schedule, applicable performance standards, any special requirements (e.g., security clearances, travel, and special knowledge), and the period of performance. Source selection Source selection refers to the process for evaluating contractor proposals or quotes submitted