Does your third party maintenance provider meet the needs of your federal compliance requirements?

Park Place Technologies has earned its status as the most trusted and utilized third party hardware maintenance provider for the United States Federal Government and its System Integrators (SI). We provide critical data center support for numerous federal agencies and departments. Our company understands the objectives and strict compliance standards of our federal customers to achieve cost savings, without degradation of service, and the administrative convenience of contracting with a full-service maintenance services provider.

Our record of superior post-warranty third party data center hardware maintenance — for storage, server, and network devices — started with understanding the specific needs of the federal agencies we serve. One of the most important requirements for each individual agency is compliance.

Park Place understands the importance of agency-specific requirements. For over 21 years, we have worked hand-in-hand with more than 24 Federal Agencies and over 25 top-tier System Integrators, ensuring compliance for reporting, accounting and varying levels of engineer clearance requirements for on-site visits.

Once Park Place is able to confirm compliance for our federal customers, we are able to provide them with our unrivaled hardware maintenance support.

Federal Acquisition Regulation System (FAR) 

The most utilized compliance guidelines fall under the Federal Acquisition Regulation System (FAR). These regulation topics include clarification for reporting; how to sell to the federal government; how agencies acquire goods/services; and many other uniform policies and procedures.

Within Park Place’s System of Award Management (SAM) account, Federal Agencies and SI organizations can view our completed Representation and Certifications article. Within this document, we attest compliance in the necessary FAR clauses, which fall under our business CAGE code and/or NAICS code. FAR 52.225 is one of great importance for the Hardware Maintenance Industry, and one of the most examined compliance standards. Park Place is compliant with General Services Administration (GSA) standards under trade agreement and parts supply, specifically, with Trade Agreements Act Compliance, Parts Origin and Refurbished Parts and Companies, from which Park Place does not source parts.

Park Place provides a “commercial service” and does not sell parts, but rather parts, as needed, are ancillary to our service offerings, so parts supply impacts are greatly reduced.

Trade Agreements Act Compliance (TAA)

Although the Trade Agreements Act Compliance (TAA) applies to services, Park Place is located in the United States. Thus, Park Place meets the TAA standard under FAR 52.225-5. In addition, if a product undergoes “substantial transformation” in the US, then it falls outside the TAA requirements. In our case, hard drives do not function on a standalone basis and only work when integrated with the substantially “larger” data center equipment. Thus, Park Place is compliant with the TAA.

Park Place follows these guidelines for procurement of parts: (a) Park Place maintains records of the source of parts used directly or indirectly under GSA Schedules contracts. (b) Vendors from which Park Place procures parts are reviewed periodically to confirm reputable, and are U.S. based. (c) Part procured are OEM origin parts. (d) Given the post-warranty maintenance service offering, parts in most or all cases are refurbished OEM parts. Park Place has a rigorous inspection and testing program.

All parts used in hardware maintenance are original OEM parts. Replacement parts are procured through commercial partners, including our own testing facility. We model all our parts testing after ISO 9000 standards, leverage climate-controlled facilities and cycle inventories to ensure our clients receive the best quality part possible.

Whether it is a whole unit or an individual piece, all used equipment parts purchased by Park Place Technologies are given an extensive and stringent review prior to being used as spares which is why our parts DOA rate is less than .25% versus the industry standard of 1.5%. Park Place Technologies’ experienced repair technicians perform a visual check and inspection on each individual part before qualifying it for use. After the parts are qualified, each piece is cleaned, bagged and boxed with the utmost care.

All parts are cleaned externally (if appropriate), have internal dust removed and are packaged in antistatic bags and new boxes. All parts will have a Quality label on the bag indicating the Park Place location, date of test completion and the initials of the technician responsible.

Park Place complies with all Executive Orders, laws and regulations. Specifically, Park Place does not procure parts or otherwise do business, directly or indirectly in the secondary markets, with: Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hangzho Hikvision Digital, Dahua, and others listed in applicable Executive Orders.

Visit this link to view Park Place’s completed Entity Registration and Representations and Certifications.

Compliance is a crucial issue, and one not to be trusted to just any vendor. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Alan Sheppard at Asheppard@parkplacetech.com.