Federal buyers haven’t been the only busy workers this summer.  In the middle of the busiest time of the year for contracting, federal regulators have gotten into the game, too.  This can cause potential problems if your company has been busy closing end of year business, but is not aware of the new rules could impact its business.  Time to take a breather to look at just three new rules you now have to play by.  The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule requires Read more

Uncertainty over FY’2017 spending bills have led some federal budget watchers to openly discuss the possibility of a sequestration in FY’17, depending on how current House or Senate proposals are finally enacted.  In its current form, spending legislation from the House of Representatives would trigger a sequestration, or automatic withholding of money, while the Read more

GSA officials have high hopes for the Formatted Pricing Tool (FPT) they’re now rolling out. Over a half-dozen Schedules, including the IT 70 Schedule, are targeted for FPT implementation this calendar year. Despite glitches and concerns in some industry sectors that the tool is not ready for prime time, it is here. The main driver is that GSA officials believe in their core that there is simply “too much” pricing disparity among the same or similar Schedule items. Contractors can forget “market basket” pricing. GSA wants the lowest price across the board. Of course, those prices might not uniformly be as low once companies understand that specially discounted or loss leader pricing is now what the agency expects all the time. Smart companies will revise their own pricing strategies that enable them to survive, resulting in few, if any, loss leaders and fewer, less aggressive, spot discounts. The FPT wave, therefore, may be real, but brief.

Meanwhile, GSA continues to move ahead with its own Category Management (CM) initiative. Professional service leaders in the agency may seek the development of new product service codes. GSA estimates that as much as 40% of current services spending is classified in that manner, meaning that the government has no real baseline against which it can ensure that agencies are buying the services they actually need, or are getting those solutions at fair and reasonable pricing. Other CM initiatives have revolved heavily around price flattening and standardization of product categories. Despite GSA insistence that the same approach won’t be used for professional services, make sure your voice is heard. Professional service contractors have till September 15th to comment on the CM Professional Services initiative.

If you’ve been paying attention to the articles above, you know your federal contract requirements are changing.  Some compliance burdens may be reduced, but other, new responsibilities have taken their place.  Also, you’re now expected to be an expert on federal labor law, along with a host of other rules.  Make sure your compliance programs are up to date and that you don’t get caught by surprise by the new requirements.  Contact Allen Federal today and we can put together a training or other solution that can help your company stay ahead of the changes.  Contact us today at info@allenfederal.com and make sense of your TDR, CM, MFC, FPT, PRC and the other alphabet soup that governs your contracts.