Although both the House and Senate are scheduled to begin their August recess next week, that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening now.  Contractors definitely need to pay attention to what Congress is doing as it will impact their future business.

1.  Increased Possibility of a Government Shutdown:  House Freedom Caucus members turned up the heat on this issue this week with Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) saying, “We should not fear a government shutdown; most of what we do up here is bad anyway…”  Good went on to say Read more

GSA  received over 4,500 questions on its most recent Alliant 3 draft RFP.  It will take some time for GSA to address each issue.  GSA leaders should use that time to not only respond to questions but develop a sound Alliant 3 small business strategy.  The agency’s current plan to issue one, unified RFP for businesses of all sizes comes with substantial risk.  NIH’s NITAAC organization used the same approach for the CIOSP IV contract, only to be mired for years with hundreds of protests – so far – and no end in sight.  That can’t happen with the Alliant program, one that has driven billions of dollars in IT purchases and has become one of the most popular IT acquisition methods. GSA’s OASIS+ team initially considered the same approach, but wisely broke that program into multiple RFP’s, with one for each small business Read more

While competitive pricing is always a must in government contracting, there are other factors that contractors should know about that could capture the interest of customers, especially during the fourth quarter.  Trying to differentiate yourself from the competition?  Consider these approaches:

1.  Sustainability Attributes.  Offering sustainable solutions doesn’t just have to be an extra expense, it can actually help win business. The administration’s current emphasis on environmentally friendly acquisition can be used by companies with “green” solutions to their Read more

Both the House and Senate are scheduled to vote on at least some of the FY’24 appropriations bills this month, an occurrence that could lead some to hope for on-time passage of next year’s spending bills.  Further investigation, though, shows that this would likely be a false hope.  House leaders have said that they plan to vote only on one or two measures in July.  The remaining 10 will not see final House action until September.  The Senate is likely to follow suit.  All of this means that the multiple conferences to iron out differences between each measure would have to be concluded in just a few days in order to be finalized by September Read more

The annual small business contracting report card was released last week and showed that federal agencies again exceeded the government’s overall 23% small business use goal.  Federal agencies set a record in FY’22 spending nearly $163 billion with small prime contractors, a figure representing 26.5% of total prime contract awards.  Ten federal agencies received an “A+” on their report card.  So, what’s not to like?  Buried toward the bottom of SBA’s press release was an acknowledgement that while more dollars are going to small businesses, fewer small businesses are receiving those awards.  Despite the administration’s attempt to attract new Read more