Officials in GSA’s Southwest regional office in Fort Worth consistently emphasized their desire to engage more frequently with contractors at their industry event last week to ensure that GSA is offering customers viable solutions. Regional leaders should be applauded for their efforts, especially for understanding that customer engagement can lead to good program growth.  People looking for good examples of how contractors and GSA officials can work together for program success need look no further than GSA’s own Alliant and OASIS programs.  Each program is led by a strong, respected Program Manager.  The PM spends significant time working with federal agency customers to ensure they understand the benefits of their programs and, when necessary, creating special incentives for large scale users to make Alliant or OASIS a preferred vehicle for a particular customer.  Much of the successful work is made possible by consistent discussions with industry.  Both Alliant and OASIS have quarterly meetings to conduct performance reviews and share information with the purpose of keeping each contract responsive to evolving customer demands.  Applying these same practices to the Schedules program can likely yield similar results and do more to increase Schedule use than a host of price slashing initiatives.  The SW region may be on the right track and others should consider following their lead.