As contractors and their government customers await spending allocations for individual offices, now is a perfect time to showcase the solutions your customers can buy when the money does arrive. Every contractor’s calendar should have multiple appointments each day with both new prospects and existing customers. These are the longer, content filled discussions that simply aren’t possible later in the fiscal year. They can truly establish your company as a partner and give your customer information they may need to make good acquisition decisions later. Showing your company’s established, successful federal business can also establish you as a low-risk, reliable contractor. New market entries should show other public sector experience or be prepared to show how commercial market success stories are relevant to a prospective federal customer. Federal agencies tend to favor low-risk partners, with innovation being a term with a slightly different meaning than what it has commercially. Contractors should take care, though, not to just promote any old solution. Reading procurement forecasts, previous budget requests, and doing market research on what your targets are likely to buy are all essential. Having a great new piece of technology may not be enough. Remember that most larger acquisitions are planned well in advance. Showing how your solutions match to actual acquisition plans ensures that everyone’s time is well used. Successful companies also know that they must be ready to answer the “how” question, as in “how can I buy from you?”. While no contractor should force their customer to sift through multiple acquisition options, having 2-3 preferred and easy to use acquisition methods is a definite best practice. The ability to have in-depth educational discussions shrinks significantly about midway through the third quarter of the fiscal year. Make sure you plan accordingly and schedule those meetings now.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council is seeking comments from industry on its proposed rule requiring contractors with over $7.5 million in annual government business to take various steps, depending on total sales, to track, report, and mitigate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Before the Council implements the rule, however, they should analyze the costs associated with it against any perceived benefits. The current generic term for this asks “is the juice worth the squeeze?”. It is an established best practice that all regulatory actions, including those that are procurement-related, go through a cost benefit analysis to ensure that the new requirements are justified based on quantifiable evidence. The costs of new GHG tracking and mitigation requirements are real, yet the universe of companies doing business in this market is small compared to the much, much larger commercial market. It is unlikely that merely imposing the requirements called for in the proposed rule would have any meaningful impact on worldwide GHG emissions. The FAR Council should quantify the expected benefits and weigh them against the cost of implementation before imposing new costs on industry. It should not be too much for industry to ask the government to do a little of its own research before it imposes new research requirements on others. If the Council does elect to move ahead, though, it should absolutely do so in tandem with the Securities and Exchange Commission that is also developing GHG requirements for publicly traded companies. The SEC rules could have a wider impact, but if the two actions are not coordinated, publicly traded companies that also sell to the government could be covered by two similar, but not identical, rules, each with its own data collection, reporting, and mitigation requirements. That adds to both cost and confusion for contractors and will ironically have the potential impact of requiring more paper generation, driving up GHG emissions. Contractors should absolutely comment on the proposed rule and understand the potential impact on their business. In the meantime, the FAR Council should take care to not impose new costs that will bring little, if any benefit, and coordinate its actions with other agencies promulgating similar rules.
We often recommend that contractors take action to oppose new rules and regulations they believe will increase their costs and deliver little, if any, of their intended benefit once in effect. What actions, though, can contractors take? While there are multiple options open to companies to act on their own or as part of an industry front, here are a few actions that we’ve seen work over time. Read more
The General Services Administration (GSA) continues to work on the implementation and refreshment of key acquisition programs, despite both external and internal headwinds. FY’23 is shaping up to be a critical year for the agency, its contractor partners, and customers. How the many issues on its plate are resolved may determine whether the agency maintains its leading acquisition status or cedes its market share to other agencies or open market acquisitions. First up for the agency is getting the Alliant3 procurement out the door. The Read more
The federal trade press lit up this week with headlines about the potential revival of the “Holman Rule” that would allow Congress to cut funding for specific projects or people. Although any cuts would have to pass both the House and the Senate, a chamber still controlled by Democrats, the revival of the rule could pose a distraction that impacts the pace of federal business. A NextGov article explains that House members could use the authority to Read more