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Government Contractor’s Blog

Ch Ch Ch Changes … to the GSA Schedules

GSA is preparing to release a round of Schedule refreshes next month, so prepare for a bunch of mass modifications. And if you are in the midst of completing your GSA Schedule proposal, either submit now or expect to review the entire solicitation again come April.

New policies represented in the GSA Schedules will include small business subcontracting changes, updates to those entities that can access the Schedules for purchases, SCA adjustments, and modifications in the Disaster Purchasing Program. For instance, the Red Cross and other qualified organizations will have access to the Schedules during emergency preparedness and disaster relief. Additionally, the following specifics may be of interest to our clients:

  • Subcontracting plans for ‘other-than-small’ businesses will now be at the CO’s discretion. For all intents and purposes, however, these will still have to be submitted with your proposal.
  • The Pathways to Success training has been removed as a requirement for streamlined offers.
  • Montenegro and New Zealand are now TAA compliant countries.
  • Federal contractors now receive paid sick leave.

If you have any questions about how these changes will affect your Schedule contract, feel free to give us a call at 301-913-5000. We look forward to assisting you with this new round of changes.

Get Ready for More GSA Refreshes and Mass Mods

Next month, GSA will refresh and release mass mods for all GSA Schedules regarding provision and clause updates.

Updates will incorporate changes in small business subcontracting, non-federal entities purchasing off the Schedules, and disaster purchasing.

A webinar concerning the changes will be held on Wednesday, 22 March at 2:00pm eastern time. You can register for the webinar here: https://meet.gsa.gov/e4et0bzib7a/event/event_info.html.

For more information, contact us at 301-913-5000.

How EZGSA makes your life easier!

Many contractors experience confusion when stepping into the word of GSA.There are huge amounts of information, and government language can make sense on the surface; however, in actuality this masks some rather complicated concepts. For instance, when your CO notifies you about a need to adjust your 72a report for last quarter because you reported $0 sales under 03FAC, you may not immediately understand that it was because your contract migrated to a new Schedule in October.
This actually happened with a client of ours recently. Our contract management team responded to the $0 sales by investigating and finding that second Schedule. In short, we know we can fix this issue.
Here’s the detail of this situation:
  • According to the government, the contractor has skipped out on payment to GSA. This can lead to harsh financial penalties, a cancelation of the GSA Schedule, and a big black mark on their government compliance record, labeled as either dishonesty (which could bar you from ever working with the government again) or negligence (which would require a lot of time and work to demonstrate that the failure in internal processes have been fixed).
  • The contractor assured us that they have reported sales to GSA, which lead us to deduce that there is likely another Schedule under either this DUNS number or company name or that another administrative flaw is afoot. After further analysis, we found that the contractor still had multiple Schedule contracts listed, and task orders being executed under the original contract are not referencing the new contract, while the IFF is.
  • This means that there is an unresolved technical glitch that will continue to cause problems until it is fixed, but it cannot be fixed until:
  • the 72a issue is addressed;
  • the Contracting Officer authorizes the fix, and;
  • the Administrative Contracting Officer (ACO) works with us to address possible additional problems for 72a reporting on the NEW contract, which currently registers at $0 sales.
  • Work currently being performed must be reissued under the new contract once the technical error is fixed so that the contractor is not in violation of the law. This causes more work for the client, and the thing they hired us to do was make them have less work.

Not only that, we have only 30 days from notification to solve the issue.

At EZGSA, we find the true source of the problem and understand its urgency. And, most importantly, we know how to fix it.

Most of our clients have no reason to comprehend this entire situation because we do. It’s our job, not theirs. We keep the pain-staking and time-dumping search for solutions out of their hair. We keep them from panic.

Playing the Long Game with RFP Proposals

People often ask, “how can I sell to the government when the RFPs are so highly specific I can’t meet the technical qualifications?”  They point out seemingly impossible specifications: “Must have performance experience in Juno, Alaska and uses 2.78 in. LG fiber optic cable. I can’t even bid for this!”

We stand by our opinion that GSA asks for you to tell them what the specifications should be! So, talk to them earlier. We recognize that this can be a difficult task. Running a business is a full time job. Sales outreach and marketing efforts can absorb buckets of your reps’ time. Moreover, compliance and administration require their own language and constant vigilance.  So the idea that you need to invest additional time into activities that will not necessarily produce immediate nor guaranteed financial payouts, basically to help the government do its job better, sounds absurd.

But it is not.

It is essential.

This can be illustrated by the following story.  Several years ago, I attended an informational session, the kind you can find on GSA’s Website. I didn’t know anything about anything, really, but I wanted to learn. I went down to 18th and F Streets in Washington, DC and sat in a government building  that looked like a high school built in the 1950s. We sat in an auditorium, with the built-in wooden fold-down chairs that are mostly indestructible, and listened to an official talk about technology infrastructure change. Long (long) story short, the government was replacing all of its copper wiring with fiber and cloud technology.

And there I sat, in the dullest lecture of my life, surrounded by several hundred business men. Everyone was furiously taking notes. At the end of the presentation, 40 hands shot up for questions. And the very first one, by a man who’s name tag listed his employer as Verizon was: “who do we talk to about shaping the technical specifications?” Thirty hands went down. GSA answered that they had established GSA Interact, a collaborative site where government and commercial sectors could communicate rapidly and openly on this and every other topic.

Those executives were in that dusty auditorium because $50 billion dollars was on the line. They were determined to ensure that the government understood why they needed to buy from them.

We’re not saying that all RFI processes take years and result in the opportunity to win billions of dollars. But for a small business, it could take weeks and result in millions: is that worth it? Simply stated, if you don’t put in the work, your competitors will.

If you have any questions about a RFP, don’t hesitate to contact us.  You may reach us at (301) 913-5000 or sales@ezgsa.com.

Scared of the CAV or IOA?

Is your GSA Schedule in good health? The government ensures that your GSA Schedule stays sound by performing occasional audits, checking that your business is following the rules under which the contract was awarded. While you may have the best intentions of remaining in compliance, new hires, misunderstandings about regulatory requirements, and price changes can trip you up, causing problems in the audit itself.

EZGSA offers a Schedule Check-Up that helps to prevent negative audit findings. Many of our clients utilize this service once a year, just as you get a physical once a year — as an objective view of your GSA Schedule’s soundness.

In the GSA Schedule Check-Up, we review:

  • invoices;
  • sales to your Most Favored Customer;
  • sales to all government agencies;
  • internal Commercial Sales Practices procedures;
  • 72A reporting and payments; and
  • open market sales.

If discrepancies are found, we assist you in correcting the problems as well as developing new procedures that will prevent replication of the problems.

Contact us at 301-913-5000 or sales@ezgsa.com to see if your business can benefit from a Schedule Check-Up, either as a yearly preventative or before the Auditor visits.