Archive for Federal Contracting

Why Will Contracting Officers Use OASIS Extensively

Fedmarket predicts that federal contracting officers will use the OASIS Unrestricted and OASIS Small Business Government-wide acquisition contracts extensively for the following reasons.

Contracting officers are using multiple award contracts (MACS) extensively because they eliminate the staff heavy requirements and excess lead times of single source public bids.

A government-wide MAC has never before been available that allows:

  • A wide scope of almost any professional service
  • Task orders of any contract type including fixed price, time & material and cost reimbursement contracts

For more information go to

http://www.fedmarket.com/l/proposals/oasis_untangled/

http://www.fedmarket.com/l/proposals/proposal_tools/oasis_model_proposal_/

OASIS, a Huge Opportunity or a Set-aside for the Big Guys

One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) is a new breed on the federal procurement scene. It has features that could make it a huge opportunity.

  • Can be used by any agency
  • $ 12 billion over 12 years; what’s not to like
  • Package almost any type of professional services in one buy and use any type of procurement, fixed price, T & M, and cost reimbursement

Contacting officers should love it if they can figure out how to use it.

Yet is GSA reserving it for the prime contractors in the unrestricted version and large small businesses in the set-aside version?

For more information go to

http://www.fedmarket.com/l/proposals/oasis_untangled/

http://www.fedmarket.com/l/proposals/proposal_tools/oasis_model_proposal_/

OASIS Requirements

GSA is accepting proposal submissions from prime contractors only. Subcontractor experience and teaming arrangements are not part of a proposal submission. The solicitation evaluation criteria are weighed in favor of:

  1. Large, multiple professional services contract experience
  2. Federal contract experience
  3. The education and experience of the two required contract management resumes
  4. The sophistication of the offerors account and purchasing systems and professional certifications

OASIS Minimum Experience Requirements

Requirement OASIS Unrestricted OASIS Small Business
Number of Projects Five (5) distinct projects, each as a prime contractor Five (5) distinct projects, each as a prime contractor
Project scope of work includes core disciplines (Core disciplines: Program Management Services, Management Consulting Services, Scientific Services, Engineering Services, Logistics Services, and Financial Management Services) One (1) of the six (6) core disciplines One (1) of the six (6) core disciplines
Project scope of work involves performance and/or integration of core disciplines At least four (4) out of the six (6) core disciplines At least three (3) out of the six (6) core disciplines
Project award value At least $ 5 Million Per Year At least $ 3 Million Per Year
Project closing date Have been completed within the past five (5) years prior to the solicitation closing date or be ongoing with at least one (1) year of performance completed prior to the OASIS solicitation closing date Have been completed within the past five (5) years prior to the solicitation closing date or be ongoing with at least one (1) year of performance completed prior to the OASIS solicitation closing date
Cost-reimbursements contract type At least one (1) project must be for work performed under a Cost-Reimbursement contract type At least one (1) project must be for work performed under a Cost-Reimbursement contract type
Federal projects At least three (3) out of the five (5) required) projects must be for work that was for the federal government under a contract or task order awarded by the federal government At least three (3) out of the five (5) required) projects must be for work that was for the federal government under a contract or task order awarded by the federal government

Contracts for Essential Services, Cost Reduction and Constituency Services will grow in the Stingy Federal Market

The stingy and much maligned federal market is still well over $ 500 billion annually. The core functions of government still need to happen, although probably slower than before the tightening of the purse strings.

Layoffs and furloughs of federal employees will soon the happening. Who will they turn to perform what’s needed to keep the government operating. Service contracts because service levels can be adjusted with the stroke of a pen.

And how will they buy the required services with an already overburdened contracting staff? With multiple award contracts know as “IDIQ contracts”.

In an IDIQ contract a number of contractors are pre-qualified based on experience and prices and awaked large, five-year umbrella contract without any funding of work. Services are ordered and funded through task orders as the need arises during the five-year period.

Theoretically, the competition for an individual task order (funded work) is limited to the winners of the IDIQ contract (awardees). In practice, the real number of competitors for a task order is usually considerably less than the total number of awardees.

And what will they do when they don’t have enough contracting staff to write, publish, evaluate, IDIQ contracts? Award IDIQ contracts for acquisition services. In other words, hire contractors to assist in awarding contracts. A well-kept secret in federal contracting is that around one billion dollars a year are spent on acquisition contracts.

And what will be the upcoming IDIQ contacts for services?

1. Government-wide Acquisition Contracts (known as GWACs) for information technology services an products

2. GSA Schedules for professional and operating support services GSA schedules are GWACs.

3. Agency specific IDIQ contracts for professional, information technology, engineering, and technical services

4. Construction and facility maintenance IDIQs let by facility construction and service agencies like the Corp of Engineers

And what will be the hot service areas for the next several years?

• Funds recovery
• Health program services
• Productivity improvement services
• Transaction processing
• Constituency Services

Even congress knows that transactions still need to be processed, constituency checks still must be written. Government services still have to be provided even though they may be slowed down for political purposes.

Most “Real” Federal Contracting Opportunities Come From Relationships

Business Development in federal contracting usually means a combination of marketing (web site, brochures, white papers, etc.) and opportunity identification.
In many companies opportunity identification is exclusively research based without a relationship element.

Research for opportunities usually includes agency web site research, procurement forecast analysis, purchase of commercial opportunity databases, etc. While these opportunity sources are valuable they often end up with the need for frustrating and expensive cold calls.

The best source of opportunities is people who have relationships of any kind with potential federal buyers. This type of opportunity identification is inherently more complex than research and is difficult to manage and control as a standard business process. A relationhip-based process could include the following sources of leads.

1. Contract employees working on site at a federal facility. The advantages of this source are obvious. The employees can form strong bonds with the people they work with every day. The downside is that they may think selling is not ethical or do not have the type of personality that recognize opportunities.

“Selling as you work” is not unethical and is a valuable process for successful federal service contractors. You get paid to sell and the federal government understands that this type of sales is inherent to contacting is done off the clock.

2. Your subcontractors, business partners, team members, etc. can be valuable opportunity sources as long as the relationship is mutually beneficial.

3. Your employees can have federal friends and acquaintances that you are unaware of but could be helpful for referrals and introductions.

4. Company management may have friends and/or business relationships that can be of assistance in developing business.

The problem with the use of people relationships to grow more relationships is that someone has to make “asking for the lead” a more formal process than it is in most companies.

Sell It Then Worry About Capturing It

“Capture Planning” in the federal market usually involves opportunity identification, plan of how to “capture” the opportunity, and write the proposal in response to the solicitation.

Some federal contracting companies are finding that the capture planning process is not as effective as hoped. Most, often the company lacks a company-to-customer sales process.

Selling is hard. Most technical staff members and subject matter specialists are good at performing contract tasks. But few are good at selling a customer and at the same time appearing like they are not selling, but solving the customer’s problem.

The second reason for the consolation step is the lack of an effective proposal writing capability. A winning proposal documents the solution that you have already sold the customer. You must sell it first and write the solution in a clear concise, and convincing manner. These two critical elements are often missing in a capture planning process.

Learn more about capture planning and the federal sales process at http://www.fedmarket.com/contractors/Sell-It-Then-Worry-About-Capturing-It

Or call me directly, I’m happy to answer your basic federal contracting questions.

Regards,
Richard White
President
Fedmarket
rwhite@fedmarket.com
301 908 0546 (cell)

Top Down Indicators of Federal Market Size

Federal market statistics are notoriously confusing, incomplete, and difficult to find and analyze. GSA schedules are the biggest and widest multiple award contracts. GSA schedule sales are reasonably accurate; around $ 40 billion annually for all schedules, and represent about 20% of new contract awards. They can be used as a measure of the federal market for most products and services. A rough estimate of the annual market for what you sell is five (5) times GSA schedule sales. This is a gross measure and should be considered as a guideline only. But the measure is better than other contact award
statistics published by the federal government.  Top down market analyses (government-wide or at an agency level) will only tell you that federal agencies buy what you sell in gross amounts. They don’t tell you what specific products and services were bought or who bought them.

The Mysterious Federal Contracting Process

The federal purchasing process often does not reflect what is really going on concerning the amount of competition for a bidding opportunity because of the need to show the public the perception of competition for taxpayer contracting dollars; why?

  1. Open competition is too expensive and time consuming for most federal purchases. The government would grind to a halt if open competition were used for every purchase.
  2. Federal buyers cannot just purchase a product of service without following rules concerning the amount of competition required. Limited competition is allowed and the number of bids required depends on the dollar amount of the purchase.
  3. The actual competition is usually less than allowed by the rules.
  4. Discussions with vendors early in the buying process is critical so end users know the features, benefits, and value of what they are buying.
  5. Contracting officials often discourage early discussions (pre-selling) when in fact the federal purchasing regulations actually encourage it.
  6. Contracting officers do not tell prospective bidders about pre-selling activity that may or may not have taken place; in order to give the appearance of a level playing field.
  7. The award file and what it shows on paper is the all-important document in federal contracting.
  8. The appearance of completion in the award file is as important as actual competition because the file has to pass the scrutiny of superiors and the unsuccessful competitors, and survive an audit by federal auditors.

What should you know as a newcomer to the federal market?

  1. Federal end users (the decision makers) are risk averse because their jobs and reputations depend on contractor performance. As a result, in most cases they will select the known company over the new company.
  2. Incumbent contractors usually win reoccurring contracts. They have an inherent edge because they know the contract and the customer inside and out. Some say they should not be able to compete for contracts that they hold but that would be not be practical or cost effective for the federal government.
  3. Companies with federal customers have a built in sales network because they are known to their customers and use customers for referrals to other customers. They can pre-sell as they preform contracts at little cost.
  4. Aggressive pre-sellers have an edge (whether new to the market or insiders) because they know the customer and the customer knows them at the time of the bid.
  5. In short, newcomers to the market have a tough sales job and experience long lead times. Yet the government selects new comers every day who execute aggressive sales programs, and get to know the customers well ahead of the announcement of a contract opportunity. In some cases before the customer has even defined the purchasing requirement. Newcomers also need to know the purchasing rules and the ways to close deals they have sold within the rules.

Call me directly, I’m happy to answer your basic federal contracting questions.

Regards,
Richard White
President
Fedmarket
rwhite@fedmarket.com
301 908 0546 (cell)