The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, includes a few changes designed to help small business subcontractors. Among those changes, the bill, which has recently been approved by both the House and Senate, includes language designed to help ensure that large prime contractors comply with the Small Business Act’s “good faith” requirement to meet their small business subcontracting goals.
Section 1821 of the 2017 NDAA is called “Good Faith in Subcontracting,” and is another Congressional effort to put teeth into the subcontracting goals required of large prime contractors. (Congress took a crack at this same subject in the 2013 NDAA.) The 2017 NDAA makes a handful of additional changes to the law, all of which should help ensure small business subcontracting goals are met.
The 2017 NDAA strengthens the current statutory language by specifying that a large prime contractor is in breach of its prime contract is it fails to provide adequate assurances of its intent to comply with a subcontracting plan (including, as requested, by providing periodic reports and other documents). The statute also provides that agency Offices of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBUs) will review each subcontracting plan “to ensure that the plan provides maximum practicable opportunity for small business concerns to participate in the performance of the contract to which the plan applies.”
Keep reading this article at: http://smallgovcon.com/statutes-and-regulations/2017-ndaa-strengthens-subcontracting-plan-enforcement/
