Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Tips to help small businesses find success with government contracting

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Finding new customers is a tough task all small businesses face.  One option many never consider is taking on the federal government as a client.

Government procurement – having the federal government purchase their goods and services – can be a big boon for small businesses.  The government needs a lot more than just items for the military, so small businesses that aren’t defense contractors shouldn’t look the other way on these opportunities.  The U.S. government spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year on a wide range of commercial items.

While many may think government contracts only go to large corporations, that isn’t the case.  The law requires the U.S. government, which is the largest customer in the world, to consider buying from small businesses.  In total, the federal government awards nearly one-quarter of its service contracts to small businesses, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Continue reading at:  Business.com

Georgia National Guard hosting Vendor Expo Day Nov. 14, 2019

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The Georgia National Guard would like to invite you to be a vendor at its Vendor Expo Day to be held on Nov 14th 2019.  This is an opportunity to showcase your products and capabilities to the Georgia National Guard.  Please take advantage of this opportunity as there will be procurement officials and buyers in attendance.  There is no registration fee to participate in this event.  As an additional bonus, there will be guest speakers from the SBA, GTPAC and FedBid (Unison Marketplace).

The event will take place on November 14, 2019 at:

The Clay National Guard Center, 1000 Halsey Ave, Bldg 447 (Drill Hall), Marietta, GA 30060

You can find a Google map link here.

The Expo Day will be on Nov 14th from 10:00 a.m. ET to 2:00 PM ET.

There will be a setup day available the day before the event on Nov 13th from 10:00 a.m. ET to 2:00 PM ET for vendors with large displays who need additional setup time.  Vendors with smaller displays can set up the day of the event at 9:00 a.m. ET.  Should you decide to attend the event, register below by clicking on the registration link.  Space is limited and the Georgia National Guard will be accepting vendors on a first come first serve basis.  If you have questions you can contact Derrick A. Thomas, Contract Specialist, 678-569-6202, or email:  ng.ga.gaarng.mbx.uspfo-contracting@mail.mil

The deadline to register for this FREE event is Friday, November 1st, 2019 by 5:00 PM.

REGISTER HERE:  https://gtpac.ecenterdirect.com/events/8734

Click “sign-up” once on the registration page.

Please note:  The Georgia National Guard is located at a secure military installation.  All adults will be required to present a valid government identification to enter.  All personnel are subject to further vetting as needed, and the Georgia National Guard, Dobbins AFB and its Visitor Control Center reserve the right to deny entry.

GTPAC participates at National MBE Manufacturers Summit

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On Aug. 12th 2019, GTPAC Program Manager Andrew Smith spoke at the National MBE Manufacturers Summit at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center in Atlanta, GA, and introduced Christopher Hall, Deputy Director of the Office of Small Business Programs for the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).  Smith also spoke briefly about the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center and the free services Procurement Technical Assistance Centers provide to businesses interested in exploring the government market.  Thanks to the Defense Logistics Agency, there are PTAC programs like GTPAC in all 50 states.

Deputy Director Hall spoke to the crowd about how to do business with DLA and educated the audience on the various DLA commands and what they typically purchase from small business manufacturers.  As Deputy Director of the DLA Office of Small Business Programs, Hall supports DLA leadership on small business issues and seeks to increase small business participation in DLA acquisitions.  The DLA Office of Small Business Programs promotes small business utilization to strengthen the industrial base, which fulfills DLA’s mission as the Nation’s Combat Logistics Support Agency.

“I was very pleased with the event, and I’m excited about the dynamic technology and innovation taking place right now in the manufacturing sector,” said Smith, “I believe these innovative manufacturers have a lot to offer the government and DoD… I hope many of them explore working with DLA to support the warfighter and to strengthen our industrial base and DoD supply chain.”

If you would like to learn how to work with DLA, you can visit the DLA Small Business website:  https://www.dla.mil/SmallBusiness/

 

Former Virginia state delegate gets prison time for $80 million contracting fraud

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A former member of the Virginia General Assembly was sentenced Tuesday to 2½ years in prison for taking part in an $80 million government contracting fraud conspiracy.

Ronald Villanueva, 49, a former Republican delegate from Virginia Beach, pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge this year and agreed to pay more than half a million dollars in restitution.

Villanueva served in the House of Delegates from 2010 until 2018; he lost his seat to a Democratic challenger in 2017.

For much of that time, Villanueva admitted, he and a partner in the tactical-gear supply business used other people as figureheads to get preferential treatment designed to help minority contractors.  They also relaunched the company at one point, changing its name from SEK to Karda, so it would qualify for contracts aimed at newer firms.

Continue reading at:  Washington Post

Understanding HUBZones

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Location, location.  It’s the biggest factor in the price of real estate but it also gives some businesses an advantage in the highly competitive world of federal contracting.

Where a company’s home office is located and even where its employees live determine whether it gets a bigger slice of the juicy federal pie of contracts and sub-contracts.

The Small Business Administration designates certain geographic locations throughout the country as Historically Underutilized Business Zones, or HUBZones.

HUBZone firms in Madison County were awarded almost $42 million in federal contracts in the 2018 fiscal year, according to Tom Todt, director of the Alabama District office of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Alabama has 135 HUBZone-certified companies and 47 of those are in Madison County, said Mary Jane Fleming, Procurement Business Adviser for the Alabama Procurement Technical Assistance Center.  That center is co-located with the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Small Business Development Center at the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce.  PTAC helps companies with HUBZone certification and other SBA contracting programs at no cost.

Similar to set-aside contracts for businesses owned by minorities, women or service-disabled veterans, the HUB program is designed to give an advantage to certain areas based on history and demographics.

“The SBA HUBZone program’s purpose is to increase employment opportunities, investments and economic development” in those areas, Fleming said.

Continue reading at:  AL.com

Katrina-inspired New Orleans business, hundreds of others land federal contracts

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Below is a nice article from NOLA.com (The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate) outlining some of the successes Louisiana small businesses have had in the government market post-Katrina.  The article mentions our friends at the The Louisiana Procurement Technical Assistance Center.

If Hurricane Katrina hadn’t hit Louisiana and damaged much of New Orleans, Pontchartrain Partners, a minority-owned construction services business, might not exist.

The reconstruction effort after the storm in 2005 brought together Danny Blanks, Bart Cook and James R. Washington III as business partners as the federal government prepared to spend $14 billion to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina.

Blanks, CEO of Pontchartrain Partners, previously worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in St. Bernard Parish in the mid-2000s.

Pontchartrain Partners was created in 2009 and has grown to more than 100 employees, at first working as a subcontractor for larger companies on federal contracts.  The company has since opted to bid for work as a prime contractor as a growth strategy, especially for professional services on construction projects, and is among the hundreds of small businesses in Louisiana awarded nearly $2.8 billion in federal contracts during fiscal 2018.

Certifications such as woman-, veteran- and minority-owned businesses sometimes enable companies to be awarded sole source contracts, plus there are other programs such as the 8a business development program for small disadvantaged businesses offered through the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The Small Business Administration keeps track of federal government contracting because there are yearly goals for different categories of businesses, such as minority- or woman-owned.

There are local resources to enable small-business owners to get certified and facilitate contracts with the federal government.  The Louisiana Procurement Technical Assistance Center has staff dedicated to several regions across the state.  More than $8.6 billion in government contracts have been awarded to clients of the Louisiana procurement assistance office since its inception.

Continue reading at:  NOLA.com

How US Army Futures Command is working with small biz, academia

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U.S. Army Futures Command is laying the groundwork to strengthen collaboration with academia and small businesses to solve some of the service’s most major problems.

The Army has struggled with relationships outside of the established defense industry, particularly with small businesses and Silicon Valley.

Small businesses have expressed concerns about working with the government, mostly in regard to the time it takes to secure a contract award as well as the complex and cumbersome government-contracting process.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report last week that found Army Futures Command could improve how it works with small businesses.  The report was released on the eve of AFC’s declaration of full operational capability, which is officially set for July 31.

“The funny thing is if I talk to defense primes, they are convinced all we are working with is small business, and I talk to small business [and they are] all [convinced] … we are [just] working with the defense primes,” Gen. Mike Murray, AFC commander, said during a July 18 press briefing at the Pentagon.

“It’s going to take a combination of both for us to accomplish our mission, and in many ways a combination of both working together” to achieve the command’s goals in modernizing the Army, he said.

Continue reading at:  Defense News

Do small businesses lack a voice in the federal marketplace?

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Small businesses contractors testified before Congress July 16, asking lawmakers to improve the Small Business Act, remove barriers to federal procurement marketplace entry and increase the use of subcontractors.

Witnesses told the House Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Infrastructure of challenges they faced, as well as opportunities for improvement.  One major point was that subcontractors should be explicitly named in prime contractor’s subcontracting plans, to ensure that commitments and payments to small businesses are met.  Without proper identification in contracts, subcontractors often lose the opportunity to work on projects, even after helping the prime contractor win a bid.

“We’ve all been to large contractor’s meetings, we’ve been invited on projects, and then all the sudden [another subcontractor] comes in and says, ‘I can do this,’” said Thomas J. Depace — CTS, C.O.O. and senior engineering manager of Advance Sound Company, testifying on behalf of the National Electrical Contractors Association.

“It really limits our ability to support local labor … to continue to grow in the marketplace — somebody just taking the scope and the specification documents that we’ve pined over for a long period of time and just putting a number to it,” Depace said.  “Being named as a subcontractor from the start would be an advantage that would give us an opportunity to … make sure commitments are met.”

Continue reading at:  Federal Times

Small businesses struggle to climb the FedRAMP

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Small businesses need lawmakers to ease barriers to product authorization through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, according to industry and federal CIOs speaking before Congress.

FedRAMP is the entity charged with evaluating security and authorizing cloud products.  During a House Subcommittee on Government Operations hearing on the program, CIOs noted challenges for small business in getting offerings approved, such as a lack of transparency with the length of the process and cost.

Or some don’t know it exists it all.

“A lot of small businesses are unaware of the process itself, the security requirements that we have,” said Anil Cheriyan, the director of technology transformation services at the General Services Administration.

It took 20 months for Virtru, a small data protection start-up, to get its product FedRAMP authorized for a federal agency to use, according to testimony from Virtru’s CTO Will Ackerly.  From the beginning, he said, “it was also unclear upon entering the process how long it would take.”  The process cost the company $1.6 million, he told lawmakers.

Entering the FedRAMP approval process can be a “high-risk decision for most small companies” because of the cost “when combined with unknown timelines,” he said.

Looking back, Ackerly said that if his company hadn’t received an agency sponsorship to go through the FedRAMP process, it may not have made it through.

Continue reading at:  Federal Times

Agencies improved on small business goals, but can do more

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Federal agencies improved on their commitment to award contracts to small businesses in 2018, though they still fell behind in goals for contract awards to women-owned small businesses, according to the Small Business Administration’s procurement scorecards released June 25.

The government as a whole received an “A” for 2018 — meaning that it met or exceeded 100 percent of the goals set for small business contracting that year — a grade that it has maintained for the past five years.

The Departments of Education, Commerce and the Treasury led the pack of 24 agencies that were evaluated, each earning an A+ and meeting over 130 percent of the established goals for small business contract awards.

Meanwhile, the Office of Personnel Management, Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for International Development and the National Science Foundation failed to meet their small business contract goals, with NSF achieving the lowest score at just over 85 percent of their goal.

But despite the overall successes for small business contract awards, some categories of small businesses failed to meet governmentwide metrics.

Continue Reading at:  Federal Times

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