GSA requires more when adding a new Special Item Number (SIN)

The General Services Administration is always making changes to solicitation, I am sure you receive those emails asking you to accept the changes in a mass modification. The newest change requires additional documentation for modifications that include adding a new Special Item Number (SIN).

The GSA is now requiring contractors to submit their original project experience, corporate experience, Open Ratings Report and quality control narrative in order to add a Special Item Number. For those contractors who have kept all of their initial GSA offer documents this new requirement is a breeze. However, for those that did not this change is going to be very tedious.

We do recommend that if you do not have these documents on file to reach out to your contracting officer. Although, the GSA does not have to provide the documents since it is the responsibility of the contractor to keep them on file. If your contracting officer is unwilling to provide you with the documents you will have to recreate them.

For new contractors this requirement will keep things a bit more tidy and organized since the emod system will automatically populate the documents. But for contractors that have been on Schedule for years this could be a bit of a mess.

As always you can always call the team at GCS for questions!

Economic Price Adjustment: 552.216-70

In June of this year, Clause 552.216-70 was changed, which may cause some headaches for GSA contractors. All economic price adjustments (EPAs) in Schedule contracts are made in accordance with clause I-FSS-969 or clause 552.216-70, depending on which clause you chose when you applied for your contract. In the past, the percentage of Economic Price Adjustment was set at a 10% increase every 12 months. As of June, this ceiling has been lowered to 4%. But what does that mean for contractors that need to increase pricing?

First, the maximum increase per 12 months has now been severely limited from what was allowed in the past. Contracting officers like to say that Contractors may ask for 4% but based on competitive research that does not mean that 4% will be granted. When increasing pricing, the most important thing is to do your research. If you are a service-based Labor Category company, take a look at the Contract-Awarded Labor Category (CALC) tool to help you determine whether your pricing falls within competitive range. CALC will allow you to narrow down your LCATs by schedule and experience levels to see at what prices other Contractors are actually winning work with similar LCATs. If you are a product based company, your best bet will eventually be the roll out of the Formatted Product Tool to your schedule. To learn more about the Formatted Product Tool, Click HERE.

The change to a 4% EPA increase under clause 552.216-70 puts pricing increase more in line with clause I-FSS-969 for escalation rates. Although the clause does not contain language specifying what the maximum allowed escalation rate is, standard practice has uncovered that more than 2.5% escalation per year isn’t being awarded at this time.

Overall, Contractors should be aware that they won’t be able to increase pricing as much year to year anymore and those of you applying for new schedules with LCATS should consider going with clause I-FSS-969 over clause 552.216-70 simply because the numbers are now so close and the escalation clause requires less work to increase (since its automatic). 

Professional Services Schedule

The GSA is continuing to consolidate and streamline the different acquisition channels available to government purchasers. The major push in this effort is to consolidate professional services into a single “Professional Services Schedule” (PSS). The ever increasing number of vendors on the multiple professional services schedules has led to the movement for consolidation.

The following schedules are in the process of migration:

·         Consolidated (00CORP)

·         MOBIS (874)

·         PES (871)

·         FABS (520)

·         AIMS (541)

·         LOGWORLD (874V)

·         Environmental (899)

·         Language (738 II)

Contractors that belong to these schedules and provide professional services have been receiving letters, requesting they begin the migration process. Contractors should have received migration notices by the end of December. The process for migration consists of submitting a modification against the current contract and providing required documentation, similar to submitting the original offer. Everything will be reviewed and your contract will be migrated.

This change will provide easy ways to purchase as well as easing the burden on contractors with multiple services schedules, which are all maintained and audited separately. Contract administration resources within companies will now only have to manage a single contacting vehicle. For the purpose of reporting sales, conducting Contractor Assistance Visits, and managing eBuy solicitations, PSS will be a huge change on contract admin resources for the better.

In terms of providing services, GSA solicitation will be able to post solicitation against PSS that span more than one professional service and gain monetary benefit from single responses to multi-discipline requests. 

Information Technology and Human Resources contractors need not worry just yet- SIN 132 51 for IT and 595-21 for HR aren’t being migrated. Your schedules are staying just the way they are. 

What's Next? Administering your GSA contract.

Being awarded a GSA contract in a huge achievement for a company. All that painstaking work collecting documents, writing narratives, and compiling information just for the opportunity to sell to the government. And once you have that permission, after all that hard work, it’s only logical that you want to make the most of it.

Our latest webinar show you how to do just that. Every step in the contract administration process has an important function; miss one and you put your contract and good company standing in peril. We show you everything you need to do make the most of your contract and of course, Make Money while doing it. Learn about pricelists, SIP uploads, marketing, quarterly reporting, and so many other vital functions that need to be performed to keep your contract healthy and working for you.

Watch the webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us8FXZee5eo and reach out to us if you have any questions at all! We’re ready to help you untangle the mysteries around GSA. 

-Sonya Nudel, Marketing Consultant 

GSA Offer Best Practices, Volume 3

Let’s talk Government. They’re in a league of their own, right? It’s true! They have their own way of organizing things, classifying things, and interpreting things. To sell to the Government you have to understand how they operate. It’s very different from dealing with other commercial entities.

Now, let’s relate this to GSA Schedules. To make your offer successful you have to know what Schedule and Special Item Numbers are applicable to your business. The “scope” of your products and services is one of the most important things the GSA will look into when you submit your offer. If the offer is out of scope you’ll be rejected right away – they won’t even look at the rest of the content. Do yourself a favor and look into all the potential Schedules your business may fall under. Then select which one is the best fit.

Here’s an example. You offer instructor led-training and your courses are designed to teach the average employee how to engineer and operate a Smart Building System. You have a few options here:

1. Instructor Led Training (Schedule 874)
2. Engineering and Integration (Schedule 871)
3. Smart Building Operations (Schedule 03 FAC)

We will start by breaking down each schedule and seeing what the services really entail. Instructor Led Training doesn’t include any training that can be offered under the scope of any other Schedule. So, if there is training available under other Schedules that is more relevant to what you’re actually teaching – then you can’t use Schedule 874. Schedule 871 doesn’t quite fit because you’re not really doing the engineering work, just training on that. Schedule 03 FAC allows for training in direct relation to what you’re teaching. Schedule 03 FAC it is!

As a reminder – don’t just take the descriptions of the Schedules at face value. Look at your competitors and research what they’re offering under Schedule. Don’t have specific competitors to look for? Performing market research on the different vendors awarded under each Schedule will benefit you tremendously.

When in doubt – give me a call!

Stephanie Gowin

Whats Next? Steps to maximize your GSA Schedule

Making sure that you are maximizing the use of your GSA contract isn’t always the easiest thing. There’s so much work that comes with maintaining a healthy GSA Schedule that we all sometimes need a review of what we should be doing. We want every contractor to be getting the best Return on Investment for their schedule; you put in the work and hours to get a contract and you need to put in the hours to maintain it as well.

Hop on to you Youtube and take a look at our most recent webinar about maximizing your GSA schedule contract. We discuss everything that companies need to do to make sure that their GSA schedule, whatever industry they might be in, stays healthy and profitable. Here’s a couple of topics covered in this webinar:

·         Contract administration- are you on top of all your reporting to government? Is your contract up to date with the latest pricing and point of contact information?

·         Opportunities- are you searching in the right places for the right opportunities? Are you proposals up to par with you competition?

·         Teaming- are you taking advantage of opportunities to work with other companies who can create more diversity in the type of work your company can do?

·         Research- do you know what’s happening in your industry in the government sector? Are sales stagnant, increasing or decreasing? What’s your competition doing?

Those are just a few focus points that every company needs to consider when it comes to making your GSA schedule a success. Hitting the required target sales goal isn’t always the easiest thing for smaller companies however making sure your focusing your energy on the right points for your business can ensure success!

And if you aren’t hitting all those points, don’t worry- not all of them are relevant to every company or industry. Some strategies work for everyone and some are only for particular companies and industries.  However, if you think that you are at risk for losing your contract due to low sales, not reporting sales, or some other contract problem, let us help! Let’s untangle any problem that you might have and get your GSA schedule back on track. 

As always, get in touch with us about any questions that you may have about your GSA schedule! Let’s see if can increase you bottom line and make GSA even more profitable for your company

Webinar Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvcD7axOoHI&feature=youtu.be