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Federal Market Intelligence for Small Business |
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Column: GSA Schedule contracts--good news and bad newsby Tom Johnson, publisher, Set-Aside AlertNew developments in the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract arena are having real impacts on the federal market. Programs such as the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI) and consolidation of the professional services schedules may affect you dramatically. At the same time, the percentage of federal purchases that use the GSA Schedules as contract vehicles seems to be declining, making it important to do your homework to be sure your time and efforts are effectively invested. What is the GSA Schedule program? The GSA has operated the Federal Supply Schedule program for decades. The program provides centrally-negotiated contracts for use by all federal agencies, and in some cases for state and local government entities as well. The products and services covered are considered “commercial, off-the-shelf” products and services, i.e., items sold in the general marketplace to a substantial number of customers with openly- listed prices or a publicized pricing structure. Office and building equipment, construction equipment and material, medical and laboratory supplies and equipment, furniture, IT hardware, software and services are a major part of the GSA schedule program, along with management and professional services, engineering, facilities maintenance and management and staffing. To see a list of schedules, what they cover, and which companies have contracts, go to the Schedule List page at http://www.gsaelibrary.gsa.gov/ElibMain/scheduleList.do. There are currently 39 available schedules, each of which focuses on contracts for a category of products and/or services. The solicitation for offers for most schedules is continually open, meaning you can decide to submit an offer at any time, not just during a specific period of time. Clicking a Schedule number links to a more detailed list of the categories, referred to as Special Item Numbers (SINs), covered in that schedule. To help determine which schedule is appropriate for what you sell, there is a direct link to the list of contractors who already have contracts for that category, so you can check on the competition. Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI) In the last few years, GSA has developed a new procurement approach for targeted commodities. Schedules previously provided an open platform for multiple sellers to offer their products. Virtually any responsible, responsive contractor could offer its products or services as long as prices were competitive and the deliverables were comparable to those they sold in the commercial (non-federal government) market. Recently GSA has conducted a secondary set of negotiations for a limited subset of the products/services. These negotiations result in selections of subgroups of contractors that are authorized to fulfill the bulk of the orders for commonly-used items in those subsets. Examples of this are Office Supplies, Small Package Delivery, Janitorial/Sanitation Supplies, Print Management, and MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Operations) equipment and supplies. Despite the fact that hundreds of contractors for these items hold GSA Schedule contracts, only a few contractors (ranging from two to 30) are authorized to fulfill agencies’ orders for those items under FSSI. Consequently, if you are a general office supplies dealer, or an ink/toner provider, you may not be able to gain orders for those items because the buyers are directed to the FSSI-approved vendors. Professional Services Schedules consolidation Beginning in January of this year, GSA began moving contracts from the eight professional services schedules to a single new schedule. The eight schedules include MOBIS (874), PES (871), FABS (520), AIMS (541), LOGWORLD (874V), Environmental (899) and Language Services (738II). Over 400 existing contractors are being migrated to the new schedule at this time. If you are about to make a new offer in one of these categories, as of Oct. 1 you will be directed to make the offer on the new Professional Services Schedule. All in all, the consolidation of professional services schedules should be a positive move for both contractors and the government. Rather than having to maintain multiple contracts on different schedules, some of which overlap as to services offered, contractors can now maintain a single contract with attendant reduction in sales reporting and modifications. Agency procurement officials gain because they will be going to only one contract source, and GSA gains by significantly reducing the number of contracts being administered across the various schedules. How do you find schedule sales data? Unlike most other federal contracts, orders under schedule contracts are not posted in FedBizOpps (FBO.gov). Until recently, task order awards were not necessarily posted in the Federal Procurement Data System. To satisfy government and industry needs for sales data, GSA long ago created the Schedule Sales Query tool ssq.gsa.gov. Through this tool, you can get quarterly and annual sales data by contractor, by schedule and by schedule category (SIN). You can assess how other companies are doing, whether sales are increasing/decreasing and seasonality in the Federal market.
Tom Johnson is president of Business Research Services in Bethesda MD. You may contact him at tjohnson@setasidealert.com.
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