GSA adds professional services to category management

The General Services Administration has been expanding its category management approach to reducing contract spending, and now it is targeting professional services procurements—one of the largest categories for small businesses.

The GSA released its new Professional Services Strategic Plan for industry comment on Aug. 2. It is available from a link on the GSA’s Interact website at http://goo.gl/6Ch056.

Professional services spending is the second largest of the 10 category management areas of spending in government, covering a broad range of services including scientific, technical and engineering, legal, financial, accounting, management and business services. It does not include information technology services.

In fiscal 2015, professional services spending totaled $63 billion, of which nearly $20 billion went to small businesses, according to the GSA strategic plan. That was 31% of the total.

The small business share has increased every year in the last six years, rising from 25% in fiscal 2011. In that year, small firms captured $17 billion out of a total of $69 billion in professional services contracts.

Listed among the strategic plan’s three-year goals is an aim to improve performance in small business utilization, but the plan does not set a specific percentage goal to be attained in that regard. Also revealed in the plan is that 59% of professional services requirements are fulfilled through existing contracts including the GSA schedules and 41% are fulfilled through open market procurements.

The strategic plan, which was developed by the Interagency Professional Services Category Team earlier this year, describes the steps that GSA plans to take to implement category management in professional services. The first is to conduct more research.

“A comprehensive analysis and baseline of agencies’ buying patterns will be completed including FPDS spending/obligations, transaction analysis, and identification of contract duplication,” the plan states.

Furthermore, agencies are being encouraged to identify and use existing contracts, and to share best practices, acquisition strategies and statements of work.

The interagency council will then identify “best in class contracts” in the category.

The plan also sets three-year goals:

• Reduce total cost of ownership for professional services contracts;
• Increase quality;
• Improve competition, small business utilization and sustainability.

The GSA has asked for industry feedback on the plan through an easy-to-use Google form on its Interact Page.

More Information:
Strategic plan and industry feedback form: http://goo.gl/6Ch056

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