Senate Favors Set-Asides on GSA Schedules, GWACs The Senate has voted to allow set-asides of task and delivery orders on GSA schedules and other multiple award contracts. The amendment, Section 851 of the 2006 Defense Authorization bill, was sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), chair of the Small Business Committee. It also requires SBA to track small businesses’ market share on the schedules, governmentwide acquisition contracts and other multiple award vehicles. Set-asides are not permitted on the schedules, but GSA has told buyers they can use socioeconomic status as a primary evaluation factor when awarding task or delivery orders. (SAA, 7/22) Small firms have been receiving more than one-third of the dollars awarded against GSA schedules in recent years. An earlier version of Snowe’s amendment would have required GSA schedule buyers to seek offers from at least two small businesses on every order, but that was scuttled in the face of opposition from some contractor groups. The Senate also adopted another Snowe amendment, Section 855 that would end the competitiveness demonstration program, which eliminates set-asides in certain industries. If the amendment stays in the final bill, it would reinstate set-asides in construction and specialty trade contracting, refuse systems and related services, landscaping, pest control, non-nuclear ship repair, and architectural and engineering services, including surveying and mapping, Snowe’s office said. The Defense Department supported ending the program, but the House voted in June to keep it. The program, enacted in 1989, allows agencies to eliminate set-asides in industries where small businesses are traditionally strong. Backers of “comp demo” say it was designed to expand small business opportunities in new fields, such as IT, but critics say it has only served to reduce the market share of small businesses in the “traditional” industries. (SAA, 6/24) As a House-Senate conference committee prepares to write the final version of the Defense Authorization bill, industry groups are gearing up to fight another provision of the Senate bill that would create new offices to handle contracts for services. The House bill contains no similar provision. Section 802 of the Senate bill, S. 1042, calls for creation of Services Contract Support Centers in the Defense Logistics Agency and the Army, Air Force and Navy. The centers would be responsible for all services contracts worth more than $100,000. In its report on the bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee said, “The decentralized nature of the Department of Defense’s services contracting and the absence of any organization dedicated to the acquisition of contract support hamper efforts to perform spending analyses, make strategic sourcing decisions, and institute comprehensive management improvements. The provision would address this problem by creating an organizational hub for the acquisition of contract support services by the military departments and defense agencies.” “We are very concerned about it,” said Cathy Garman, senior vice president of the Contract Services Association of America. “You can’t be constantly changing how they are organized or else you’ll never get anything done.” “Since many services contracts are intimately connected with hardware contracts, it makes no sense to have two different contracting shops involved,” she added. The Senate bill would also prohibit the use of cascading set-asides unless a contracting officer certified that he had conducted market research and determined that no qualified small business was available to perform the contract. Industry groups have complained that cascading set-asides require contractors to prepare proposals that may never be considered. “They are spreading because contracting officers are using them instead of doing the market research that the law requires,” Garman said. The bill would continue restrictions on public-private job competitions under OMB Circular A-76. Defense Department employees would be permitted to reorganize their work into a most efficient organization (MEO) before a competition; in civilian agencies, streamlined competitions involving fewer than 65 jobs can be conducted without an MEO. The bill also continues the requirement that contractors in job competitions must provide health insurance coverage equal to that offered by the government. In an attack on the “revolving door” between the Defense Department and its contractors, the bill would require all contractors receiving more than $10 million in awards to file an annual report naming all former DOD employees in their employ. The bill calls for a 15% increase in the defense acquisition workforce. The committee said acquisition personnel are stretched too thin.