Webinar! Small Business Certifications, March 20, 2024, 10:00-11:00 am CDT

Please join federal government contracts attorneys Nicole Pottroff & Greg Weber for this informative webinar on SBA certifications hosted by Catalyst Center for Business & Entrepreneurship. Participants will get an overview about the Small Business Certifications including:

  • Woman Owned Small Business and Economically Disadvantaged Woman Owned Small Business
  • 8(a)  Business Development Program
  • HUBZone (Historically Underutilized Business Zone)
  • Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business

We will discuss how to get certified, how long it may take, regulations, changes, updates, and tips and tricks on how to be prepared. Please Register here.

SmallGovCon Week in Review: March 11-15, 2024

Happy Friday and happy, early Saint Patrick’s Day. We hope you have some fun things planned for the weekend. Here, in Lawrence, Kansas, preparations are underway for the annual St. Patty’s Day parade. It seems the whole town comes out to celebrate and it’s a very fun and festive spectacle. I think more than anything, people are just ready to get outside to enjoy the warmer temperatures.

Before you head into your weekend activities, here are a few articles on what’s happening in the federal government contracting world. Enjoy the weekend and don’t forget to wear green!

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GAO Says: SBA’s Rules for Mentor-Protégé Joint Venture Experience Evaluations May Limit Solicitation Terms

Contractors will often enter into mentor protégé relationships and joint ventures to leverage the experience and skills of multiple parties for various reasons. SBA regulations dictate how the capabilities, past performance, and experience of a mentor-protégé joint venture will be evaluated. But at the end of the day, what matters is, whether agencies will follow those regulations in their small business set-aside solicitations and evaluations thereunder. A recent GAO case addressed this issue, providing further guidance on the interplay of solicitation terms for experience evaluations and SBA’s rules for evaluating mentor-protégé joint ventures’ experience.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: March 4-8, 2024

Happy Friday! March Madness is upon us! For you college basketball fans, it’s a great time of year. The upsets keep things exciting, even if they do bust everyone’s brackets. I guess that’s what makes March Madness so maddening and exciting–one can never predict the outcome. Listening to the news out of the federal government can sometimes feel like March Madness.

So, before you start your weekend of studying those basketball stats, here are some things that happened in federal government contracting this week. These include updates on government spending bills, AI, and use of apprentices. Have a wonderful weekend.

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8(a) Program’s Two Years in Business Rule: Requirement or Suggestion?

It is no doubt that the SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program is a first-class program: there is a reason that some of us around here tend to say that it is one of the most important of federal government contracting programs. And in the past year, there has been a flurry of activity surrounding the 8(a) Program. For the most part, this uptick in activity has had to do with the requirement that all applicants prove they are socially disadvantaged in light of the the Ultima decision that we’ve discussed on the blog. As you may know, applicants must also prove that they are economically disadvantaged, though the requirements to qualify as such are a little more objective. But then there is the requirement that the applicant firm must be able to prove that it has the potential for success. Today we take a closer look at the potential for success requirement’s two year business revenue rule, and delve into whether there is any way around it.

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Playing Dr. Frankenstein: DoD Memo Tries to Revive Joint Venture Facility Clearance Requirements

Back in 2021, GAO came down with a clear decision on whether Department of Defense (DoD) agencies could require a joint venture (JV) to have its own facility clearance level (FCL) if its component members held the required FCL themselves. Infopoint LLC, B-419856 (Aug. 27, 2021). That decision was “no,” and it was based on a very strong foundation: The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (2020 NDAA), an act of Congress, contained a provision, Section 1629, expressly forbidding DoD agencies from doing such. We in fact did a blog post on this GAO decision and litigated this very matter. Despite this, in October 2023, the DoD quietly released a memorandum describing how they think they can still require JVs to have their own FCL. Today, we look at this memorandum to see what DoD is saying.

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Why File: A NAICS Code Appeal

A NAICS code appeal can be a powerful tool for altering the competitive landscape of a bid by changing what size of business is allowed to submit a bid and thereby either increasing or decreasing the potential competitor pool. This post explores some of the important reasons for considering filing a NAICS code appeal. While NAICS codes appeals are not that common, they have a fairly high rate of success.

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