The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, includes a few changes designed to help small business subcontractors. Among those changes, the bill, which has recently been approved by both the House and Senate, includes language designed to help ensure that large prime contractors comply with the Small Business Act’s “good faith” requirement to meet their small business subcontracting goals.
Section 1821 of the 2017 NDAA is called “Good Faith in Subcontracting,” and is another Congressional effort to put teeth into the subcontracting goals required of large prime contractors (Congress took a crack at this same subject in the 2013 NDAA). The 2017 NDAA makes a handful of additional changes to the law, all of which should help ensure small business subcontracting goals are met.
The 2017 NDAA strengthens the current statutory language by specifying that a large prime contractor is in breach of its prime contract is it fails to provide adequate assurances of its intent to comply with a subcontracting plan (including, as requested, by providing periodic reports and other documents). The statute also provides that agency Offices of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBUs) will review each subcontracting plan “to ensure that the plan provides maximum practicable opportunity for small business concerns to participate in the performance of the contract to which the plan applies.”
Perhaps most important, the 2017 NDAA requires the SBA to provide a list of examples of failures to make good faith efforts to utilize subcontractors. Such a list should provide guidance to large primes to know specifically what sort of activities would run afoul of the good faith requirement of the Small Business Act. What’s more, such guidance should prevent large primes from pleading ignorance, at least with regards to the provided list of specific examples. The guidance, however, may not come for awhile. The 2017 NDAA gives the SBA 270 days from enactment to put the list of examples together.
The provisions of Section 1821 should be welcomed by small businesses subcontractors, some of whom have complained about a perceived lack of government emphasis on ensuring that primes make good faith efforts to achieve their subcontracting goals. And given the recent Congressional interest in subcontracting plans, it wouldn’t be surprising if additional enforcement mechanisms were proposed in the near future.
2017 NDAA: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 has been approved by both House and Senate, and will likely be signed into law soon. It includes some massive changes as well as some small but nevertheless significant tweaks sure to impact Federal procurements in the coming year. For the next few days, SmallGovCon will delve into the minutia to provide context and analysis so that you do not have to. Visit smallgovcon.com for the latest on the government contracting provisions of the 2017 NDAA.