Category Archives: Federal Government Contracting

Free Event! SBA & DoD Mentor Protégé Webinar hosted by MST Contract Opportunities Center APEX Accelerator, El Paso: January 23, 2024, 10:00-11:30am MST

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Touted as a “game-changer” when it was first introduced in 2016, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s All Small Mentor-Protégé Program isn’t new anymore. Known now as simply the “SBA Mentor-Protégé Program,” it is still extremely useful for large and small contractors alike.

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Please join me and Gregory Weber as we explain the ins and outs of the SBA Mentor-Protégé Program, covering the program’s eligibility requirements, its potential benefits (including the ability to form special mentor-protégé joint ventures), the application process, and common misconceptions and pitfalls. Additionally, we will provide an introduction to the even older DoD Mentor-Protégé Program, which set the stage for the SBA’s program, and compare the two programs.

Register here.

Year in Review: Top SmallGovCon Posts of 2023

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Happy New Year to our SmallGovCon readers! While we have already posted some updates from 2024, it’s a good time to reflect on the important posts from 2023.

This post revisits those blog posts from 2023 that were the most popular. Below, we summarize the blogs written in 2023 that were the most popular as well as the perennial favorites from years past that were the most viewed in 2023. It’s a good chance to look back on the important articles from 2023, and those topics of continuing interest to federal contractors.

Here are the top 10 blog posts that were posted in 2023. As usual, our readers were interested in changes to SBA’s rules, including changes to the 8(a) Program and the social disadvantage requirement, as well as our Back to Basics series focusing on issues such as teaming agreements, debriefings, and SAM registration.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: January 1-5, 2024

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Happy new year! We hope you enjoyed the holiday and are looking forward to what 2024 brings. It’s been a pretty mild winter so far, but we expect old man winter will be showing up any day now. Until then, everyone has been taking advantage of getting out and about without any major travel problems. We are all grateful for that.

This week in federal government contracting news saw more insights on the new CMMC regime as well as important trends for 2024.

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Two Bites of the Same Apple: Protester Wins Sustain on Second Name Brand or Equal Protest with an Unexpected Result

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When submitting an offer, it is important to make sure that all the requirements of the solicitation are met. This is essentially Federal Government Contracting 101 and applies to any type of solicitation. In RELX, Inc., B-421597.2, 2023 CPD ¶ 262 (Comp. Gen. Nov. 17, 2023), GAO looked at this issue in the context of a lowest-price, technically acceptable (LPTA) solicitation for a brand name or better product, with an unexpected ending that the protester surely did not see coming.

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FAR Subcontracting Plan Update: Credit for Lower Tier Subcontractors Means Lower Tier No Longer Lower Value

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Updates to the SBA’s Small Business Subcontracting Plan regulations in response to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 Section 870 are changing the circumstances in which a prime contractor can receive credit for lower-tier subcontractors, effective November 13, 2023. Such changes make the inclusion of lower-tier subcontractors in certain situations optional and put the onus on the lower tier subcontractors to report such work to the SBA if the lower tier subcontractor wishes to receive credit. It is important to note that these changes have no effect on any first tier subcontracting requirements.

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Room for Improvement: Statistics Suggest It is Unclear if Large Businesses are Meeting Small Business Subcontracting Goals.

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Just as agencies have established goals to award a certain percentage of their procurements to small businesses and businesses participating in socio-economic programs like the 8(a) Program, large business contractors must establish goals to include small business subcontractors in their pool of subcontractors for unrestricted awards over the applicable threshold in FAR 19.702 ($750,000 for most contracts, $1.5 million for construction contracts). While the specific goal will vary with each contract (or in some cases may be on a company-wide basis), it is rare for a contracting officer to find a large business hasn’t met the given goal. However, an investigation by GAO indicates that large business contractors aren’t meeting their small business subcontracting goals as often as the government would hope. Let’s take a deeper look at these findings.

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SBA OIG Report Shows Improvements in 8(a) and Woman-Owned Small Business Programs

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The Small Business Administration Office of the Inspector General (OIG) recently released its report discussing the top management and performance challenges facing the SBA in 2024. The report highlights a number of issues currently plaguing the SBA and its various programs, including abuse of economic relief programs, disaster assistance programs, and loan programs, cyber security shortcomings within the agency, and oversight of grant management. The report also notes concerns with the HUBZone and small disadvantaged business programs. However, today I want to focus on the issues identified in two programs that we at Koprince McCall Pottroff work with day in and day out: the Woman-Owned Small Business Program and the 8(a) Business Development Program.

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