Category Archives: Statutes and Regulations

CIO-SP4 Amendment 10: More Changes and No Delay

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Amendment 10 clarifies obligated dollar values, how to have subcontracted federal work counted, restrictions to contractor participation in task areas, evaluation of contractor program manager(s), establishing a static date from which to calculate the three-year look-back for corporate experience relevance, and evaluation of labor rates.

Needless to say, there is a lot of things packed into Amendment 10, and here’s the kicker, proposals are still due August 20th! With little time to digest, let alone alter, proposals in line with Amendment 10, NITAAC has left little room for offerors to catch up with the changes.

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Is the Revision to the FAR’s Limitations on Subcontracting Finally Nearing the Finish Line?

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On June 30, 2016, a major new SBA regulation took effect, overhauling the limitations on subcontracting. The SBA’s new regulation, codified at 13 C.F.R. 125.6, replaced the “old” formulas for calculating compliance–like “cost of the contract incurred for personnel,” for service contracts, with new, easier-to-use formulas based on the amount paid by the government. And, in a major boon for small businesses, the SBA’s new regulation allowed small primes to count work performed by “similarly situated entities” toward the prime’s own self-performance.

But more than five years after the SBA regulation took effect, the FAR’s provisions governing the limitations on subcontracting still resemble Marty McFly: stuck in the past. The FAR Council still has not updated the FAR to conform with the SBA’s regulations and the underlying Congressional mandate, causing considerable confusion for contractors trying to figure out which rule to follow.

Now, though, we may finally (hopefully!) be nearing the finish line for this important and long-delayed FAR change.

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CIO-SP4 Amendment 8 – NIH Puts Small Businesses Behind the 8-ball

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CIO-SP4 Amendment 7, we barely knew you. Less than a week after Amendment 7 went live, we have another amendment to dig into. What is new in this amendment? We have major changes to Other Than Small Business (OTSB) and Emerging Large Business (ELB) certifications. For small businesses, NIH is digging in its heels on consideration of CTA members.

While we are not sure how long this amendment will last, it puts small businesses behind the 8-ball.

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CIO-SP4: Large Mentors Now Get More Credit

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I wrote earlier about the restriction on the number of experience examples a large business mentor can provide. Well, NITAAC has listened! OK, they probably weren’t listening directly to me, but let me have this one, alright. CIO-SP4 has been amended to allow large business mentors to contribute two examples of corporate experience per task area.

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COFC Confirms SBA Interpretation of Runway Extension Act

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The Court of Federal Claims recently reviewed the Small Business Runway Extension Act, particularly SBA’s contention that it was not bound by the 5-year lookback period that Congress enacted for size receipt calculations. Now, SBA has issued its own rule that it will use the 5-year lookback period, at least after a two-year transition period, as discussed in our earlier posts. But there were still some cases working their way through the courts that examined how Congress implemented the Runway Extension Act and whether it applied to SBA or not. To make a long story short, the court agreed with SBA.

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Certificates of Competency: A Little-Known Friend of the Small-Business Contractor

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You can’t believe it. You did everything right. The solicitation required that offerors have three distinct licenses. You have two, but one should cover for the license you don’t have. However, the agency says you have to have all three as distinct licenses, and denies your offer. Fortunately, you have a potential savior: The Certificate of Competency (“COC”)

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CIO-SP4: Is it Limiting Mentor Experience Too Much?

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The CIO-SP4 is a big deal for many small and large federal contractors. And lately it’s been a bit of a moving target as to how NITAAC will evaluate the experience of companies working together in prime-sub, mentor-protégé, and joint-venture relationships. We wrote about some of the issues with past performance and other recent changes. One change that caught my eye puts a restriction on the number of experience examples a large business mentor can provide. But should it?

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