I am back in Lawrence after a trip to the greater Chicago area, where I spoke at The Next Level: Federal Contracting conference.

The conference was a great chance for experienced federal contractors to avoid beginning level seminars (“how to register in SAM” and so forth) and concentrate on information designed to help them take their government contracting businesses to the next level.  I was honored to be part of an all-star roster of speakers, including Tom Johnson and Alice Lipowicz of Set-Aside Alert, Richard Hernandez of e-MBE.net, and Jamie Bratten of EZGovOpps.  My presentation focused on the SBA’s proposed new “universal” mentor-protege program.

Many thanks to Rita Haake and Amber Gardner of the Illinois PTAC at the College of DuPage for putting on this conference and inviting me to speak.  A big “thank you,” as well, to all of the contractors and industry professionals who attended the event, asked great questions, and seem poised to take full advantage of the new mentor-protege program.

A company’s failure to certify itself as a small business on its SAM profile resulted in the elimination of the company from a set-aside competition.

In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that a procuring agency properly excluded the low bidder from award of a small business set-aside contract because the low bidder’s SAM profile stated that it was not a small business under the solicitation’s NAICS code.

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The FAR Council recently proposed amendments to Part 19 regarding large prime contractors’ subcontracting plans.  The amendments require, among other things, that a large prime include in its subcontracting plan the “NAICS code and corresponding size standard of each subcontract” that it will award to a small business.

The proposed FAR amendment assumes that large prime contractors are assigning NAICS codes to their subcontracts, and with good reason–the SBA’s regulations require it.  In my experience, however, many large primes are not doing so.

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