It should come as no surprise that a company must qualify as a small business in order to be eligible for federal small business set-aside contracts. But figuring out if your business is “small” in the eyes of Uncle Sam is not as easy as it sounds.

Not only must you calculate your company’s average annual receipts or number of employees in accordance with the U.S. Small Business Administration’s rules (which are not necessarily intuitive), you must avoid affiliation with other companies if the affiliation would push you over the relevant SBA size standard. And affiliation is a much broader concept than many small businesses realize—for instance, if one of your close relatives owns another company, or if your small business receives a large share of its revenues from a single source, you may have an affiliation problem.

If you are uncertain whether your company qualifies as a small business for federal government contracts (or if your company has been found to be “other than small” by the SBA), Koprince McCall Pottroff LLC can help.

SBA Size and Affiliation Audits

Koprince McCall Pottroff can help reduce your SBA affiliation risks by performing a top-to-bottom audit of your company’s ownership, management, and contractual relations. Based on our experience with SBA size protests, SBA size appeals, and SBA size determinations, Koprince McCall Pottroff will review your company’s size much like the SBA would, and offer you strategies to correct any size or affiliation problems, before they result in an adverse SBA size determination.

SBA Ostensible Subcontractor Rule Guidance

If your company teams with a large subcontractor on a federal set-aside contract, you must take care to avoid so-called “ostensible subcontractor” affiliation–a special type of affiliation in which the SBA deems two companies affiliated for purposes of a single government contract.

When evaluating whether your company has an ostensible subcontractor affiliation problem, the SBA will closely examine your proposal, teaming agreement and subcontract (if any) to determine whether the subcontractor will perform the primary and vital tasks required by the contract, or whether your company is unusually reliant upon its subcontractor.

Koprince McCall Pottroff can help you understand the many “risk factors” the SBA considers when it evaluates ostensible subcontractor affiliation–allowing you to craft your proposals, teaming agreements and subcontracts so as to minimize your ostensible subcontractor affiliation risks.

SBA Size Recertification Requests

If your company has been found “other than small” as the result of a SBA size determination, it may make you ineligible for new set-aside contracts until the affiliation is fractured. Koprince McCall Pottroff can help you correct the size issues identified in the SBA’s size determination and prepare a SBA size recertification request on your behalf.