SmallGovCon Week in Review: September 12-16, 2022

Happy Friday, Readers! Our weather here in Kansas has decided it’s not quite ready to be cooler for Fall just yet. You can bet though, when it does, it will decide abruptly. I’m taking my family on a camping trip this weekend to extend summer just a bit longer. Hope you are able to enjoy a great weekend with your family and friends.

Along the way, enjoy this roundup of the latest federal contracting news, including the new DoD deviations on flexibility in the face of inflation and SAM registration delays. Have a great weekend.

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The DoD Mentor-Protégé Program’s New Look: Expanded Protégé Eligibility

Many SBA programs and offerings have their origins in other agencies or parts of the federal government. Contractors who do not work with the DoD might be surprised to learn that the DoD’s own Mentor-Protégé Program is in fact the oldest continuously operating mentor-protégé program, dating back to the First Gulf War. Recently, this program received some updates, one of which will greatly expand the pool of eligible proteges. Let’s take a look at these changes in more detail.

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Govology Webinar Event: Top 21 Legal Mistakes in Government Contracting, September 15, 2022, 1:00pm EDT

Government contracting law is complex, and the rules aren’t always intuitive. As a result, many contractors make the same legal mistakes, involving everything from completing SAM profiles to calculating small business size to communicating with government contracting officers.

In this webinar, I will unveil the top 21 most common legal mistakes I see contractors make time and time again and how to avoid them. I hope you will join me!

Register here.

SmallGovCon Week in Review: September 5-9, 2022

Happy Friday, SmallGovCon Readers. The sunflower, which is the state flower or Kansas, are in full bloom. They have been spectacular this season! Sunflowers exhibit a trait called heliotropism, which means that they turn to face the sun. The tallest sunflower ever recorded was 30 feet tall! Wow! I haven’t seen one that tall but they sure are beautiful.

We hope you can get out and enjoy the September flowers in your neck of the woods and here’s a few noteworthy articles on federal goverment contracting that we hope you will find informative.

Have a great weekend!

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Open to Interpretation? Don’t Guess if Your Joint Venture Agreement Plays by the Rules

A recent SBA decision showcased the strict manner in which SBA interprets its joint venture agreement rules. After an agency awarded a contract to a joint venture entity, SBA determined the joint venture was ineligible due to fairly small deficiencies in a joint venture agreement. It’s a situation that no federal contractor wants to encounter. SBA requires strict adherence to the requirements that must be contained in nearly all joint venture agreements. Unfortunately, one company learned this lesson the hard way.

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SDVOSB Owner Avoids Brewing Up Trouble with a Second Job

In a recent SBA decision, SBA’s judges had the opportunity to review three different simultaneous challenges to whether a service-disabled veteran controlled a SDVOSB. Because there were three different challenges reviewed at once, SBA took a deep dive into the SDVOSB certification standards around the requirement of control of a SDVOSB. With such a deep dive, SBA provided some explanations of SDVOSB control concepts that could be helpful to contactors looking to certify or re-certify as an SDVOSB. In these cases, a SDVSOB owner had a second job, and job experience in a different field, but SBA found the owner had the necessary control over the SDVOSB to remain certified.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: August 29- September 2, 2022

Happy Labor Day weekend, Readers. Monday is a federal holiday so I’m sure everyone is looking forward to an enjoyable, long weekend and perhaps a parade. It turns out that the first Labor Day parade was in New York City on September 5, 1882 when, according to the US Department of Labor, a newspaper account of the day described “men on horseback, men wearing regalia, men with society aprons, and men with flags, musical instruments, badges, and all the other paraphernalia of a procession.”

While some of the parade marchers returned to work, most continued on to the post-parade party; even some unions that had not participated in the parade showed up to join in the post-parade festivities that included speeches, a picnic, an abundance of cigars, and “Lager beer kegs… mounted in every conceivable place.” – US Department of Labor

It sounds like a good time was had by all! Enjoy the long weekend and here are a few noteworthy happenings in federal government contracting news to peruse at your leisure.

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