A happy Veterans Day to all veterans and their families as we remember what you’ve done for our country. And there’s good reason for veteran business owners in particular to be happy. The Department of Veteran Affairs has recently made it easier to stay verified as a veteran-owned or service-disabled veteran-veteran owned small business.

VA’s Center for Verification and Evaluation is the the certifying authority for SDVOSBs or VOSBs. While it can be a source of frustration, the CVE is also a source of knowledge and advice to help businesses get certified and maintain their certification. Recently, CVE has taken steps to make remaining certified easier by simplifying the reverification process. Effective November 1, CVE will now allow what it calls “Simplified Reverification” for verified SDVOSBs and VOSBs.

CVE certification is good for three years. After, that, a company “must submit a new application for each eligibility period to continue eligibility.” But under the new process, seeking an additional 3-year term may be a smoother process for businesses that have not earned too many VA contracts.

Here are the key points for Simplified Reverification:

• The company has to be in the last 120 days of its 3-year term
• “The firm must have less than $1 Million in total VA contracts over the past three completed fiscal years and the current fiscal year to-date.” The VA notes that this number is subject to change. It seems the dollar amount is so low that it would exclude most contractors who have had any amount of success with VA contracts. I hope VA will quickly increase this threshold. It’s also unclear as to whether this means dollars earned on contracts during the time period, or total contract award amounts during the time period.
• The company must answer a series of questions from CVE.
• The process will not be available if the firm “has received a Simplified Reverification approval within the last three years”; the firm is under CVE investigation; or CVE identifies a reason for more in-depth review.

If a business does not qualify for the Simplified Reverification process, the standard reverification process applies. The standard reverification process is simpler than the initial application, as CVE only requires that a business “[a]nswer four questions and upload only the business documents that have changed or were received (e.g., current year taxes) since the previous verification.”

VA has taken a good step to make the process of staying CVE-certified simpler for a number of firms. Here’s hoping that VA expands the Simplified Reverification process so that more firms can take advantage of it in the future.

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