On Friday, Steven wrote about the framework of the new SBA small business mentor-protégé program. As part of this significant program addition, SBA’s final rule includes details about the requirements a small business joint venture must satisfy in order to be qualified to perform a small business set-aside. This post will briefly discuss those requirements.

A quick disclaimer: as we have detailed previously on SmallGovCon, the SBA will closely evaluate a joint venture agreement in the case of a size protest, and omitting even one piece of required information can render a joint venture ineligible for award. Any joint venture agreement should be prepared and reviewed carefully, to ensure its compliance with the new regulations.

With that admonition in mind, the small business mentor-protégé joint venture requirements (to be set forth at 13 C.F.R. § 125.8) are very similar to the existing 8(a) joint venture requirements (which apply both to 8(a) mentor-protege joint ventures and to “non-mentor-protege” joint ventures for 8(a) contracts).

The regulatory requirements are very different for a joint venture between two small businesses, on the one hand, and a joint venture under the small business mentor-protege program, on the other. In the case of a joint venture between two or more businesses that each qualify as small, the agreement “need not be in any specific form or contain any specific conditions in order for the joint venture to qualify as a small business.” But for a small business mentor-protégé joint venture, the agreement must include provisions that meet the following criteria:

• Purpose. Set forth the purpose of the joint venture.
• Managing Venturer/Project Manager. Designate a small business as the managing venturer, and an employee of the managing venturer as the project manager. The individual identified as the project manager “need not be an employee of the small business at the time the joint venture submits an offer, but, if he or she is not, there must be a signed letter of intent that the individual commits to being employed by the small business if the joint venture is the successful offeror.”  Importantly, “the individual identified as the project manager cannot be employed by the mentor and become an employee of the small business for purposes of performance under the joint venture.”
• Ownership. State that, if the joint venture is a separate legal entity, it is at least 51% owned by the small business.
• Profits. Distribute profits from the joint venture commensurate with the work performed, or in the case of a separate legal entity, commensurate with the ownership interests in the joint venture.
• Bank Account. Provide for a special bank account in the name of the joint venture. The account “must require the signature of all parties to the joint venture or designees for withdrawal purposes.” All payments to the joint venture for performance on a set-aside contract will be deposited in the special bank account; all expenses incurred under the contract will be paid from the account.
• Equipment, Facilities, and Other Resources. Itemize all major equipment, facilities, and other resources to be furnished by each venturer, along with a detailed schedule of the cost or value of such items. In a recent court decision, an 8(a) joint venture was penalized for providing insufficient details about these items—even though the contract in question was an IDIQ contract, making it difficult to provide a “detailed schedule” at the time the joint venture agreement was executed. Perhaps in response to that decision, the new regulations provide that “if a contract is indefinite in nature,” such as an IDIQ, the joint venture “must provide a general description of the anticipated major equipment, facilities, and other resources to be furnished by each party to the joint venture, without a detailed schedule of cost or value of each, or in the alternative, specify how the parties to the joint venture will furnish such resources to the joint venture once a definite scope of work is made publicly available.”
• Parties’ Responsibilities.  Specify the responsibilities of the venturers with regard to contract negotiation, source of labor, and contract performance, including ways that the parties will ensure that the joint venture will meet the performance of work requirements. Again, if the contract is indefinite, a lesser amount of information will be permitted.
• Guaranteed Performance. Obligate all parties to the joint venture to ensure complete performance despite the withdrawal of any venturer.
• Records. State that accounting and other administrative records of the joint venture must be kept in the office of the small business managing venturer, unless the SBA gives permission to keep them elsewhere. Additionally, the joint venture’s final original records must be retained by the small business managing venturer upon completion of the contract. These provisions, which were lifted essentially word-for-word out of the current 8(a) regulations, seem dated in the assumption that records will be kept in paper form; it instead would have been nice for the SBA to allow for more modern record-keeping, like a cloud-based records system that enables documents to be available in real-time to both parties.
• Statements. Provide that quarterly financial statements showing cumulative contract receipts and expenditures (including salaries of the joint venture’s principals) must be submitted to the SBA not later than 45 days after each operating quarter of the joint venture. This language, which again was basically copied from the 8(a) regulations, doesn’t specify who might be a “joint venture principal” in a world in which populated joint ventures have been eliminated. The joint venture agreement must also state that the parties will submit a project-end profit-and-loss statement, including a statement of final profit distribution, to the SBA no later than 90 days after completion of the contract.

As noted, these requirements closely mirror existing requirements for an 8(a) mentor-protégé joint venture agreement. But at least one key difference exists: for a small business mentor-protégé joint venture agreement, the small business partner must self-certify as to the agreement’s compliance. The regulation states:

Prior to the performance of any contract set aside or reserved for small business by a joint venture between a protégé small business and a mentor authorized by § 125.9, the small business partner to the joint venture must submit a written certification to the contracting officer and SBA, signed by an authorized official of each partner to the joint venture, stating as follows:

• The parties have entered into a joint venture agreement that fully complies with [the joint venture agreement requirements];
• The parties will perform the contract in compliance with the joint venture agreement and with the performance of work requirements [set forth in the regulation].

Much like an 8(a) joint venture, moreover, a small business mentor-protégé joint venture must meet the applicable performance of work percentage set out in the regulations (at 13 C.F.R. § 125.6). Additionally, the small business partner to the joint venture perform at least 40% of the work performed by the joint venture; this work must be more than administrative or ministerial, so that the protégé member can gain substantive experience.

The regulation further requires the small business partner to issue performance of work reports to the SBA. These reports must describe how the small business is meeting or has met the performance of work requirements for each small business set-aside performed by the joint venture. The small business partner must submit these reports annually and at the completion of any contract.

The SBA’s new final rule, issued only today, provides new opportunities to increase small business participation in federal contracting. And though businesses hoping to participate in the new small business mentor-protégé program can look to the SBA’s existing programs as a guide, key differences between the programs warrant a close review of the new requirements. Follow SmallGovCon for more updates on this important rule.