Tag Archives: SBA size standards

SBA Eliminates Megawatt Hours Size Standards

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The SBA has issued a final rule eliminating the unusual megawatt hours size standard applicable to six NAICS codes in NAICS Sector 22.  The SBA’s revision replaces the megawatt hours size standard with a 500-employee size standard, and eliminates the requirement that a firm must be “primarily engaged” in the generation, transmission  or distribution of energy for sale.

Although the megawatt hours size standard may have made sense when it was adopted in the 1970s, the SBA appropriately recognized that the market has changed.  Perhaps most important, the “primarily engaged” component of the megawatt hours size standard unfairly excluded many companies from competing as “small” in NAICS Sector 22.

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VA CVE: SDVOSBs Must Remove “Large” NAICS Codes From VetBiz Within 30 Days

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The VA CVE has instructed verified SDVOSBs to remove so-called “large NAICS codes” from their VetBiz Vendor Information Pages profiles within 30 days–or else.

According to a recent email from the VA CVE (which was kindly shared with me), SDVOSBs must remove any NAICS codes for which they do not qualify as a small business.  Failing to remove these “large NAICS codes” may result in potentially harsh penalties, including debarment.

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SBA OHA Decision Highlights Joint Venture “Individual Size Treatment” Rule

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The SBA misevaluated a joint venture by basing its ineligibility decision on the joint venture’s revenues, rather than determining whether each joint venturer, individually, qualified as a small business, according to a recent decision of the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals.

SBA OHA’s decision highlights what I like to call the “individual size treatment rule,” a special regulation requiring the SBA to deem a joint venture “small” under certain circumstances, even when the combined sizes of the joint venture’s members exceed the applicable size standard.

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SBA OHA: Increased Competition Not Part of NAICS Code Decision

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When designating the NAICS code for a solicitation, the procuring agency should not consider which NAICS code will help increase competition and decrease the risks of unsuccessful performance.

According to a recent decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, these factors should play no bearing on an agency’s NAICS code designation.  Instead, in most cases, the agency must select the NAICS code that best describes the principal purpose of the product or service being acquired.

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Non-Manufacturer Rule: SBA OHA OK’s Drop Shipments

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The SBA’s non-manufacturer rule allows a drop shipper to qualify as a small business, so long as the drop shipper takes legal ownership of the items in question, according to the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals.  In an important decision interpreting recent amendments to the non-manufacturer rule, SBA OHA rejected the argument that a company must take physical possession of the items in question in order to qualify as a non-manufacturer–which would have essentially prohibited drop shipments.

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Joint Venture Between Small Business, Large Company Not “Small”

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Go on, go on.  Call me Captain Obvious for writing this post if you must, but the question actually comes up quite often: can a small business joint venture with a large business and qualify as “small” for purposes of a federal small business set-aside contract?

The answer, as confirmed in a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals SBA size appeal decision, is “no,” unless the joint venturers are participants in the SBA’s 8(a) mentor-protege program.  Unfortunately for the joint venturers in Size Appeal of BY&R Contractors, LLC & West Coast Contractors of Nevada, Inc. JV, SBA No. SIZ-5349 (2012) not only were they not an 8(a) mentor and protege, but neither company was even an 8(a) participant.

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Agency Gets SBA Size Standard Wrong; SBA OHA Dismisses Late NAICS Code Appeal

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Know your SBA size standards.  That’s the lesson to be drawn from the decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals in NAICS Appeal of Ash Stevens, Inc., SBA No. NAICS-5368 (July 12, 2012).

In the Ash Stevens NAICS code appeal, the solicitation erroneously stated that the SBA size standard associated with a particular NAICS code was much larger than is actually the case.  By the time the agency corrected its mistake, SBA OHA held that it was too late for a contractor to challenge the NAICS code.

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