Many federal contractors are familiar with or have heard of the Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) program. It is currently run by the SBA, but previously was administered by the VA. Due to the nature of the program being around for a while, and shifting from one agency to another in the past few years, undoubtedly there are some requirements that have changed, but contractors may not realize it. One of the requirements that has experienced change is one of the most basic: how you establish that you are a Service-Disabled Veteran. In this installment of our GovCon FAQs series, we tackle, how do you show or prove your Service-Disabled Veteran Status, now that the SDVOSB program is under the SBA?
Continue readingTag Archives: Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses
Fully Devoted or Just Rebuttable? Qualifying Veterans Overcome Full-Time Devotion Rule
It doesn’t take too long to find a blog post where we’ve discussed SBA’s Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) full-time devotion requirement. For a service-disabled veteran (SDV) to meet the SDVOSB control requirements, the SDV must control “the management and daily business operations” of the SDVOSB. This requires the SDV to be fully devoted to the SDVOSB. As a quick refresher on the full-time devotion requirement, a qualifying veteran “may not engage in outside employment that prevents [them] from devoting the time and attention to the concern necessary to control its management and daily business operations.” Further, the veteran must be able to “devote full-time during the business’s normal hours of operation” or SBA will assume lack of control. 13 C.F.R. 128.203(i). The same rule applies for the WOSB and 8(a) programs. In past decisions, SBA was OK with a veteran juggling multiple jobs as long as the hours didn’t overlap. But a recent decision shows that it may be possible to overcome this assumption.
Continue readingUpdate: SBA Will Eliminate Remaining SDVOSB Self-Certification December 2024
As SmallGovCon readers may recall, SBA has already eliminated the ability to self-certify as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) for all prime contracting opportunities set aside for SDVOSBs. This change occurred January 1, 2024 and meant that self-certified SDVOSBs will no longer be eligible for set-aside and sole source contracts. We wrote about the change here. However, the rule change left in place the self-certification ability for self-certified SDVOSBS, but only for subcontracting purposes and government goaling purposes. This will be changing in December 2024.
Continue readingSBA: Full-Time Devotion Still Matters for SDVOSBs
SBA’s Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) rules include one particular component dealing with the working hours of a service-disabled veteran owner of an SDVOSB business, often called the full-time devotion rule. SBA has recently reviewed its full-time devotion requirement in an SDVOSB protest, and found that the company in question did not establish that a service-disabled veteran met the requirement.
Continue readingSBA Says Goodbye to Reasonable Commute Rule for SDVOSBs
SBA, without much commentary, recently removed the so-called reasonable commute requirement for service-disabled veterans (SDV) who owned or managed service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSB). This rule used to require that veterans live near the principal office or job site, but it sometimes caused issues for SDVOSBs because of how restrictive it could be. Thankfully, SBA has removed this requirement. Since SBA brought little attention to this change, we want to highlight it in this post and say farewell to this SDVOSB requirement.
Continue readingSBA Provides Answers on Vets Certification Program Roll-Out in Q&A Session
On December 6, 2022, the SBA held a virtual Q&A session to discuss the roll-out of the Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB) certification program. They will be assuming responsibility as of January 2023 and the SBA will begin accepting applications for certification on January 9, 2023. Through the Q&A session, the SBA provided some tips for contractors, an explanation of the processes that are controlling the SBA’s SDVOSB and VOSB certification program, and even gave attendees a preview of the software that will be used. Of course, SmallGovCon was there to get all the details so that we can break them down for you.
Continue readingSBA Issues Final Rule on SDVOSB Certification
SBA has issued its final rule for its takeover of the Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) Certification program. The rule will have an effective date of January 1, 2023. We discussed the proposed rule in our post here. Below are a few key takeaways from the final version of the rule.
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