The Catalyst Center for Business & Entrepreneurship is hosting this helpful, virtual workshop on August 28 at 10:00am CDT. Joint ventures can be a powerful tool for companies to jointly compete for proposals and combine the best of their capabilities to perform their awards. This webinar, presented by federal government contracts attorney, Gregory Weber, will address the benefits of joint venturing, eligibility, how past performance comes into play, and the differences between a joint venture and a teaming agreement. He will also discuss how to make sure a joint venture agreement is compliant with the latest rules, how to set them up, and how to avoid some common traps in the process. Register here.
Tag Archives: small business joint ventures
The Dog Ate my Addendum: Don’t Neglect your Joint Venture Addendum, says OHA
Spring is upon us, and for many of us, it evokes thoughts of friendly weather, and new life. In the world of federal contracting, new life is often seen through the forming of new joint ventures. As most contractors and readers of this blog know, there are many requirements placed on a joint venture that intends to bid on set-asides, and most deal with the content of a joint venture agreement between the joint venture members. In a recent case, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) reviewed a joint venture agreement and addendums. Through its decision, OHA sent a clear warning to the industry to complete and sign both the joint venture agreement and any addendums, and make sure to have all items completed and signed prior to proposal submission deadlines, at the latest, the date of final proposal revisions.
Continue readingNew GovCon Handbook Arriving Soon! Joint Ventures–Updated Edition
We are pleased to announce that, back by popular demand, our updated Koprince McCall Pottroff LLC GovCon Handbook, on Joint Ventures, is coming soon! This handbook–complete with all of the SBA’s important changes from the past couple years–was co-authored by me and Nicole Pottroff as well as firm founder Steven Koprince. It will be published through Amazon in the coming weeks. We’ll provide more updates soon on the publication date and how to reserve an advance copy.
The Joint Venture Handbook is one of our most requested–for good reason. Joint ventures are a powerful tool for small businesses to partner with other companies and enhance their chances of success on federal contracts. But there are a lot of SBA-required components–miss one, and your joint venture might lose out an award.
That’s why the Joint Venture Handbook provides a step-by-step, easy-to-understand method for working through the SBA joint venture process. Stay tuned to SmallGovCon and social media to be updated when the Joint Venture Handbook becomes available.
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GAO Affirms SBA Rule: Only Joint Venture Members, not the JV, Need Facility Clearance
For years, it had been difficult for joint ventures to get Facility Security Clearances to go after DoD contracts where a facility clearance was required. The DoD and many contracting officers had long required that the joint venture entity itself, rather than each individual joint venture member, have the FCL. SBA thought it had fixed this problem when it updated its joint venture rules in November 2020 to eliminate the need for the joint venture to have an FCL, as we wrote at that time. But DoD contracting officers had been ignoring this rule, setting up a showdown at GAO to decide if the SBA’s rule did actually apply to the DoD.
Continue readingSBA Rule Tamps Down Joint Venture Unequivocal Control Requirement
The SBA’s new rule on Consolidation of Mentor-Protégé Programs contained a lot of updates. One of those concerned the level of control that a lead joint venture member has to have over a joint venture.
In particular, SBA now says that the lead venturer doesn’t have to have unequivocal control as the Office of Hearings and Appeals had suggested in the past. The other joint venture partners can have some say in the joint venture, but how much?
Continue readingSBA Clarifies How to Calculate Joint Venture Receipts for Small Business Size Purposes
In many industries, small business status under SBA’s government contracting rules depends on a company’s average annual receipts. But if a company is a member of a joint venture, it can be confusing figuring out which joint venture receipts count toward the company’s small business size.
Fortunately, in its recent new rule, SBA has provided two important clarifications. Let’s take a look.
Continue readingSBA Mentor-Protégé Joint Ventures: Even GAO Appears a Tad Confused
The SBA’s All Small Mentor-Protégé program offers a tremendous opportunity for participants to pursue set-aside contracts as joint venture partners. But misunderstandings and misconceptions about how SBA mentor-protégé joint ventures work are pervasive.
One very common misconception is that the SBA must pre-approve a mentor-protégé joint venture. In most cases, that’s not so. In a recent bid protest decision, even the GAO appeared a little confused, repeatedly mentioning SBA approval of a joint venture even though no such approval was required for the contract in question.