After years in the making, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced in late June that it has awarded contracts to three major e-marketplace platform providers to support implementation efforts for the Commercial Platforms program and Section 846 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The chosen providers—Amazon Business, Fisher Scientific, and Overstock.com, Inc.—were selected for a three-year pilot program where GSA will test the use of commercial e-commerce portals for purchases below the Micro-Purchase Threshold (MPT) of $10,000. (Note: This is a different Micro-Purchase Threshold than the recent update regarding the COVID-19 response that we discussed in an earlier blog.) What does this mean for GSA contractors in the future? Let’s dive in to better understand GSA’s upcoming E-Marketplace Platform.

If you’re a GSA Contractor, you may already know some of the benefits of a Small Business Set Aside. 8a certification is a certification given to specific Small Business contractors that allows contractors a wide breadth of opportunities for socially or economically disadvantaged businesses. A new opportunity — the 8(a) Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resource for Services (STARS) III Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) is on the horizon for your company. The 8(a) STARS III Request for Proposal (RFP) was released in July of 2020. Here is what you and your company should know if you want to pursue this huge 8(a) opportunity.

To be a successful government contractor, you need to stay up to date on all of the changes that arise in the General Services Administration (GSA). If you’ve been following our blog, you will know that keeping up with all of those changes is no small task! From the new look of GSA eBuy to the consolidation of the Multiple Award Schedule program, GSA is continually trying to make contracting easier for the general public, but that means you need to know how to properly adapt to these developments. As government contract consultants, Winvale has been keeping a close eye on what our clients need to do to stay informed. The most recent update is the new solicitation refresh for the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program. Here are the main points contractors should know about the changes.

COVID-19 has hit the global economy in strange ways. The obvious economic impacts include unemployment levels and problems with the stock market, but a surprising effect has been how common it is to now consider the prices of toilet paper and face masks — prices that were definitely not on the forefront of Americans’ minds before this crisis. It’s important to recognize the economic effects that the Coronavirus has had on items like N95 masks, KN95 masks, and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Let’s discuss a breakdown of PPE pricing in the COVID-19 era.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to change. The standard email greeting has been converted from “Hope you had a great weekend!” to “Hope you are staying safe and healthy in this uncertain time.” Employers and employees alike have been forced to live in the new normal of working from home as much as humanly possible. At some point, however, this will all have to end, and people will file back into offices and “normal” workplaces. But that doesn’t mean that offices will look the same. With COVID-19 in mind, it’s important to recognize how to best protect your employees when reopening your offices across the country.

A lot of businesses are looking to the federal government and the public sector to keep their businesses profitable during an economically uncertain time. Thankfully, the U.S. government is taking steps to try to help out Economically Disadvantaged Businesses through methods like those outlined in the OMB Memorandum. The federal government is also prepared for times of emergencies and has put statutes and clauses in place that specifically address small business set-asides and sole-source opportunities in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Stafford Act. If you and your company are economically disadvantaged due to the effects of the Coronavirus, let’s review how set asides, sole source opportunities, and the updates to the MAS program can help your business.