The lifespan of a contract through General Services Administration (GSA) is up to 20 years. For a contract vehicle that can be a longer legal commitment than raising a child, it’s not surprising that the application process is quite lengthy, with many moving parts. This blog is going to map the components and requirements of each section of a GSA Schedule proposal, while providing some qualitative pointers so you can prepare a competitive offer to the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS).
First Section: The Administrative Section
The GSA MAS offer starts with the basics. This is the softball. You’ll give GSA an outline of your company and verify your compliance with some essential regulations. The focus of this section is not to be narratively compelling, but rather to make sure you’re nailing compliance. Otherwise, you may be liable to have your offer rejected outright.
The following list describes each document that GSA requires on each MAS offer:
- Completion of Pathways to Success Training: You can find this course on GSA’s MAS Roadmap page.
- GSA Readiness Assessment: A questionnaire GSA provides to ensure your company is ready for a GSA MAS contract.
- System for Award Management (SAM) Registration: You’ll need to register with SAM.gov as part of doing business with the government. We recommend this as one of the first things you do in preparing your offer in case there is some sort of delay in the registration process.
- Annual Financial Statements: Your company will be required to provide income statements and balance sheets for the previous two years. The only exception to this is if you have a company younger than two years, in which case you might qualify for the Startup Springboard program.
- Trade Agreements Act (TAA): A GSA contractor must be compliant with sourcing their products and/or labor from countries that the federal government is allowed to work with.
There are also components that are included based on unique features of your business. This does not mean that these documents are optional, only that for some businesses they would not be applicable. These are listed briefly below:
- Explanation for any Negative Financial Information
- Statement on Previous Contracts
- Subcontracting Plan
- Agent Authorization Letter
- Letter of Supply for Product Offers
- Section 508 Standards compliance
Many of these core and situational components will have slightly different requirements for Joint Venture (JV) offers, so be sure to review the solicitation documentation in eOffer if your company is participating in a JV offer. If you have any questions ensuring your prepared documents are compliant with the solicitation requirements, Winvale’s team of experts can help you out.
Second Section: The Technical Section
The technical section of a GSA MAS offer explains the experience and qualifications your company can bring to the federal marketplace. This section offers a lot more creative freedom than the preceding one, but that can make it all the more challenging if you don’t have a clear idea of what GSA is looking for in the documents making up this section.
The following list outlines each document:
- Corporate Experience Narrative: This series of prompts solicits information on the corporation’s experience, the experience of the employees within, and organizational controls.
- Quality Control Plan: GSA wants to know how you manage quality control and will ask you for some technical details through a series of prompts that address review procedures, quality control personnel, and corrective and preventative action strategies, among others.
- Relevant Project Experience: You will be required to submit a narrative for each Special Item Number (SIN) you intend to include on your GSA contract that relates a project you’ve completed in the last two years to the SIN(s) you intend to offer. This section is also divided into prompts that will be submitted through eOffer.
- Past Performance: You’ll need to provide the government with at least three reviews from past clients, which will necessarily differ in formatting whether your past clients are federal or commercial customers.
GSA is interested in “best value”, which doesn’t just mean “lowest value”. The technical section is where you build the narrative that your company has the experience, quality control, and resources to be “best value” in the products or services you want to offer in the federal marketplace.
Third Section: Pricing Section
Get ready for the largest section of your GSA MAS offer, the pricing section. There are a lot of documents and information GSA asks for in this section that they use to determine “Fair and Reasonable Pricing.”
The list below will provide an overview of what core documents and requirements are in this section:
- Price Proposal Template (PPT): The keystone landing page of your pricing proposal. All your offered products and services will be detailed here. GSA specifies that this document follow their provided template.
- Supporting Documentation: This must be included for each proposed product or service price. Valid documents can be invoices, contracts, or quote sheets.
- Mechanism for Future Price Adjustments: There’s a couple ways to do this, either by trending changes in your commercial pricelist, or proposing price changes based on commercial market standards.
- Commercial Sales Practices: GSA asks for you to describe who your company sells to commercially and how you discount your sales to different customers. This is not required if you qualify and opt into Transactional Data Reporting (TDR).
- Full-Product and Broad-Services Offerings: GSA requires that any offeror provides a full and broad array of proposed products/services.
You will have to include additional documentation and requirements that differ based on whether you are offering services or products; details for these are in the solicitation document. Joint Ventures may also have varying requirements for certain documents.
The pricing section of your GSA MAS offer is lengthy and detailed, but this is how GSA ensures federal customers don’t need to wonder if they are getting the best value product or service.
Where to Start on your GSA Schedule Proposal
So you’ve got an idea of key documents and requirements for each section of the GSA MAS offer, along with some resources to learn more. But now you’re wondering where you even start on such a substantial undertaking.
We recommend starting this process with your SAM.gov registration and determining which SINs you plan to offer on your GSA contract. Having a vision for what your offer will consist of will help you ensure compliance with the solicitation guidelines and help you know what materials you’ll need to gather, from invoicing history to past project work descriptions.
You may find that completing this work yourself leads to a lot of uncertainties. That’s normal. While the Schedule acquisition process can be daunting, it can also be a promising avenue to consistent sales. If you find yourself getting bogged down in the weeds, consider letting Winvale’s team of expert consultants and proposal writers help.
