A key strategy for taking full advantage of the GSA Multiple Award Schedule’s contracting opportunities is partnering with other contractors. Of the partnership options available, Joint Ventures (JVs) are a great choice for companies that want to form a new legal entity in order to pool each other’s capabilities, past performance, and even small business designations.
To sell through the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS), the Joint Venture itself needs to have its own GSA Schedule, regardless of whether its members hold individual Schedule contracts. This raises the question: how does a Joint Venture get its own GSA Schedule? As we’ll share in this blog, the process for getting a GSA Schedule as a JV is similar to getting a GSA Schedule as an individual company, but there are some unique requirements to keep in mind.
Before we discuss how a JV can get a GSA Schedule, let’s recap what a JV is. JVs are a type of contracting partnership made up of two or three businesses that pool their resources together to compete for contracts. Unlike a Contractor Teaming Arrangement (CTA), a JV is considered a new legal entity and requires approval by the Small Business Administration (SBA), a separate Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code, and a new SAM account. The contractors in a JV may have their own individual GSA Schedules, but it’s not required. Participating in a JV brings numerous benefits, as we’ll cover below.
Joint Ventures allow participating businesses to share costs and resources, combine their past performance when qualifying for contracts, and leverage each other’s experience and market share. By combining the skillsets of its members, JVs can be more competitive in the government contracting space and qualify for a greater range of opportunities – such as those available through the GSA Multiple Award Schedule.
A major benefit of forming a JV over other types of contracting partnerships is the ability to use the JV to compete for small business set-asides. JVs can pursue small business set-asides as long as one JV partner meets the small business or socioeconomic requirement.
This means that large businesses can greatly benefit from the opportunity to form a JV with a small business. Small businesses in a JV, in turn, can benefit from the large business’s expertise and resources. The SBA’s Mentor-Protégé Program is a common way that JVs originate between large and small businesses.
To take advantage of these benefits on the GSA MAS, your JV will need to acquire its own GSA Schedule contract. We’d like to start off by emphasizing that the steps below assume that you have already set up the JV itself. If you haven’t done so, you’ll want to follow the steps for creating a JV outlined by the SBA. You should also keep in mind the SBA’s rules surrounding JV subcontracting and performance of work.
Once your JV is established, you can begin preparing your JV MAS offer. If you’ve ever put together an MAS offer for an individual company, you’ll find that preparing a JV MAS offer is similar. As with a normal MAS offer, the MAS Solicitation is a good place to find the complete list of requirements for your JV offer. Make sure to take note of anywhere it calls out “Offers from Joint Ventures,” as that signals an additional requirement or consideration for JV offers.
We’ve compiled below some important points that JVs should consider when putting together the three sections of their offer:
Next, we’ll highlight the documents that are required for JV offers specifically:
Make sure these documents are part of your offer and are fully compliant with the JV Solicitation Attachment.
As anyone who has submitted a GSA Schedule offer knows, pricing is an important part of how Contracting Specialists evaluate offers. We’ve mentioned above that JV members who have their own GSA Schedules can submit their individual GSA Schedule pricelists as pricing support for the rates on their JV offer. However, it’s worth noting that Contracting Specialists are still required to evaluate the proposed JV rates independently from individual MAS contractors’ pricing, and they may ask for additional discounts based on the market research they find.
Therefore, don’t assume that your JV will be awarded the same rates that are on your individual company’s Schedule. Aside from that key point, JV offers are evaluated using the same guidelines as standard offers, so you can expect Clarifications and Negotiations to follow a similar process.
We hope this blog clarifies some of the key requirements that are unique to JV MAS offers, but preparing a JV offer can understandably raise a lot of questions. If you’re looking for an answer to a common JV offer conundrum, GSA’s JV FAQs document on their MAS templates page is a good place to start. For more specific questions or assistance with preparing your JV offer, our consultants are here to help.