Past performance is a crucial component for evaluating and awarding contracts. If a contractor does not have a satisfactory record, they may not be able to perform to the expected level to complete the work type and scope. As a GSA Schedule contractor, what do you need to do to prepare for the past performance requirements? Let’s review what past performance is, why it’s important to government agencies, and how you can be ready for your next solicitation.

Navigating the government contracting world as a small business can be daunting. Thankfully, small businesses have access to several resources to tap into such as small business set-asides and certain funding programs to help them get their foot in the door, such as the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR). In this blog, we’ll cover the SBIR program and how contractors can use this program to their advantage.

As a GSA Schedule contractor, you are given access to a variety of tools and platforms for advertising and selling to government buyers. Arguably, the most important of these is GSA Advantage!. Much in the way that you and I would purchase items from Amazon or shop online during Cyber Monday, Contracting Officers for government agencies access GSA Advantage! to browse the full catalog of contractors and their offerings. Even if you’ve already established consistent relationships with existing buyers, your public sector footprint could grow even larger with the aid of GSA Advantage!.

The short answer is yes, you can participate in government bids without a GSA Schedule. However, it’s much more nuanced than that, and you can be missing out on huge opportunities within the federal marketplace. Open market sales to the federal government take much longer and can be more costly than sales through a government contracting vehicle, and other vehicles are not as flexible or available.

GSA has been developing a slew of Information Technology (IT)-related contracts recently from Polaris, to the Ascend Cloud Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) and now Alliant 3. GSA has recently released the draft Request for Proposal (RFP) for Alliant 3, one of the largest contracts in the works that will focus on the acquisition of advanced and emerging IT technologies. Alliant 3, a follow on from Alliant 2, will be a government-wide Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Best-in-Class (BIC) contract, with an estimated ceiling of $75 billion. Since all questions and comments on the draft RFP are due on January 6, 2023, we’re going to cover what you need to know about this upcoming contract vehicle so your company can get involved early on.

As the pandemic lingers, the demand for goods and services continue to be a spending trend among government agencies. To respond to this crisis and other health-related emergencies, state and local governments are able to purchase items from GSA Schedules by participating in GSA’s Public Health Emergencies (PHE) Program. This program allows some non-federal entities to use the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program for essential public health emergency supplies.