So you have been following a pending government solicitation for months (maybe years), you have met with the customer and completed a solution demo, you have attended all the industry days, formed your team, followed the capture processes and best practices, and your team is ready for the solicitation to come out (or potentially the draft solicitation). You get the notification that it has been posted, you download it, open it up and start reading. Three pages in you’ll see statement like the one below:

Since you clicked on this blog post, there is a good chance your business could qualify as a small business government contractor, or perhaps you are simply looking to learn more about the calculations that determine small business status. Regardless, it's important to determine your business size designation, because there are certain advantages associated with being a small business in the federal government. In this blog, we'll help you identify whether your business qualifies as a small business with the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Small Business Association (SBA).

The Biden-Harris Administration intends to heavily invest in our nation’s infrastructure. In March 2021, Biden unveiled the the American Jobs Plan, which will allocate $2 trillion to create more jobs and rebuild the U.S. infrastructure. A significant aspect of the American Jobs Plan is a $621 billion investment in transportation infrastructure, including public transit, modernizing roads, bridges, and highways, and electric vehicles (EVs). Electric vehicles are a large part of Biden’s plan—he wants to build a network of EV charging ports across the nation’s highway system and electrify the federal government’s transportation fleet.

Most GSA contractors are used to working with federal government agencies through the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Program. While federal government agencies do account for a large percentage of GSA revenue, some of the major buyers through the GSA MAS Program are state and local government entities. State and local government entities cannot purchase everything through GSA Schedules, but they can qualify through certain programs. One of the ways in which states and local units of government can purchase off GSA Schedules is through the 1122 Program.

One of the basic requirements to a successful acquisition is having an access point into the federal marketplace. As a GSA Schedule contractor, you not only have a major access point through the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS), but you have an advantage over other government contractors. The federal government likes to choose GSA contractors for their solutions because they are pre-vetted, and the prices are guaranteed the best value. While the federal government often prefers to purchase through the GSA MAS program, opportunities will not necessarily fall into your lap. You’ll need to be proactive about finding federal opportunities and winning business through a well thought out capture strategy and proposal which we'll walk you through below.

As a government contractor, you’ve probably run into NAICS codes more than a few times, and you likely know which ones are applicable to your products or services. But like many, questions still linger about their true meaning and function. Questions like: “What does the acronym even mean in the first place?” “How do they affect your business and how you work with the government?” “What is a size standard?”