Last month, our contract support experts represented the Winvale team at the Small Business Administration (SBA) Baltimore District Office’s workshop: Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contracting Program. Workshops hosted by the SBA are extremely beneficial for all small business owners looking to acquire the right tools to succeed in the federal marketplace.

The Formatted Product Tool (FPT) is one of GSA’s most recent developments in its Competitive Pricing Initiative and as of July 2016, FPT has been implemented to select product Schedules as part of its Phase I rollout. Below is a Beginner’s Guide for what contractors need to know once they’ve decided to implement FPT. If you’re interested in learning more about FPT and the implementation schedule, check our previous blog An Executive Overview to GSA's FPT.

As new needs and challenges arise, the General Services Administration (GSA) considers adding new Special Item Numbers (SIN) to preexisting Schedules before creating new ones. We’ve seen this most recently with the addition of a new Schedule 70 Health IT SIN, and will be seeing it again shortly as the government works towards releasing the Highly Adaptable Cybersecurity Services (HACS) SIN to the IT-70 schedule beginning September 12, 2016.

In an effort to increase efficiency and encourage savings, GSA published a final rule on transactional data reporting on June 23, 2016. This new requirement instructs vendors to report transactional data from orders placed against certain Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contracts, Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), and Government Wide Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contracts.

The General Services Administration (GSA) will be releasing a new SIN under Schedule 70 that incorporates Health Information Technology Services (HIT) later this year. Currently, the Health IT SIN is projected to be released in July, but we have yet to know the exact date of expectancy.

109 vendors have been awarded $11.5 billion Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS) contract by GSA in collaboration with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This joint venture will utilize both organizations’ industry strengths through a singular procurement channel.