Upcoming MAS Consolidation: Get Excited For What’s To Come

The MAS Consolidation is one of the four cornerstone Initiatives of GSA’s Federal Market Place strategy. The main goal is to modernize and simplify the buying and selling experience for customers, contractors, and acquisition professionals. The consolidation will offer a simplified format with a single consolidated Multiple Award Schedule template containing additional solicitation documents to complete new offers which will include new large categories and sub-categories, as well as new streamlined conditions for new offerors.  

Phase one will begin October 1, 2019 and will start with the issuance of the new consolidated Multiple Award Schedule and the mapping of the legacy SINs to new NAICS code-based SINs. During Phase two, contractors with a single schedule will be transitioned via a mass modification that will be issued against their current contract to be released in January 2020. Phase three will begin in January 2020 as well, and GSA will be helping contractors with multiple legacy schedules who need assistance navigating their current contract to the new consolidated SINs. More information on the timeline and what the expectations for the upcoming MAS Consolidation can also be found here. 

Consolidated Schedule Templates

With the upcoming Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Consolidation, GSA has been working on combining the current 24 legacy schedules and releasing a new single Schedule for products, services, and total solutions on October 1. On that day, GSA will publish the new consolidated solicitation on FedBizOpps along with applicable attachments. This package will contain all appropriate attachments such as the solicitation, letter of supply template, price proposal template, CSP-1 Form, and many of the same documents that contractors are already used to seeing – just in a new consolidated format referencing the one Multiple Award Schedule. GSA will also use a new “Available Offerings and Requirements” page on GSA.gov to house those templates and attachments that will then be posted in addition to the solicitation. 

SIN Specific Terms and Conditions 

One of the major components of the upcoming MAS Consolidation is the updated terms and conditions for new SINs. GSA’s goal is to refine and standardize the terms and conditions so that they are current, accurate, complete and consistent for all contractors. The more common clauses within the Terms and Conditions, such as those for delivery, price reductions, and trade agreements act compliance will remain in the consolidated Schedule. 

Through consolidation, GSA will be allowed to address category-specific terms and conditions at the category level. This will enable the contractor to offer additional categories of products and services that are currently on different Schedules. Rather than keeping contractors’ products and services on multiple different schedules, they will all be consolidated within one single Schedule. This will help those in the industry to provide a more comprehensive and total solutions-oriented offering. 

How GSA Writes the Terms and Conditions 

After GSA fully reviewed the current terms and conditions, it was decided that SINs must change as the industries are changing. Since GSA will be consolidating the number of SINs from over 900 to around 300, they evaluated the terms and conditions for each SIN and have managed to determine which terms and conditions should specifically apply to which SINs, much in the way that certain SINs have specific requirements in the current format, i.e. NIST requirements for Cloud Technology, CDM requirements, FIPS compliance, etc.  Within those terms and conditions, the GSA team included a justification for the change to help us understand their reasoning. One goal of streamlining the current solicitation was to better align it to the modern-day market without losing any value for the customer or protections for the government. Once the terms and conditions have been created, a newly formatted solicitation will be released so it is clear for all vendors. 

Some Things Will Not Change 

Procurement Professionals and Vendors will not see a change in eBuy. GSA will map the old SINs to the new SINs during Phase two of the Consolidation to ensure that contractors see all the opportunities listed for the new SINs as they correspond to legacy SINs. GSA’s goal throughout the consolidation process is to make it as easy as possible for contractors to identify which SIN is the best fit for your company based on designated NAICS codes, as NAICS codes describe the principal nature of the products or services being offered. 

Winvale is here to help you navigate the GSA MAS Consolidation and can answer your contract-specific questions as we learn more from GSA. Feel free to reach out to us for more information, and review all of our Consolidation resources. 

Register now for our webinar "UPDATED: The GSA MAS Consolidation. What You Need to Know Moving Forward" on October 16, 2019 at 1:00 pm ET.  Stay tuned for a second webinar coming early 2020 after the Mass Modification is released.