GSA considers one schedule

The General Services Administration is in the early stages of an effort to consolidate the 43 schedule contracts into a single schedule or a small number of schedules, said Neal Fox, assistant commissioner of the Office of Commercial Acquisition at GSA.

Fox said that GSA personnel are now building a matrix of all the schedule solicitations to identify the elements they have in common and the places where they are unique, speaking today at the Coalition for Government Procurement's Spring Conference 2005. That matrix should be completed by the end of the month, he added. At that point, GSA officials would then begin holding discussions with industry representatives.

The effort is not directly connected to the ongoing reorganization of GSA. Fox said it is an attempt to eliminate the problem of work being awarded that is outside the scope of the specific contracts.

Fox said his vision is of a single contract divided into functional areas that would be analogous to the current individual contracts.

The move would streamline many of the administrative tasks associated with the schedule contracts and eliminate the need to train or judge personnel on making the correct decision about which contract they should use in a given case.

Fox said there are some significant hurdles to GSA plans such as the fact that many provisions apply only to certain schedule contracts.