GSA looks to funnel IT work to small businesses

The General Services Administration today laid out new goals for tapping small businesses on large contracts, starting with its $25 billion contract for large-scale information technology support services.

GSA's Federal Technology Service's Federal Computer Acquisition Center (Fedcac) plans to award to a maximum of 12 vendors in April the Millennia contract, which will include a wide range of IT support focusing on systems integration, software engineering and communications. The five-year contract will replace the high-end requirements from the current multiple-award, indefinite-quantity 9600 contract and includes a five-year option.

At a networking session today for potential primes and small-business subcontractors, Fedcac set the minimum small-business goal on Millennia at 35 percent for each contractor. Within that 35 percent, 10 percent of the subcontractors must be small, disadvantaged businesses and 5 percent must be women-owned, small businesses.

Those goals will be considered on a pass/fail basis on all bidders' proposals, and bidders' past performance in subcontracting with small businesses will count as 10 percent of the overall technical score in the evaluations, said Lisa Akers, program manager for Millennia.Fedcac also will designate a full-time employee to monitor and report on the winning contractors' commitment to the goals, and the five-year option is to be tied to their good-faith efforts to meet the goals.

"We're very serious about having this kind of commitment on this contract," Akers said.The goals for the Millennia contract are expected to become the model for FTS' large contracts, said Fedcac director Ronald Decker.

"We're going to be watching this one closely," he said.