Top 10 GovCon Stories – #9

GWACs – Bigger Budgets and Small Acquisition Workforce

Summary
Government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs) consolidate purchasing across a number of federal government agencies and encourage long-term vendor agreements with fewer vendors. GWACs have become commonplace vehicles for federal clients purchasing a vast array of products and services. GWACs sell information technology products and services to agencies. The issue surrounding GWACs hit the burner over the summer, when several agencies met to form a joint force to manage GWACs going forward. While the concept was embraced by some in government who feared losing control of their GWACs, contractors feel that there are too many hoops to jump through and that opportunities for small business are limited.

Why it matters to the GovCon space?

Written by: Jeff White, Founder at govWin

The reason why this is important to government contractors is because more and more money is flowing through these vehicles. It requires contractors to build what I call “response engines” in order to manage it all. This is the year of the IDIQ. Now responses are measured in days. Things are coming together in a fast and furious manner. RFPs require rapid turnaround to play in the game. Now contractors need to be able to appropriately respond – so teaming goes from being very important to critical for success.

Written by: Rich Wilkinson, VP, Government Contracting, Deltek

Keep in mind that Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts are just that, Government Wide, but they are actually flat or even shrinking in terms of their share of Federal procurement. So are GSA schedules. The segment that is really growing is the (Agency-Specific) Multiple Award Task Order Contracts (MATOCs). Attached is a slide out of Kevin Plexico’s deck form the INPUT briefing. The Agency-specific contracts are more popular with the agencies because

• OMB doesn’t have any visibility into their usage or any control over them (unlike GWACS) and
• The agency can more easily control their usage.

Of course, there is usually also a much smaller list of competitors for each program and fewer awards. That makes them easier to manage for the agency.The graph sort of makes the issue clear.

Companies are spending more and more to win a place in a GWAC program and the list of winners just gets longer and longer. The prospect of getting enough business out of a win to pay for the proposal effort is now something of a risk.

Check back on Thursday, December 9th for the #8 most important story.

In the meantime, we are interested in what you think was the top story of 2010. Please take a moment to fill out our poll below. If you do not see a story you think was important, use the option marked “other” to submit your own idea. The results will be collected over the next several days and shared on Monday, December 20th, with the #1 story of 2010.

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