The Small Business Association’s (SBA) Mentor Protégé Program has been widely used as joint ventures (JV) in government contracting become more prevalent. For anyone not familiar, the program uses approved large businesses as mentors to assist smaller protégé businesses with business development (BD) efforts for federal contracts. This allows the mentor to create a JV with the protégé allowing the protégé to compete for small-business set-aside contracts with the benefit of having the large business to assist them. In addition,...

Many small businesses have experienced a major shake-up from COVID-related issues, and at times like these having liquid assets are important to allow a firm to pivot as necessary. As you have likely heard, the secondary Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is providing major funding to assist especially vulnerable businesses such as restaurants, travel agencies, entertainment venues, and farmers. That is not all however, as it will help small businesses continue to keep their personnel retained with a second forgivable loan...

We’ve seen this coming for a little while now. The GSA released a Request for Information (RFI) and draft Performance Work Statement (PWS) back in October 2017 for Entity Validation Services for the predicted replacement of the Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS). The DUNS is a proprietary identifier that has been used for decades. There was a desire to use these numbers across the government, however the contract between Duns & Bradstreet and the GSA dictated that the...

While federal employees are generally reimbursed for days the government is shutdown thanks to legislation from Congress, contractors are not so lucky. Depending on the percentage of federal work companies take on and how large their commitments are, a shutdown can cause major headaches for a business. It’s relatively obvious that this is affecting large companies performing various military and IT contracts for the government, but it is also detrimental to thousands of low-income contractors working in federal buildings like...

Tyndall Air Force Base, based in Panama City, sustained heavy damage when Hurricane Michael reached Florida without much warning. What does this mean for federal contractors who currently have contracts with Tyndall AFB? Per EZGovOpps records, there are currently 148 ongoing contracts with a value of 5.6 billion that expire in the next three years. Vendors like L3 Communication, Science Applications International, and TASC are likely concerned that these current contracts would be continued during the rebuilding process. With the temporary...

If you’re wary that the mid-term elections will throw a monkey wrench in the F.Y. 2019 defense appropriations and authorization bills, you certainly won’t be the only one. The results of the election will greatly influence control of the House, and how many dollars will be earmarked for defense contractors, who are one of the biggest winners from the Trump presidency in terms of dollars and cents. Should we experience a “Blue Wave” and Democrats take control, defense contracts would...

Back in June of 2017, the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee moved to change control of space missions to a new military branch (rather than under US Air Force command). Things are now picking up steam with Trump ordering the Pentagon to create this new service branch for space military operations yesterday (6/18/18). This would be the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces. “We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have a...