What a GSA Schedule Actually Gets You Every small business that reaches a certain size in federal contracting eventually gets asked: "should we be on the GSA Schedule?" The pitch from consultants and vendors is compelling — a pre-negotiated contract vehicle giving agencies fast access to your products or services, positioning you as an approved…
What DCAA Does and Why It Matters The Defense Contract Audit Agency — DCAA — is DoD’s contract-audit organization. DCAA audits cost-reimbursement, time-and-materials, and other flexible-price contracts to determine whether the government paid what it should have. For small contractors accustomed to firm-fixed-price commercial work, DCAA compliance is a new discipline: the government wants to…
DFARS 101 for Small Contractors Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement — DFARS — is the DoD’s overlay on top of the general Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). For any small business selling to the Department of Defense, DFARS clauses matter as much as FAR clauses. The most-discussed DFARS provisions today are the cybersecurity clauses that require…
What CPARS Is (and Why It Runs Your Future) The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System — CPARS — is the government’s official record of how you performed on a contract. Every federal contract above the simplified acquisition threshold generates a CPARS report. That report follows you across procurements for the life of your business, because…
Why Market Research Wins Contracts Before You Bid Every small government contractor eventually learns the same lesson: the bid was lost long before the proposal was written. You couldn’t hit the price the agency expected because you didn’t know the historical price. You couldn’t cite competitors’ past performance because you didn’t know who won last…
The Decision That Shapes Your Federal Business Every small business entering federal contracting eventually asks the same question: should we go after prime contracts, or subcontract under a larger prime? The answer isn’t obvious, and choosing wrong wastes years. Some small businesses that should be teaming as subs waste 18 months chasing prime contracts they…
The Real Reasons Small-Business Proposals Get Rejected You spent 200 hours on a proposal, submitted it on time, and got a “not selected” notification with a form-letter debrief. What actually happened? Most rejections fall into a small number of recurring patterns — patterns that small businesses learn the hard way and Big Six consulting shops…
Getting Paid Is the Second-Hardest Part of Government Contracting Winning the contract is hard. Getting paid on it is a close second. The federal government does not send you an invoice or ask you to send it a bill — you have to submit invoices through a specific electronic system, in a specific format, tied…
Why the Contract Type Matters More Than the Dollar Value Small government contractors regularly celebrate a $500,000 contract award without asking a simple question: what type of contract is it? A $500K firm-fixed-price contract with a scope you understand is a business you can plan around. A $500K time-and-materials contract with a poorly-defined statement of…
What NIST 800-171 Actually Is NIST Special Publication 800-171 is the U.S. government’s control catalog for how contractors must protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). CUI is the sensitive-but-unclassified data the federal government shares with vendors — technical drawings, contract-performance data, personally identifiable information, and program-specific material that isn’t secret but isn’t public. If your contract…