Small firms may get a big hand – General Services Administration is reaching out

When the General Services Administration goes shopping, the agency patronizes the mom and pop stores as well as the big-box outlets.

Bert Caldwell
The Spokesman-Review

Administrator Stephen Perry says the agency, which handles purchasing for much of the federal government, will award as much as 48 percent of that business this year to small businesses. That more than doubles the 23 percent target set by Congress.

All things being equal — price, service, goods — Bush administration policy mandates the agency will do business with the smaller bidder, Perry says.

That’s welcome news in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, where small business predominates. In fact, in the GSA Northwest/Arctic region, which includes Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska, small businesses grab 54 percent of the agency’s contracts.

Perry is in Eastern Washington this week to drum up still more interest among small businesses, which create two of every three new jobs, and produce half the nation’s gross domestic product.

"Small businesses these days are the job generators in this economy," he says.

The agency, Perry says, is trying to find ways of easing small businesses over the first and most bothersome hurdle to doing business with federal agencies; qualifying for the schedule of approved vendors.

In order to get the GSA’s "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," companies must show they have the background, competence and financial wherewithal to perform on a contract. The forms are complex, and the application process can take anywhere from two weeks to six months.

"Business owners really don’t have a lot of time to fill out applications," Perry says, adding that the agency’s goal is approval in less than 30 days.

Much of the initiative toward simplification has focused on the Internet, which allows businesses and GSA workers to update information instantaneously. Work available for bid is posted at http://www.gsa.gov, as are winning bids. With that information, businesses can decide whether they want to get into the game.

The potential reward is not just the $10 billion-plus GSA will spend on goods and services this year. Getting on the schedule of vendors qualifies businesses to bid on work other government agencies let themselves — a total of more than $200 billion.

"It’s the largest marketplace in the world," he says.

Perry says that since 9/11, for example, GSA has been a major buyer of security equipment technology. The agency has also begun to catch up on deferred maintenance at the 1,800 buildings it owns, creating another significant business opportunity for vendors.

The agency, he notes, has asked Congress to allow private investors to participate in the rehabilitation of some buildings for mixed use in return for a share of the rent. Apparently, "public-private partnership" has not the taint in Washington, D.C., it has in Spokane.

In another innovation, GSA has cooperated with Canadian authorities in the construction of new border checkpoints that consolidate inspections by both countries into a single structure, with construction and operating costs split 50-50. Perry will attend the dedication of one such post at Oroville-Osoyoos today.

Meanwhile, the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce and Snohomish County Economic Development Council await final approval of a plan to create a Procurement Technical Assistance Center that will help businesses in several Washington cities qualify for the GSA vendor list, and find business leads once they do so. Center offices will also explain how to do business with state and local government.

Jeff Selle, the Chamber’s director for regional and federal issues, says big contracts awarded for projects in the area too often go to out-of-state companies that leave once the work is done. Chamber concern about that pattern has increased because contracts worth a potential $200 million-plus may be let for improvements at Fairchild Air Force Base should new tankers be based there.

The Chamber, Selle says, has already had some success cutting local companies in on a share of the transmission grid work Duke Energy is doing for the Bonneville Power Administration.

The down side to these laudable GSA/Chamber efforts is what they say about the nation’s weakened private sector economy, which has intensified pursuit of government work. Public sector work will pick up only so much of the slack.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=100903&ID=s1421946&cat=section.business