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    Archives for August 09

    Aug 18, 2009

    The agency wants to broaden the base of small businesses awarded contracts, subcontracts. The General Services Administration has started its mentor-protégé program to include more small businesses in GSA contracts, the agency announced today.

    Officials want to urge companies to help small businesses in establishing themselves in the federal marketplace and then foster long-term relationships between small and large companies, which often are prime contract-holders, according to a Federal Register notice.

    The program includes contracts awarded under GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules program, the notice states.

    The program will allow small businesses to become protégés and receive help in their development as federal contractors from large-business mentors. Mentor companies can offer business guidance and share with their protégés lessons they’ve learned along the way. GSA also will allow small businesses that want to mentor other small businesses, the notice states.

    A mentor is an established company offering to help small-business subcontractors in being more successful.

    GSA expects the program to increase the overall number of small businesses receiving GSA contracts and subcontracts. However, GSA won’t measure the program's success on the basis of awards and dollars alone. Officials plan to consider success as an increase in the number and value of subcontracts awarded to protégé companies by mentors. They also want to see expanded expertise by the protégé firms by seeing them enter industries that have they’ve not traditionally worked in, the notice states.

    To encourage companies to be mentors, the program allows contracting officers to look more favorably at bids from mentor/protégés, and they can consider prime contractors' compliance with its subcontracting plans as a factor in evaluating the company’s past performance, the notice states. Read More http://tr.im/wBF7
     

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    Aug 26, 2009

    22 Aug 2009, Avon, OH - GovPartners was proud to sponsor a hole and a four man team at the First Annual Greg Shannon Memorial Golf Outing. A loving Father and dedicated husband, Greg passed away suddenly on January 31, 2009 after suffering a “silent” heart-attack attributed to Sugar Diabetes.

    Amongst some rain drops and unseasonably cool August weather in Northeast Ohio, spirits of the near 200 golfers were high. Proceeds from the event will be placed in scholarships to be awarded to outstanding athletes in the Avon/Avon Lake area as well as one to an outstanding athlete from Greg’s hometown of Defiance, OH.

    The four man team of: Team Captain Vin Karnik, Vince Karnik, Kevin Karnik and Troy Bunner were proud to be a part of this event and look forward to next years outing already, with hopes of improving on their score. Although slightly soaked at the end of the event, Kevin Karnik (COO) was thrilled with the dedication of the event organizers, saying “I’ve been involved in several golf scrambles, and this was by far the best!”
     

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    Aug 31, 2009

    The Department of Defense (DoD) is one of the largest purchasers of products and services in the world. The DoD awards contracts valued at $5 million or more each business day (source: www.defenselink.mil )If you are a small business looking to capture government opportunities, the DoD is a good place to start.

    Government contracting can seem like a intimidating business development strategy for many small businesses. Many often mistakenly believe that only the top prime contractors can really compete for DoD business. The old saying is always true, if you can’t beat them, join them. But, in this case, you can beat them and join them.

    The reality is that the government designates a significant amount of procurement contracts to small businesses each year. In fiscal year 2009 (Oct 01, 2008 -Sep 30, 2009) the DoD set aside over 22% of its prime contracts to small business and over 37% of its sub-contracting opportunities (source: www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/statistics/goals.htm ). This doesn't include funds set aside for small businesses owned by veterans, women, minorities and disadvantaged businesses.

    That's a BIG revenue opportunity! How do you get in on the action?

    Whether you are selling a service or a product to the federal government, the procurement process can be challenging for a small business to navigate. Many times, the procurement process allows 30 days or less for the vendor to respond to the request for proposal and it may take the majority of that time for a small business to understand the requirements, terms and conditions.

    Defense contracting can be a viable long term business strategy. However, there are many other considerations that you will need to work through on the way to getting your share of what can be a very profitable line of business. It is important that small businesses understand the overall government contracting process. Partnering with other prime and subcontractors can help ease the pain. Sign up for SubTeamPartners to find your DoD teaming opportunity govpartners.com

    A sample or recent awards:

    Raytheon is awarded a Navy Research Contract. Raytheon Co. won a $7 million follow-on contract from the Office of Naval Research to continue work on a project to develop a new semiconductor for the Defense Department. Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems is partnering with Raytheon Systems Limited, Glenrothes, Scotland; Soitec, Bernin, France; Teledyne Scientific Imaging Company, Thousand Oaks, Calif.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.; Paradigm Research LLC, Windham, N.H.; IQE, Bethlehem, Pa.; and Silicon Valley Technology Center, San Jose, Calif.

    Black Construction Corp., /MACE International Joint Venture, GMF Barrigada, Guam, is being awarded a $19,180,000 firm-fixed price contract for upgrades to the existing air ops water treatment plant and air ops wastewater treatment plant, and to construct a one-story warehouse and wharf utility improvements at Naval Support Facility, Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory. Work will be performed in Diego Garcia, and is expected to be completed by July 2011.

    Ikhana/Choate -1 LLC, Mt. Pleasant, S.C., is being awarded a $13,385,855 firm-fixed price construction contract for the construction of two child development centers at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. Work will be performed in Jacksonville, N.C., and is expected to be completed by June 2011.

    Consigli Construction Co., Inc., Milford, Mass., is being awarded $9,039,438 for firm-fixed price task order for construction of a consolidated emergency control center at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The work to be performed provides for the construction of a three level, steel framed reinforced concrete facility with the ground level located below grade to directly support radiological emergency response as required. This facility will house the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard radiological emergency response organization and will serve as its command and control center during an emergency.

    Head, Inc., Columbus, Ohio, is being awarded a $6,783,933 firm-fixed-price construction contract to repair Runways 13L/31R and repair taxiways at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. Work will be performed in Corpus Christi, Texas, and is expected to be completed by August 2010.

    Air BP a division of BP Products North America, Inc., Warrenville, Ill. is being awarded a maximum $112,125,808 fixed price with economic price adjustment, indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity contract for fuel. There are multiple locations of performance. Using service is the Defense Energy Support Center.
    Frank Gargiulo & Son Inc., Hillside, N.J., is being awarded a maximum $13,050,000 fixed price with economic price adjustment, total set aside contract for full line fresh fruit and vegetable support.

    Terex Corporation, Fredericksburg, Va., is being awarded a maximum $5,624,730 fixed price with economic price adjustment contract for rock crusher jaw plant. 

    GovPartners News Brief: 31 Aug 2009: By Cynthia Karnik

     

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    Aug 6, 2009

    The General Services Administration is looking for Internet-based IT services to offer federal agencies through a proposed cloud-computing storefront service. Last month, the agency issued a Request for Quotation for providing cloud services to government agencies.

    The document describes a GSA-run storefront portal in which government agencies can purchase commercially offered infrastructure IT services using a credit card or other approved payment option. Specifically, the GSA is looking for three broad categories of services to offer through this portal: Storage services, virtual machines and Web hosting.

    To serve the government, service providers will need to have the following in place:

    * The ability for customers to procure and provide service without vendor review.
    * Two separate facilities within the continental United States that offer the service. Internet bandwidth for each location should be no less than 1 Gigabit per second.
    * Virtually unlimited storage.
    * The ability for the customer to scale up or down service on an as-needed basis.
    * A dashboard for each customer to convey usage, as measured on a weekly basis.

    Each service will be accessible remotely by dual-factor authentication. Trouble tickets should be able to be submitted by application programming interface (API), and all services should be maintained at 99.95 percent uptime. For outages lasting longer than one hour a month, the provider must provide a written description of the cause of the outage.

    Federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra has stated that GSA is planning to set up a cloud-computing "storefront," that federal agencies can use to procure IT services.

    For the RFQ, GSA adopted the definitions of cloud computing that were authored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Read full article...Washington Technology  tr.im/vJFA

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