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>> Hello, everyone. It is now time to begin our
next session of the day. Thank you to those of you that have
been with us since the beginning. For those that are just joining,
my name is Robin Vikra [phonetic]. I'll be one of our hosts today. And with me, we have Andrea Azarcon Heller. And I'd like to take just a moment
to check your audio, Andrea. >> I am here. >> Fantastic. Okay, well, I'd like to thank everyone
for answering those poll questions and for being so involved in our chat windows. I love seeing all of the networking going on. I think that is fantastic. But I am going to move us ahead,
so your screen is about to change. I apologize if you're typing. This will interrupt you. Okay, it's now time to begin
our next session titled Thinking About Pursing GSA's Multiple Award Schedule? Here's What You Need to Know. And this will be led by Stephanie Shutt, Director of GSA's Multiple Award
Schedule Program Management Office. I'd like to remind you that this session,
this session, along with all of our sessions, are being recorded, and these recordings
will be made available after the conference. Stephanie, I'll turn it over to you. >> Thank you, Robin. And I want to thank everyone for joining
this wonderful session that we have today, about the Multiple Award Schedules
Program and contract vehicle. Again, my name is Stephanie Shutt. I am the Director of the Multiple
Award Schedules Contract Vehicle, and that means that I set the
strategic direction for this program. I do want to say that I do have a
couple of subject matter experts that are here to help answer your questions. So, as you have questions during this
presentation, feel free to throw those in the chat Q&A section, and one of our
subject matter experts will get to you. If we have time, we will do some live as well. It's all going to depend on that timing. If you do not get your question
answered and we just run out of time, I will say that you can e mail them
to the MAS PMO at maspmo@gsa.gov. So, again, maspmo@gsa.gov. Really quick, I want to introduce my subject
matter expert, Jaime Martinez, Jack Tekus, Xavier [phonetic] Arasband [phonetic],
Aaron Curtin, Rebecca Cosif [phonetic], Ernesto Martinez, Dana Anillo
[phonetic], and Daniel Stafford. And one of these people will be the person that will be answering these
questions as they come in. But with that, let's get started. Today, in this presentation, we're going to
go over the Multiple Award Schedules Program. It's a high overview. Then we're going to go into whether
or not MAS is a good fit for you, because sometimes it is a great fit
for some of our industry partners, and sometimes there are better ways or
better contract vehicles to go towards. And then we'll go through the offer process
and the roadmap at a very high level. And then we'll get into some of the
learning resources and technical support. So, for the overview of the Multiple Award
Schedules Program, this is also referred to as MAS, GSA Schedules Program, the schedule. We do have the technical term, which
is the Federal Supply Schedule. And that level includes both the GSA run
schedules, which are the MAS program, and also the federal supply
schedules run through the BA. They are delegated nine medical
schedules as well. We do have both of those under
the federal supply schedules. I'm more going to be speaking
to the GSA schedules, which is the Multiple Award Schedules Program. So, the Multiple Award Schedules
Contract Vehicle is a contract, a commercial contract vehicle
with the federal government. And it bridges in around over 31 billion,
somewhere up of 33 billion dollars of sales annually through this
program and contract vehicle. We currently have upwards of over
15,000 contracts on this vehicle. And it is an indefinite delivery
and definite quantity contract. It includes commercial products and services,
as well as some solutions that can be used by the federal agencies worldwide. The biggest purchaser from this
program are federal agencies. However, we do have some quasi
agencies, such as the Red Cross or the United States Postal Office. We do have some territories
that can use such programs. And under very special circumstances, state and local governments can also use the
Multiple Award Schedules Contract Vehicle. There are other types of government
wide multiple award contracts. And basically that just means a contract
vehicle where there are multiple awards, meaning multiple industry partners have
individual contracts within that vehicle. They are called government wide
acquisition contracts, or GWACs. These are typically an IT
or information technology. And then you have multi agency contracts. And these are contracts in which multi
agencies can purchase from or own. So, there's a lot of opportunities
and benefits within the MAS program that the top things are this is a vehicle that
does deal with commercial products and services that we try our hardest to match
those commercial buying practices. Sometimes it's a better fit for commercial
contractors, especially if you really work in that world of commercial selling. It's a fast, easy, and effective
contract vehicle. And what that means is we do
have streamline buying practices that ordering activities can take
advantage of through this program, which makes it a little easier,
easier just to purchase from, and connect with our industry [inaudible]. We comply with rules and regulations. And basically what that means is it helps
agencies comply with what they need to comply for at the contract level so that they can
make sure their task orders or purchase orders that they put against this vehicle are going
to be compliant with all regulations that are within the government buying power. We do have total solutions
on the schedules program. This includes large businesses
or other small businesses that can vary comprehensive offerings. We do have a lot of mid tier or small
businesses that also have these large ones. But we have certain vehicles called
contractor teaming arrangements. And this is when more than
one company can come together and work together to provide a solution. And this really are on a small business
to work together to bring those solutions to our agencies and to all
of our buying customers. So, there are a lot of other benefits. We've listed a couple more down here. But, again, this is a large and very
popular commercial acquisition program. We have anything from office supplies to information technology
to also leasing a vehicle. It's very broad, it's very wide, and we
recently consolidated it to one vehicle so that you don't need to get multiple
contracts to play in this world. You would just need one. So, one of the things that I get
from a lot of companies is whether or not the MAS program is
going to be good for that. There are a lot of things related to
the Multiple Award Schedules Program and that includes a lot of requirements and a
lot of rules that you have to follow by and time and resources that you're
going to need to put into this. The first thing you want to do is make sure that this vehicle actually has
a category that applies to you. So, these are our categories that
we have under the current vehicle. We have facilities. And this could be services, solutions,
or products used within a facility. It is furnishings, furniture and furnishings,
which is pretty self explanatory, human capital, industrial products and services,
information technology. We do have a miscellaneous category,
and this, this is a category of items that don't fit pretty smoothly somewhere else. This often includes clothing. We have musical instruments
that are underneath here. Just a plethora of different things. But we also keep our categories under
here that relate to other direct costs. For items that you guys can
put together to make a solution where these other direct costs
may not really have a home. Professional services, office management. And that includes both the products from
office supplies and office services, scientific management and
solutions, security and protection, transportation and logistics, and travel. So, it's a wide array of commercial
offerings that are under this vehicle. If you're looking at these categories and you're
not sure if you fit underneath one of them, I'm going to give you some stuff
later on where you can actually figure out if that's really where you're going to fit. So, another thing you're going to want to
do is you're going to want to make sure that the demand for your product or service. So, we have a website. It's called beta.sam.gov. For most of you guys who have worked for the
government, you guys have gone to sam.gov. And this is where you registered your company
with your DUNS number to actually be able to participate in government spend. At beta.sam.gov, it will include
a view into your registration so that government agencies can validate that
you are a company that has registered with SAM. But also this is a place where government
puts all of their opportunities. So, we used to have a website
called SBO or [inaudible]. This was migrated recently into beta.sam.gov. So, one of the things you're going to want
to search in here is contract opportunities. And you can use key word searches. You can use what we call NAICS code, or the North American Index
Classification System Coding. And those are numbers that would associate
with your products or services or solution. And there are other filters you can use in here
to see if there are any pending opportunities or if there were past opportunities, or if
there are any future opportunities coming up that are asking for quotes on
products or services that you might sell. This is an excellent place to go to that just
kind of fill the demand within the government. Another search you're going to want to do in
here is to kind of see what different parts of government bought the products and
service that you would want to offer. You can go to the contract data search
and look into that and just see what types of contracts are out there, or see how the
government is actually buying these things, because this will also tell you if this
vehicle is the best vehicle for you. So, the government can buy many different ways. And sometimes it's not through the
Multiple Award Schedules Program. And so we want to always make sure that
everyone gets to the correct contract vehicle that fits their company best and makes them
as streamlined as possible for the government. So, I'm going to go through a couple of
websites next that will also help you. This will help you with your market analysis. This is GSA eLibrary, GSA Advantage,
and GSA Schedule Sales Query Plus. So, these three sites together can help you
put together what your market analysis is and what it would take to actually
get [inaudible] within that market. So, GSA eLibrary, this is where we list all of
our contractors as kind of an inventory tool. It lists everyone that we have on contract. As you can see in this small screenshot, there
are these red numbers under this category tab. These are what we call special item numbers. But basically they're a categorization
of what services, products, or solutions we're offering on this contract. And you can look through all of those. I would recommend that you go to the
Multiple Award Schedule in eLibrary and at least do a control find or some sort of
search on there to see if any of the key words that you would describe your
company's offering as are in there. Now, what you also want to do is when
you click into this special item number or this categorization, for example, this
first one is 561210 FAC, if you click on that, you could go to another page, and it would show
you how many contractors offer these thoughts, services, products, or solutions. And this basically tells you how
saturated or unsaturated the market is. You're really looking for a special item number
who has at least more than five contracts on there, mainly because if it's under
five, what you're going to see is it's going to be an extremely niche market, and
it's going to have some suppliers in there that are extremely well known. So, those sometimes are harder to break into. If there is one where there's
a lot of contractors, some of our special item numbers
do have over 100 companies on them. This is also something that you're going to see
that there's a lot of people competing in here. And when I go in this schedule sales query,
there are certain things that you can look up in there that will tell you how
much, how much sales are going on and how it's distributed [inaudible]. And the reason that it's important is you kind
of want to see how much are activities going on. But this also could help you make a decision
on whether or not you want to get a contract. Typically, if you are selling something
that is extremely commercial in nature, which is fabulous, but you have one or two
items, some of the things we do [inaudible] just so you don't have so much of the burden on it
is to find companies that sell similar items that you are selling and connect with
them, and maybe become a supplier for them through their contract, which we call
a prime subcontractor relationship. And this helps you kind of get into that
government market, but you don't have to do the work that is related to getting
on contracts and maintaining that contract. So, this is always a really great thing. So, right now, we are in
this midst of a pandemic. And as you guys know, we are constantly
trying to make sure we have enough masks for the federal government and for FEMA and
state and local governments and for people to hand out to the population, hand
sanitizer, these kind of things, cleaning, all those kind of things. If you're a company that you sell with
and you only sell one or two of these, as this pandemic is not going
to go on indefinitely, finding a company that you can team up
with quickly that you can sell your stuff through them and they can resell on your
behalf is always a really great idea, because it gets your product on contract
more quickly, and you shift a little bit of that burden to that prime contractor who
owns that contract, but you're also able to provide them supplies that
they can then sell as well. And adding a new supply is much easier,
or adding a new special item number and new item is much easier than
getting a whole new contract. So, as you're thinking about whether or not you
want to go through this [inaudible] just know that one of the things that's going
to be something you want to think about is maybe I need to do a
prime subcontracting relationship, maybe I need to have someone resell my product through their contract while they've
been doing all this work myself. And then it kind of also
helps you determine whether or not this would be something you
would want to do in the future. But especially with things that we need
quickly, this is the easiest and most quick way to do it is to team up with someone. GSA Advantage is another
great place to look related to your market research,
especially if you sell products. So, GSA Advantage is a buying website. So, anyone can go there. You can only purchase if you
log in and you meet the criteria of what we would call an eligible user. The federal government, for example. But you can go in there and look at pricing. So, some of the things you're going to want to
use GSA Advantage for is you're going to want to look up your manufacturer part numbers
that you offer, type them into that search and see how many contractors are
selling that exact same item. So, when you click on the manufacturer
part number in GS, in Advantage, one of the things you're going to get to
is a comparison or price comparison matrix, and it's going to list all the
companies that also sell that item. So, if you're looking on there and
you see that there are hundreds of companies selling the exact same item, this
is also a great indicator that you may want to team up with a company and just resell
through that company rather than going through the process of getting a
very highly competitive market. One of the other things you're going
to want to search in there are going to be whether or not you can compete. So, it will show the pricing
from lowest to highest. And so you're going to want to see whether
or not your pricing fits in that arena, if your pricing's too high, or if your pricing
might be a little higher than you want it to be and you're down at the bottom of the list, you
want to make sure that your pricing comes up. But then there's also other
features than just pricing. You've got delivery. So, is that delivery going to be in
a week, is it going to be 30 days? Sometimes delivery is a big factor for an
agency when they're purchasing something. Another item would be warranty terms. And then there is also where they ship. So, do you only ship to the
contiguous 48 states, or do you also shift to Hawaii and Alaska? Do you ship overseas? What are those different things that
we have in there that you can do? So, you're going to want to look through all of
those different things in that comparison to see if what you're providing at
the price you're providing with these extra features would be
something that benefits everyone. So, another thing that we have a
lot of new contractors do is go to the schedule sales query dashboard. And this is a dashboard that has been created
because in the Multiple Award Schedules Program, we transparently put out at a summary level
all the sales that go through this program. So, this is something that
you could go and just be. One of the things you're going to want to
look in here is if you want to report in here by special item number and there are a
lot of contractors, you want to validate that the sales are equally distributed. If you notice that they're not, they're in
four or five companies of a hundred companies, you're going to want to really think about that
to make sure that you're [inaudible] is going to be a good competition related
to those other contractors. So, you kind of put together this picture. You need to know how many
companies are in this arena. You need to know how distributed
these sales are in this arena. And you need to know whether or not your pricing and additional what we call best value factors
are competitive enough to be in this pricing. So, these are the things you're
going to want to put together to put together your market
research to determine whether or not this is a vehicle
you would like to go to. So, at the end of doing all this,
you're going to hopefully be able to answer is my organization
position for a mass contract success. So, to be successful in that, it
is not just getting the contract. Getting the contract is a very large step,
but there is a lot going on in there. It will require resources. It will require education. You must market this contract at all times. We do have a contract clause of $25,000
where you need to get at least $25,000 worth of contracts through the MAS contracts within
your first two years of being on contracts, and then 25,000 each year after that. So, that's a very high number. So, if you are selling products that
are extremely low in cost, this is, if you don't feel you're going to have
enough volume coming through, this is, again, going to be when you make that decision to team with someone rather than
getting your own contract. Know that you're going to need to devote
resources to this and you're going to need to develop expertise, not just in marketing,
not just knowing the landscape of this, but also fulfilling all those requirements. There are a lot of requirements in this
contract, and that's why the beginning, one of the benefits is it provides a very strong
happy regulation for our customer agencies is because we have these requirements
to make sure that they are able to do their [inaudible] safely and securely. So, if you've gone through all of that and
you're like, yeah, this is my contract vehicle, I really want to do it, this is
exactly what I need, you're going to go through the offer process
and what we call the roadmap. So, you're going to go to this MAS roadmap
and you're going to look through it. And I recommend that everyone read through
the entire roadmap once before you even start putting your offer together. Don't put your offer together as you read. It will become very confusing. So, read the entire roadmap and then come
back and start to put your offer together. In this roadmap, it's going to break things
into three sections; a get ready section, a submit your offer section, and
a finalize your offer section. Your get ready is getting your
training, your registration, and making sure that you
understand the solicitation. Also know to actually submit your offer, you
will need to get additional certificates, and there will be a link to that on that
website of what the appropriate ones are. Assemble your offer. And you'll complete various
forms and template for that. You'll compile that information. And then when you finalize your offer, you're
going to submit it through our eOffer, system, and that's where you're going to be
assigned a CO, and they will review and then negotiate your said offer. And then once you're awarded,
you go forward and sell. I do recommend that you try and get
into the [inaudible] market prior to getting a Multiple Award Schedule Contract. It does make it a little easier because
if you're in the federal market already, you kind of have learned a little bit
of government speak along the way, which makes the reading a
little easier for everyone. So, what you're going to do is
you're going to locate and read and understand the MAS solicitation. So, it's going to be after you've read that
roadmap, you're going to go to eoffer.gsa.gov. You can also look it up on beta.sam.gov. But if you go to eoffer.gsa.gov,
there is a button for solicitations. And the very top one is called
the Multiple Award Schedule. All the other existing schedules that
will be listed on here are retired, dropping off so you won't be
able to actually look at them. You'll only be able to them at them
in beta.sam.gov probably by the end of this calendar year [inaudible]. But in here, you'll be able to find the
current Award Schedule Contract Vehicle. We recommend that you read
the main solicitation. So, when you click on that, you're
going to get all of these documents. That number one document called solicitation
is one of the most important ones, mainly because it has the
offer instructions in there that will map one to one to that MAS roadmap. So, you're going to want to go through
that solicitation, all the way through it, so that you know what you need to get ready. And then based on which large category you found
you're in, that blue box of those 12 categories, whichever one you fall into, you're also
going to download that category attachment because that's going to have the additional
terms and conditions, but also apply on top of whatever is in that solicitation. So, again, please, please,
please read the solicitation. So, instructions for all offerors which
is in what we call the SCP is going to be administrative/contract data. And then it's going to go
into your technical proposal. This is going to be a lot of what
you're going to be submitting in eOffer, and that's your corporate experience. You need two years of corporate
experience, and that's about your company. The corporate experience can also be
found on your company's website under the About Us link that's in, that's
usually where most people find that. Past performance for factor two. We have two versions of past performance. You can do CPARS if you have
past work with federal agencies. Or you can submit us a list of point of
contacts, which we will then e mail a survey to. We do ask that you make sure that you pick
people that you know are super responsive. We really only give 10 days for those things,
so I also do recommend that in eOffer, as soon as your CO is assigned, to ask
them when they're going to send those out so you can maybe ping your point of
contacts to tell them when the survey comes, make sure that you respond to it. Factor three is going to be
your quality control plan. For products, you're going to be looking
at supply chain risk management, labor, you're going to be looking at those
quality control factors for your company. A lot of the quality control
are in employee handbooks. The last one is project experience. Project experience is really
related to the special item numbers, or the subcategories that you are looking into. And that's going to be demonstrating
that you have that experience and how you have that experience. And then you're going to go through your
price proposal, and that's going to be under a price proposal template
where you'll submit that pricing. So, again, after you've proposed, you're going
to be looking at that category attachment. Based on what you're offering,
that category attachment is going to be different for everyone. And you may have more than one. If you're offering very complex
solutions, like contact centers, which you would need information technology
and professional services, you're going to want to download both of those category attachments. So, just make sure you've
read through and made sure that you have all the category
attachments you need. All the category attachments and also
solicitation will direct you to the MAS roadmap where you're going to see that
one to one throughout everything. And under this, you'll have a link to
this available offerings and requirements. This is where you're going to see all of
your templates, that price proposal template. If you are selling products and
you need a letter of supply, it's going to have [inaudible] instructions. Anything that has a template
associated is going to be on this page. So, again, that's why I always say, read that
full MAS roadmap, read that solicitation, read the category attachment, and then
start to figure out what you need to do to put this offer together because
it will give you a complete story. So, when you're ready to start your offer,
you'll make sure, you need to make sure that you have a digital certificate
to enter the eOffer system. The digital certificate typically
takes about two weeks to get. So, while you're reading everything, this is a
great time to go get that digital certificate and really read through all that
documentation so that by the time you're done with all the reading, you're starting to
put together your plan of how you're going to put this offer together and you've
got your digital certificate ready. Typically, a digital certificate lasts for about
two years, and then you've got to renew it. Make sure that when you renew it, you renew
it for the same e mail and the same name with the same first, if you have a middle name
or no middle name, or if it's just an initial, and then your last name, make sure you put
spaces in the same place when you renew it. That's probably one of our biggest things
is contractors get frustrated their digital certificate doesn't work after they renew it
because they changed the name just slightly, but it doesn't match back
up to what we have on file. So, how do we evaluate a
Multiple Awards Schedule offer? So, the very first thing we do is completeness. So, we validate whether or not you have
completely filled out all the templates or provided all the documentation
that is required in the solicitation. The next thing we look at is scope. Is what you're offering in scope with
the special item numbers and large and subcategories in which you apply for? So, we're going to be looking at responsibility. Do you have the correct responsibility? Do you have the correct foundation in play? [ Inaudible ] This is both for you as much as us. Making sure contractors are successful in
this program is extremely important to us, and so we don't want you
to get caught off guard. If you are not a small business, if
you're an other event small business, you're going to have a subcontracting
plan in that, in there, and that will be something we will further
negotiate from your first put you in there, that you put in there, the
first template you provided. And then your proposed pricing and
price related terms and conditions. And these are a best value term. What's warranty, delivery, where
do you deliver, how quickly? If it's for labor categories,
what is the education level? What's the experience? Those different types of things to make sure
that it's all sitting in the right place. So, basically, then it gets
into, this is basically going to be your timeline [inaudible] is assigned, they're going to do fact
finding and clarification. So, if they find a document missing or
anything like that, they are going to make sure that you have everything in there that you need. And if not, they're going to ask you
clarifying questions to make sure we get that. Then you're going to start
the negotiation phase. Everything you've put into this offer is
basically your beginning negotiations. And we will further negotiate from that. And sometimes that negotiation also includes us
making sure that what you propose not only works for the federal government, but
puts you guys in a secure situation. And then we're going to do a request
for a final proposal revision. So, any final revisions you guys need to do. And then we'll make the addition
of award or no award. So, majority of this stuff is going
to happen after you submit your offer. You will get a CO assigned. And that's the person that you're
mainly going to be working with. You could get a contract specialist that
also works with that contracting officer. So, you're just going to want to make sure
you have the right [inaudible] contacts so that you are communicating fully
through this entire situation. So, the last thing I have
is the learning resources. So, if you had download this presentation
at the very end this thing is going to be all your learning resources on one slide. You're going to have your MAS roadmap, your
vendor toolbox, the schedule pages on gsa.gov, contacts for the office of
small business utilization. Any training events that we have, pathways to
success, which is a training that you will need to take for a vendor education center. I do recommend that anyone,
whether or not you have a contract, you're thinking of getting a contract,
or you're just entered in the, interested in the Multiple Award Schedules
Program in general, and leaning towards that, joining the interact community
is always a great thing. We will e mail you when we have
new stuff that goes out there. And then we do have a national
customer service center that could help get your
questions to the correct place. And then, again, if you do have questions
or questions from this specific training, feel free to e mail MAS PMO at maspmo@gsa.gov. So, with that, I'm going to have Ms.
Weston from the MAS PMO, unmute her and see if we have any questions. And, again, we are going to be
trying to take questions that may or may not have been answered, but they're
going to be questions that are [inaudible] so we can get as much information
to you guys as possible. >> Hi, Stephanie. We've received many questions in the chat box. Our first question is from Mark. He says, we sell patient room furniture
and medical carts and bassinets. In the past, patient room
furniture was under Schedule 71, and carts and bassinets were under Schedule 65. Does the MAS consolidation simplify this,
or do we have to pursue two schedules? >> So, for yours, you will need
to continue to do two schedules because 65 is actually owned by the VA. So, you'll be doing one contract through
the VA and one contract through GSA. So, you can do both that
hospital furniture there. If you do have things that do
sit under what was the Legacy 66, which is that scientific equipment, and
I would recommend that you look there, you can see in there's anything
that cross pollinates for you. But you could do only just one [inaudible]. >> The next question we have is from Benjamin. He had a question about whether
or not contractors without prior government experience
can get on GSA's schedule. >> Yep, 100%. So, GSA [inaudible] is one
of the few contract vehicles that you do not need specifically
government experience to participate. So, we do accept past performance from,
if you don't have government experience, so you wouldn't have what's called the
CPARS, which is the past performance that a federal agency would provide,
bullet you do have past performance with commercial companies, or you have
them with a state and local agency or anything like that, we will accept that. You would basically take what's called
the narrative version of past performance, and you would provide us no more
than five point of contacts. We really, we only really need
three, so, but we ask for five just in case we have a couple
people who aren't responsive. And what, you'll need to
provide us certain information, and then we will send them a survey. And we give them about 10
days to return that survey. And that's how we would do
your past performance. >> Okay, next question is from Alyssa. She would like you to expand on the
[inaudible] and would like to know, is there a process you recommend
for small businesses in order to make these teaming arrangements? >> So, for the total solutions, what we usually
do for the contractor teaming arrangements is, so everyone, the difference between
a contractor teaming arrangement and a prime sub relationship is a prime
sub, only the prime has to have a contract with all the products, services,
and solutions on contract. The sub does not need a contract
to play in that relationship. In a contractor teaming arrangement, all
parties, and there can be more than two, but all parties would need to have their own
individual Multiple Award Schedule Contract. And what you guys would do is you would work
together to determine which companies need to be part of a teaming arrangement. I recommend strongly, very, very
strongly that you have a written document of what each partner will be providing. And then as you guys come across
RFQs or requests for quote, whether it be an EVI [phonetic] or it be
through data.sam.gov, when you come to something where you provide a large percentage or even
a small percentage that you have other teams, partners that would fill those gaps,
and they each have their own contracts, and everything that you need is on
an approved price list with you, or one of your team partners, you would
come to provide a quote with yourself and listing those other companies and
their contract number and referencing that you have a contractor teaming arrangement. Now, the way that our systems
work, it's not awesome sometimes. So, just know that usually an agency
will ask for a company to step forward as the leading member of the contractor
teaming arrangement because typically when they report theirselves to what's called
FPDS, or the Federal Procurement Data System, they will only allow the
listing of one contract member, and they'll use whichever the
lead of the team is typically. So, they will ask for someone to be that
lead so that if they have any major problems or if they have any issues or even just
questions or concerns, they have one person to contact and they're not playing
a game of telephone with everyone. >> The next question is from Peter. Do you guys know information about the
data.sam.gov contract page and how that's used? >> So, data.sam.gov has quite
a few searches in there. There is a blanket that is all of their
searches in one, which is always a safe bet if you just want to cover the gamut. And that would be the all awards data. Again, other things that they
have is contract opportunities. And this would be your contract opportunities
of potential request for quotes or requests for proposal and searching those
and you're looking for key words to see what agencies have opportunities
out there that you can actually bid on. Another search that you can do is contract data. And the contract data search is more
going to be related to who's won something and what a company's history is
or what an agency's history is or what an agency's history is or what type
of contracts have been awarded and won. You can also look up entity information, which
we do, and that would be related to looking at the company's, what makes codes you guys have
assigned to you, what your sign standard is, making sure you're registered and your
registration is current and active, all of these different things would be in there. >> Next question is from Eric. It says, if you already have an MAS
contract and you're getting to the end of a 20 year performance period, is GSA
considering a streamlined way to [inaudible] and get automatic schedule again? >> So, we actually do have what is
called a streamlined offer process, which is for what we call follow on contracts,
meaning you already have a current contract, and you are basically getting your
next 20 years of that contract type. So, the things that you need to do
to make sure you're qualified for, if you have not signed the MAS mod for the,
to move to the new MAS consolidated schedule, so basically if you type your contracts in
eLibrary, if you don't show up under MAS, go ahead and make sure you sign that MAS mod
first, because what you need to do is make sure that the schedule number matches. And since we only have one vehicle
type, it's going to have to match MAS. You're going to have to make sure that
your special item numbers match 100%, and that you're not changing your
price list at all in this new vehicle. And if you have those three things, the
schedule and the prices have not changed, and that's the offering, not necessarily the
pricing, but the offering of the products or the services that you're going to offer,
if those three things haven't changed, you can go ahead and do the streamlined. And when you go into the MAS roadmap, or
into the solicitation, you'll see an asterisk on certain sections where it doesn't apply. So, you don't have to do the vendor
education center of the contractor assessment. You don't have to do pathway specific
success training, any of that. You don't need to do the past performance. It's also streamlined out. You won't need to do that either
because we have your past performance. The corporate experience and the
financials, you won't need to do either. So, you'll be able to see in the solicitation
those sections which you don't need to complete because you are going to be, you
are a contractor in good standing. Depending on how many years you have left, I
usually recommend people start their follow on contract when they're in year
14 or 15 of their 20 year contract. So, if it's past that 15 years, go
ahead and start getting that going. >> Okay, and it looks like we have about two
minutes left, so this will be our last question. It's from [inaudible]. It says, with COVID 19 challenges
to sales in 2020, will GSA [inaudible] extending
the initial two year time frame where there is not yet achieving
$25,000 in sales? >> So, I know we are giving more time, and it's
really going to be a case by case situation, that we are giving a little bit more
latitude right now due to the pandemic, especially for companies that the pandemic
has forced to shut down temporarily to give them time to get back up and going
and get things going again to make sure that you guys, it's an equal
rating for everyone. Okay, well, with that being our last question,
again, if your question was not answered, please feel free to e mail the maspmo@gsa.gov. We just don't have a ton of time to answer
every question, but every question is important, so please feel free to go
ahead and e mail that to us. Thank you again so much for attending. And at this time, I will turn it
back over to Robin Vikra [phonetic]. >> Hi, this is Andrea. So, I'm actually going to take over from here. Thank you, Stephanie, and team. We had a lot of really great
information sharing in the Q&A. So, I am going to actually
switch back to the break room. It's time for another quick 15 minute break. So, while you're grabbing your next
cup of coffee and allowing us to set up for our next speaker, please
consider taking our polls. We have two questions here. What subject would you like to learn more about? Make sure you use the scroll bars on
the side to go from option to option. And also, which small business resource
have you found the most valuable? We will see you back here at
1:30 Eastern for a 2020 look at supply chain resilience
and contract compliance.
