Sign Oklahoma Banking NDA Later

Industry sign banking oklahoma nda later

[Music] all right our next speaker for this afternoon is matthew moriarty he is a partner with copernic's law llc where he is an exclusive practice of federal government contracting law matt works with clients on litigation matters in various forms including government accountability offices gao u.s small business administration and the u.s court of federal claims and among others he also assists clients with transition transactional issues from various business to business relationships to compliance with various socioeconomic statutes and regulations matt is well versed in the entire federal contracting regulatory landscape matt enjoys working with small businesses to help them solve their problems you can follow matt on twitter more moriarty govcon or his email moriarty coprints.com take it away matt thank you thank you for for the introduction um hello everybody uh i'm coming to you from my living room in kansas city missouri i apologize as you can see i still have my kovid beard still have my coveted haircut um i'm hoping to have that remedied soon but what i'll do now is start sharing my screen so you can look at the presentation instead of this face okay i hope everybody can see that if you can't please let me know um so you know it's i've given this a presentation like this a couple years in a row now and when i started you know i would say wow what a what an unbelievable year i can't believe how many changes and now you know it's just again you know can you believe nobody saw 2019 coming nobody saw the early parts of 2020 coming uh with uh covid uh uh significantly affecting um this um this meeting even so uh uh we're living in a world where things are gonna keep changing uh but you know we're here to sort of help you sort it out we hope gonna move on okay so today what we will be talking about is what we've seen over the last i'm gonna say 15 months or so maybe even a little bit longer and what we will expect coming soon and those changes coming soon are frankly basically already here before i get started i did want to plug our blog it is uh uh at smallgovcon.com i think a lot of uh the people um at in this meeting probably are aware of uh the blog run by the co-prince law firm uh where we have over 500 blog posts about federal government contracting issues so uh let's say over the past year give or take quite a few months we've seen tremendous challenges like i said uh tremendous changes um that used to be something that we thought was unusual but the fact is it's going to keep happening so let's just get going uh first and foremost most big changes to how businesses calculate their size just a little bit of a background i'm sure everybody knows this but a company is a small business if its size falls under the standard for the corresponding next code so of course when you get a solicitation issued the first thing you do is go find the next code north american industry classification code um to figure out what size applies to that contract um so for socioeconomic program eligibility um that would be the 8-a program the wosb program you have to determine your size based on your primary next code we talked about eligibility per contract and size includes your company plus any affiliates um affiliation is a big issue in federal government contracting um we can we're not going to cover it a lot in this presentation but i'm sure you'll hear about it over the course of these two days um determining size matters what type of contract you're going to be seeking or performing for service contracts um general services construction and specialty trade you're going to be under a revenue based size standard so that means your size will be measured based on your annual receipts for the last five completed years and your receipts equals total income plus cost of goods sold and i mean the where the rover meets the road with regard to these size determinations is um your tax returns however the sba may look at other information for example um let's say you haven't filed your taxes yet uh for 2019 let's say for example uh something crazy like covet happens and a lot of people put off filing their taxes so if that happens and the sba needs to determine your size for 2019 uh they'll take a uh um a revenue statement of some type now if you're not doing a service contract so if you're manufacturing or you're supplying products you're going to be measured under an employee-based size standard and that's the average number of employees over the preceding 12 months including all employees full-time and part-time including those that you've obtained from a camp agency so tampa employees are included however volunteers are not sometimes there's a lot of debate over whether an independent contractor is an employee the sba has some guidance online where you can look to that it pretty much matches the irs guidance of when an um independent contractor is an employee or not um the big change of course uh and everybody's aware of this now probably was the runway extension act this act was passed by congress in late 2018 uh it came as something of a surprise i believe to the sba i don't think that congress kept sba in the loop on this as much as it could have um but what the act did is it required the sba to calculate receipts over a period of five years as opposed to the three-year historical period of calculation [Music] the sba pushed back i think it's fair to say pretty significantly uh regarding uh putting this act into effect um the extension act passed in late uh 2018 um and the sba almost immediately indicated that uh the act will not be effective in its opinion until the sba updates its regulations uh we wrote about this and this is all water under the bridge now but you know in our opinion that was uh simply incorrect when a statute passes without an effective date attached to it it becomes effective immediately uh however um you know uh in february of 2019 the sba claimed the act didn't apply to it however in august of 2019 the sba created updated its uh regulation to say that um oh i skipped a part uh sba oha upheld um this opinion and said that the three-year standard applies and that the runway extension act will apply as soon as sba promulgates new standards which is exactly what happened early in 2020 the sba said that the five-year measurement period is effective it quite cleverly in our opinion incur included a two-year transition period um meaning that until january 6 2022 if you're the subject of a size protest or otherwise having your size determined you may as a contractor elect to have your size measured over either a three year or five year period the form 355 that people are familiar with having to fill out and submit when size of that issue [Music] has been updated so that you can elect what standard will apply um to your size determination uh one interesting thing that i don't believe we know the answer to yet is does that selection last um for the entire two year period i.e let's say uh you're protested and you say i'd like to have my size measured over a three year period not a five-year period and then you were found small then something changes um six months later or 12 months later and there's another protest at that time can you elect to be measured over a five-year period uh i don't think we know the answer to that so some of you may be wondering okay so what what why is a five-year standard or a three-year standard such a big deal um well um let's assume that you're linear you're a business that is experiencing linear growth okay that means growth over time becoming larger and larger each subsequent year um so that business is uh let's say bidding a contract that is for architectural services under an 8 million size standard if you look based on this slide over a three year average the business would be a large business ineligible to bid on the on the project however over a five-year average the business would be small eligible under the five-year standard but why wouldn't everyone elect to use a five-year standard then um let's take a look at a different type of business this is a business that had much more success years ago and now uh was hoping that those years would come off its books so that it can transition back to a small business let's say you know you were waiting for the end of the fiscal year of 2019 you were hoping to begin bidding on small business contracts suddenly congress passes this uh rule change and says nope sorry it's five year standard that puts that 20 million 2015 and that 10 million 2016 back on your books so if you didn't have the option to elect to be measured over that three-year average the uh historical three-year average then you would be uh an ineligible large business um so it's a it's a very good thing that the sba chose to do um adding in the option to pick either a a three or five year standard oh i see there's a question about access to the slides uh this is being recorded so um my understanding is that these slides will be made available yes um so uh speaking of size standards um recently in late 2019 the size standards did increase to account for inflation um you may want to take a look at your sam profile to you know see what representations and certifications you've made and double check uh frankly to see if had you been in a large business under a certain calculation uh and you were quite close to the border since those uh standards have been increased you may very well be a small business again um take for example and and i'm not gonna go through all these but you can see uh some size standards they all kind of increased a couple of percentage points sort of across the board nothing increased so dramatically that it would make a huge difference uh however you know i mean an extra million and a half here and there it would make a big difference to me i don't know about you um so that was revenue based right but what about employee-based size standards there is a an act called the capturing all small business act that would change the employee calculation period from 12 months to 24 months kind of like the way the runway extension act extended the time period from three years to five years [Music] this act has not passed yet uh it passed a house i don't believe it has passed the senate as of this um this recording and it very may well die uh after passing the house um but it also may have uh some the same issues as the runway extension act because again uh it's not clear if the sba was sort of brought into the discussion before changing this so let's move on a lot to talk about um there were significant changes to the hubzone program over the last 12 to 15 months let's talk about the eligibility requirements kind of as they were what we call the ordinary eligibility requirement requirements to be a hubzone you have to be small business under your primary code at least 51 owned and controlled by persons who are us citizens have your principal office located in a hub zone principal office is a little tricky by the way because that's not your headquarters for sure it may be but really it's just where you have the most of your employees working however if that is a job site that does not count so let's say for example you have a headquarters where you have 12 people you have a satellite office where you have four people and you have 60 workers on a job site uh your headquarters therefore would be your principal office because it is um where you have most of your employees working that is not a job um also the sort of last prong of hubzone eligibility is that at least 35 percent of your employees reside in a hubzone not necessarily the hubzone that your principal office is located in a hubzone all right um and just fyi the sba will round up to determine um how many employees have to be in a a hub zone so for example if you have 95 employees and you're trying to spa is trying to determine how many of those 95 have to be residing in the hub zone you multiply 95 times 35 percent that equals 33.25 employees well you can't have a quarter of a person so fba is going to round up to 34. okay um why were these changes that we're going to get to made well the hubzone program has not been as successful as some of the other programs the annual hubzone contracting goal is three percent uh annual achievement of that um dollars to hubzone contractors is is usually less than two percent um so the sba change uh changes in our opinion somewhat recognize uh that there are have been some deficiencies in the program um so these changes are include some changes in hubzone tracks uh allowing employees to relocate we'll talk about that a little bit more right and active compliance uh required as uh sorry yeah okay active compliance is required as a bid and award date that was the previous rule um the rule change effective late 2019 should make compliance easier um so what does that rule change uh consists of well um your principal office as we talked about uh is going to be where you have the majority of your workers uh doing their everyday work if a hubzone entity purchasability purchases a building or enters into a long term 10 years or more lease in a hub zone it will be determined to be in a hub zone for 10 years if you're as for employees residing in a hubzone if the employee lives at the in the hubzone location for at least 180 days then the employee will be grandfathered in as a hubzone employee so what that means is if the employee lives in the hub zone at the time of certification the employee will be seen as a hubzone resident for the entirety of his or her employment even if he or she moves out of the hub zone the reason for this change uh by the way is that so the hubzone program is intended to uh bring [Music] development to historically underutilized zones and part of that development is jobs right so um when a new business comes to a historically underutilized business zone and starts offering people jobs their circumstances improve and while they have been living in a hub zone they may wish to upgrade to a better apartment or buy a home if so they should not be penalized for that so this is a quite wise change to allow those employees freedom of movement to improve their situations now you do have to attempt to maintain compliance with your hubzone 35 requirement previous to this change attempt to maintain was a bit of a standardless phrase now we know what attempt to maintain is it means you have to have at least 20 percent while you're performing and while you're uh certified for the year uh to live in a hub zone and if you go below that then you have not attempted to maintain uh compliance key change again uh is annual certification of home zone status um what that means is you no longer have to be hubzone compliant at the time of bid and the time of award now you get certified every year and as long as you're certified your hubzone eligible through the year until your next recertification um so now there's no more of this you know atta no more of this putting in a bid and being eligible and then waiting six months and the award comes and suddenly you're not eligible anymore that's not gonna happen another big change to one of the socioeconomic programs is uh doing away with wosb edw osb self-certification the sba will now certify um wosbs and edw osbs so this change dates back years and years in 2015 congress eliminated self-certification by changing the statute to read that all wosbs and edw osbs must be certified that change took a very long time to implement um the sba proposed its uh rule change to its regulations in 2019 halfway through 2019 and they have not gone into effect until you can see this summer so as of july uh 2020 last month the sba has begun accepting applications uh to determine whether a an entity can be a certified wosb or edwsb great news there is no fee associated with that there has been a fee potentially in the past associated with third-party certifiers um that's not the case with the sba it will take some time for uh decisions start coming out the sba has said that its first wosb edw osb determinations will be issued on october 15th i suppose there's no reason why some couldn't be issued before that but that's the timeline that has been put out there will remain two options fo certification um the first of course is certification through the sba that requires submitting documents to demonstrate eligibility um there should be a decision coming with that uh within 90 days but frankly with covid19 and with the fact that there are probably you know thousands upon thousands of firms who will be seeking this certification there may be a bottleneck we don't know but we thought we'd point it out um certification through the sba can also be done by submitting evidence uh of verification uh through other programs we'll talk about that a little bit more in the next slide uh and the second option is of course uh third-party certification um i should point out by the way that uh certification through the sba is through the certify i believe it's actually the beta.certify.sba.gov website it should be up and running i gave a presentation on the day that that um began accepting applications and i do think there was a little bit of trouble just with the technology but i expect that that's fully up and running now certification through the sba um you don't need to make your case twice if you've already made it for a separate program if that makes sense so if you're a certified a participant then you've already proven that you are [Music] a disadvantaged individual and you have enough control over the entity to be certified so then as long as you're a woman you're eligible for the 8 a program because in order to be an 8 a participant you have to prove that you are socially disadvantaged and economically disadvantaged then you can automatically be economically an e w osb which is an economically disadvantaged woman-owned small business now that's not the case for sdv osp or vosb approval however if you are approved by by the department of veteran affairs the center for verification and uh examination i think it's i always get the e wrong uh but uh if you're verified by the va cve then you can show the sba that you've been verified by them and you're a woman and you own the business in which case they'll say okay you're a wosb the last uh of the other programs that will lead to wosb certification is disadvantaged business enterprise authorized by the department of transportation the hubzone program unfortunately cannot help a certification through the hubzone program cannot help an entity become certified at the wosb because frankly it's a different uh standard hubzone program is about where the business is and who works there not who owns the business and who controls it uh so that's the key difference there so sba certification is uh is going to be a formal process uh like the 8 a business development program certification however my expectation is it's going to be a little bit less convoluted the way the 8 a business development program can be sort of a long drawn out process it uh pardon me um uh it it to apply as 8a you have to again improve your socially disadvantaged in many cases and prove you're economically disadvantaged for wosb you don't have to prove either of those and for edw osp you only have to prove um that you're economically disadvantaged this of course replaces the self-certification method that had been part of the wosb program for many many years what that meant is that self-certification was done on a contract by contract basis meaning that by virtue of submitting a bid on a wosb or edw osb project you're certifying that you are eligible for that contract the contracting officer was empowered to accept self-certifications kind of just take the company at its word unless uh um the contracting officer had reason to believe that the the company was not eligible and of course no fees i mentioned that before but it's worth reiterating the sba certification timeline is uh frankly pretty quick one thing to know is that if an application is incomplete it will be not evaluated the sba will let applicants know within 15 calendar days if an application is complete or not if not the applicant will be given the opportunity to complete the application once a application is complete a final determination will be made within 90 days quote whatever practicable um we've come across that whatever practicable standard quite a bit and it's pretty it's a pretty good standard the sba will will frankly go to great pains to hit that deadline consider that to be a hard deadline but it is not in fact a hard deadline so if there is a big bottleneck like we discussed that could lead to some longer time frames pardon me when you apply for wosb or edw osb certification you will get a determination in writing you will either be approved and certified as wosb or you will not deny if you are denied you will be given a written decision that will lay out the specific reasons for denial you cannot unfortunately appeal that decision to the sba office of hearing and appeals however you can request reconsideration of the decision within 30 days of the denial and you may provide additional information to explain to the sba either why that decision is wrong or perhaps why the reasoning for the decision has changed what happens if you're a self-certified wosb well if you have a contract and you certified and were eligible as wosb or edw osb at the time of the offer then you are considered eligible wosb or eda wosb throughout the life of the contract so let's say you're a wosb you self-certified you know two years ago for a contract you got the contract and you're actually not that interested in certifying as wosb now but you do want to keep performing that contract well you can you're considered wosb or edw osb through the life of the country however if it's a long-term contract i.e more than five years you will have to recertify as wosb or edwsb or have the agency no longer count awards to you toward their wosb edwsp contracting goal what happens to third party certifications um well they don't go away you can still be certified through a third party i had to be frank i don't know why you would they do have the option of charging a reasonable fee they do use the same standards as the sba the sba has approved four third-party entities to certify [Music] businesses as wosb edw osb they are we bank women's business enterprise national council uh the u.s women's chamber [Music] nwboc i'm not even going to try with that one national women's business owners corporation and the el paso chamber of commerce women's chamber of commerce i had to omit that because i was going to go off the slide um so that's the wosb program uh big big changes there um now let's talk about the limitation on subcontracting um this has been another one of those uh long term uh things that uh has been in the works for a while and by the way i'll get uh to some of these questions uh hopefully by the end of the presentation um if not i'll send some answers through the chat sorry so uh every set-aside contract i.e every uh small business contract or wosb edwp sdv osb contract must have a limit on the amount that the small business contractor may subcontract out 2013 uh through the ndaa congress changed the limitation on subcontracting and uh that uh change was put into effect by the sba through its regulations on in june of 2016. the far has continued to lag behind the far council proposed changing the far last year i do not believe that the far has changed as of yet as of today that could be coming along any time now but effectively most agencies including the department of defense agencies have adopted those changes through deviations class deviations to the far so those changes uh for the most part are in effect however we do continue to see in contracts the uh far clause limitation on subcontracting um so it's something to keep an eye out you're probably asking what the difference is um well the far um says that the prime must perform at least 50 of the cost of the contract incurred for personnel so that's for service contracts it's measured based on what you pay your people right um so supply contracts uh the prime must perform at least fifty percent of the cost of manufacturing not including materials the sva rule and i know it says 2013 nda sba dod let's just call it the sba rule the fba rule says for service contracts no more than 50 of the amount paid by the government can be paid to entities that are not similarly situated uh so what that means is you get a check from the government for a hundred dollars and you turn around and write a fifty dollar check to a subcontractor for doing uh its roofing work you have just um uh subcontracted out fifty percent of that contract for supply contracts obviously you see it there it's 50 of the amount paid by the government that are two uh entities that are not similarly situated we will talk about the limitation of subcontracting for construction yes so for general construction the far clause said the prime must perform at least 15 percent of the cost of the contract excluding the cost of materials specialty trade is 25 the sba reverses that uh it's it's basically the same limitation but it just says you can't pay out more than 85 of the amount paid by the government to firms that are not similarly situated uh excluding the costs of materials we will talk about similarly situated soon by the way um same thing with specialty contractors you can't pay more than 75 to firms that are not similarly situated again cost of materials excluded what is a similarly situated entity well it is an entity that has the same socio-economic status as the prime contractor so if the prime contract is a hubzone contract for example and then one of the subcontractors is a hubzone entity then that entity is considered similarly situated and the monies paid to that entity are not considered subcontracted money or moreover um compliance with the limitation on subcontracting is allowed through paying that subcontractor so the idea behind this by the way is to say hey we set this aside for hubzone entities we want those dollars to go to at least a certain percentage of those dollars to go to hubzone entities so if you're the prime in your hubzone and you pay money to another hubzone well it's still staying within the family of entities uh that are uh sought to be the beneficiary of this contract however if you turn around and subcontract to an sdv osb that would be subcontracted even though it's a small business because it's not the type of entity that the government is seeking to have the benefit of the contract so by the way a very strange wrinkle in all this is that the similarly situated entity is uh determined by whether uh the entity is a small business via the nax code north american industry classification system code assigned by the prime contractor to the subcontract in our experience a lot of primes do not go through the effort to assign a next code to the subcontract but if compliance with the limitation on subcontracting is going to be um if you're going to stay in compliance by subcontracting to similarly situated entities you can't forget to do that otherwise it won't it won't count as a similarly situated entity one interesting thing that i don't think we know the answer to is okay what if it the next code is a 16 million size standard and then you assign a next code to the subcontract that's a 32 million size standard it's bigger uh does that still become a similarly situated entity i think based on the wording of the regulation it would um but i don't think that it may not still be in the spirit of the of the law another quick uh rule change to a limitation on subcontracting late 2018 contracting officers gain the discretion to request information about compliance i.e a contracting officer can say hey you have to tell me how you are going to be in compliance with the limitation on subcontracting um they also have the discretion to require compliance at the order level um so generally speaking you know compliance would be measured based on uh the total contract uh but if if the contract officer wants to contract the officer can say you have to comply with the limitation on subcontracting for this task order as well it also excludes certain costs from the calculation such as airline travel cloud computing mass media purchases all that more about the late 2019 change this expands there's an argument inside protests called ostensible subcontractor affiliation um so you can make an argument that a prime is uh too reliant or so reliant on its subcontractor to do the work that the subcontractor is a subcontractor in name only so this change allows an entity a protester to assert that the prime contractor is uh reliant on a similarly situated subcontractor um sorry not similarly situated subcontractor ie and sdv osb but if they are similarly situated then no ostensible subcontractor affiliation can be found because like we talked about before the idea is for the benefit of this contract to stay with the type of entity that the contract is set aside for some big updates to the far [Music] this came out not long ago next codes must be assigned to every solicitation uh contract and order uh including delivery orders uh so the next code must be listed on the underlying contract for a delivery order if you have a multiple award contract the contracting officers can now select more than one nayx code to assign to a multiple award contract i there's not one that best describes the purpose of the contract so we can assign several um by the way um if you are representing your size on a multiple award contract and it does have many makes codes assigned to it you have to represent your size for each code currently uh contractors had to uh not currently but previously contractors only had to recertify their size in the event of a novation or a merger or a long-term contract like we talked about over five years long now contractors must recertify their size and their socioeconomic status in certain circumstances including when the contracting officer asks a contractor to recertify and in the event of a merger or acquisition if after such a request the contractor is no longer eligible from a size or socioeconomic status standpoint that doesn't mean that the contractor loses the contract it means that the agency can no longer count those contracting dollars toward its goaling would that prohibit an agency from issuing new task orders for example we don't know the answer to that this is the last and probably the most uh welcome of the changes we saw over the last um you know 15 or so months no more fed biz ops now the government has switched all uh contract seeking opportunities to beta sam um and it has now become uh the hub for all these previous portals including fvo fpds slash ng wage determinations and of course sam registration um while uh it has been a bit of a bumpy transition um i think most people agree that fedbizopps was not the most user-friendly platform so hopefully uh this will ultimately be a very good change um so there has been some confusion as to when an entity must be registered in sam um [Music] as of late 2018 and i just want to squeeze this in uh offers must be registered at the time of the bid and they must verify that um their sam registration is current accurate and complete um remember uh this is sort of a key companies are very good at ensuring their sam profile is current accurate and complete however um when they're in a joint venture they're often not as good at updating their sam profiles so it's just something to keep an eye on if you're in joint ventures you have to make sure your sam profile you're registered and your sam profile is current accurate and complete as of the time of bid future um changes uh there there's quite a bit on the horizon and uh um we're not going to go into huge detail of of all that but um you'll you'll see what i mean so um there was a proposed rule to make some very big changes uh that has not passed as of yet um most of them are likely to pass in my opinion so one of the proposed changes is to consolidate the mentor protege program so the sba currently runs both the 8 a mentor protege program and the all small mentor protege program they have essentially the exact same rules regulations benefits the only difference that i'm aware of is to take place to be a protege in the 8a mentor protege program you have to be an a contractor that's literally the only difference so this proposed rule change would consolidate those two programs and there would simply be one sba mentor protege program it's a pretty good idea and it's almost certain to happen um there is a part of that which might cap the size of mentor companies but that's just something to keep an eye on [Music] this change would also eliminate joint venture pre-approval requirements for the 8a program the sba goes it's probably quite a bit of a headache for the sba frankly to approve all joint ventures um that are seeking 8a contracts um one thing you know since the entity that is in the 8 a program has already gone through the approval process if it forms a joint venture it could be much easier and simpler for that bidder the joint venture to certify uh when it submits its bid that it is an eligible a.a joint venture the joint venture pre-approval process would not go away for sole source awards we are to understand um but that's another one where contractors often go into trouble because not only is the joint venture required to have to be approved if the joint venture seeks another 8 a contract it must submit its addendum to be approved for that second project speaking of joint ventures with multiple contracts this proposed rule change would eliminate the three two rule for joint ventures what that rule is is that a joint venture can perform no more than three contracts over a two-year period without becoming generally affiliated so this is not a cap on the amount of uh contracts a joint venture can do it's an affiliation so if a joint venture has hit three contracts over a two year period and it seeks a fourth that's fine if the joint venture members understand that they're going to be affiliated if they get that fourth and perform that contract this change would uh simply do away with the three and two rule and create a two-year rule um so joint ventures will simply say perform as many contracts as they can over a two year period again uh in our opinion it's a great change it's a simplification the three and two rule is something that is very confusing to contracting officers but also it doesn't have a lot of teeth because the rule can be easily circumvented by simply forming a new joint venture and then finally the proposed change would require recertification for orders set aside under unrestricted idiq contracts so i.e you get an idiq contract and then a task order comes out as a restricted task order contracting officers would require recertification in that circumstances a couple few other things guns numbers are going to go away by the end of the year they're becoming a unique entity identifying your numbers um you will request a uei in sam uh and if you are already in sam and have a duns number a uei will be automatically generated for you that number will be 12 characters it will include letters and numbers uh and your duns number will not go away it will remain on your record for historical purposes but the uei will be what the government uses to identify you furthermore gsa is looking at consolidating its schedules a solicitation was released in late 2019 it will migrate existing schedules into the consolidated existing contracts sometime this year it may in fact be going on right now i honestly am not certain and another key change uh executive order 1349.5 non-displacement of qualified workers i'm sorry i'm speeding up a little bit we're running out of time this was a right of first refusal for incumbent workers it's kind of an executive order that comes on and off the books based on you know who's in the white house this was revoked in 2019 the far has incorporated that change to remove references to non-displacement qualified workers um but you should still you know verify that when you're going through uh your contracts to bid on to see if you still have to offer a first refusal to qualified incumbent workers and sort of last but not least at all is the government's focus on cyber security big big steps uh to change your cyber security requirements uh i'm not gonna go through all this um but just be aware that there are far clauses that require cyber security uh those clauses are going to flow down to subcontractors and this of course is the big one here the cyber security maturity model certification the government has taken great pains to require department of defense contractors to comply with a cyber security model [Music] cyber security certification will be given a level you the level will be assigned from one to five there will be contracts that will say you have to have a certain cmmc level in order to bid on this work there will be third parties who will perform audits to determine what level you should be at [Music] the government said that it would start incorporating those standards into solicitations in summer it has since revised uh that approach to probably fall although the questing came up to us is this something that's going to be required beyond the department of defense we didn't know now we do know yes it is very likely uh to be required beyond the department of defense in fact if you look at the gsa stars 3 solicitation that just came out it does mention cmmc requirements may be part of requirement for stars three um let's uh we do have a little bit of time so i'm gonna try to get to the the questions um i stopped my screen chair um where do we have the chat all right so um question one from angie cash if a firm is an 8 a edw usb or cve do they still need to complete the sba application for evwsb and upload documents i think what you're asking is if you're 8a and your cve do are you automatically certified as edw osb no i don't believe so you would have to upload uh an application um put in an application and say you know basically your application is uh going to consist of proving that you're already 8a certified so you should you should automatically be edw osb certified as well um what is the best order debbie asks what is the best order to get certified in between hubzone wosb edwb and 8a i don't have a an exact opinion on that it's whatever is best for your business i can say the 8a program is kind of the gold standard program because the 8 a program focuses most on sole source awards and it is a business development program so there are some other advantages associated with that so if you're going to be 8a eligible i would say you should seek to be at a certified yes the other programs are excellent programs the 8a program is the gold standard we talked about limitation on subcontracting for construction i'm happy to speak more on it if anyone would like um i see there's a question here from tom that says i'm a manufacturer rep of manufacturers gsa certified how do i fit into the bidding and purchasing process tom i gotta say i don't know um but if you want you can email me i'm gonna share my screen again show my my contact page and you can email me by the way we sell handbooks they're available on amazon if you're looking to educate yourself please go ahead and take a look at those there's my contact information if you have a question for me please email me i've included my personal email account for any reason you can't reach me at my work account and i think i have gone a little bit over time so i i guess i better um turn it back over to burbon all right thank you matt do you all have any questions you didn't go over that much that's the first it's all right all right well actually it's carter or do you want me to do it quarter uh we we're ready for the next session matt i really appreciate you doing this as always it's been very helpful to to get uh your update on all the changes and i think i agree with you this is uh an amazing year for changes an amount of changes and the number of programs affected you'll notice i barely mentioned covet 19. yeah yeah not to mention the whole global pandemic thing so um it's it is a wild year you