Industry Guidance and Resources

HCaTS industry partners are integral to the helping agencies meet their customized solutions for human capital management and training requirements.

Contract Administration

Proper contract maintenance is vital to ensuring HCaTS vendors can respond to buying opportunities.

We have designated the following two email addresses that must be used for general questions, requesting modifications (e.g. novations, address changes), submitting contract compliance deliverable documentation, and requesting changes or any other updates to your contract information (e.g. key personnel and shared email addresses, phone numbers, other contact information):

HCaTS Unrestricted: hcats@gsa.gov

HCaTS Small Business and HCaTS 8(a): sbhcats@gsa.gov

Review this guide to the various registrations and tools required to manage your contract to help your company be in compliance with the HCaTS program requirements:

HCaTS Systems Tools and Registration Guidance [PDF - 1 MB]

Contract Reporting

The HCaTS contract requires vendors to properly report new task orders awarded against their contract in CPRM.

Failure to ensure the CAF is appropriately included in all task order solicitation responses and subsequent task order awards, on a separate line item, may lead to contract non-compliance. It is critical to ensure CAF is paid to you by ordering contracting offices, so that you may in turn remit payment to GSA. Your HCaTS contract requires you to report new task orders awarded against your contract within 30 days in CPRM, and to report invoices each quarter after that. Remittance of CAF billed to, and collected from, your customers in a timely manner through CPRM reporting is required by the contract in Section G.3.1, Contract Access Fee. You may contact HCaTS@gsa.gov or SBHCaTS@gsa.gov with any questions you have about CPRM or reporting.

Getting on HCaTS

The HCaTS family of contracts have proven to be a significant step forward in supporting our customers and improving acquisition efficiency and effectiveness in the federal government. Thank you for your continued engagement as we grow our comprehensive, governmentwide, professional services HCaTS contracting vehicles.

  • HCaTS is not a GSA Schedule contract, so there is no continuously open application process.
  • Getting on HCaTS is a competitive process called “on-ramping.” On-ramping is conducted at the Government's discretion.
  • HCaTS on-ramping will likely be targeted to a single pool at a time.

Research Tools

These tools are designed to help buyers make better program and business decisions.

Launch the PSHC Dashboard

The Professional Service and Human Capital Categories portfolio created a tool that takes its data to the next level. HCaTS stakeholders can now view and segment HCaTS information to make better program and business decisions.

With the PSHC Dashboard, you have the ability to:

  • Explore HCaTS and HCaTS SB data by federal agency and industry partner; and
  • Build customized reports and download them to your computer.

Notice to Users: GSA strives to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Some of the dashboard content presented through .swf files may not be completely accessible to users of assisted technology. If you experience technical issues, please contact BIEDW Support.

The CALC tool helps federal contracting officers and others find awarded prices to use in negotiations for labor contracts. It offers ceiling prices, fully burdened costs, services data, and worldwide rates.

Contract-Awarded Labor Categories (CALC)

CALC Demo Video

Discovery is a market research tool that helps you explore GSA services contracts, vendors, and vendor contract history to determine whether a GSA contract can meet your needs.

Discovery allows federal users to:

  • Generate a listing of awarded contractors based on a primary North American Industry Classification;
  • System (NAICS) code and filter for fair opportunity from a list of socioeconomic classifications;
  • Find contractor administrative information such as points of contact, as well as, lists of current and completed contract actions from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS); and
  • Download contractor details as a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file for offline use and analysis.

How Discovery Works

Discovery pulls information from FPDS to provide context-rich contract history on awarded contractors based on primary NAICS codes. Each contract is separated into Unrestricted and SB to make it easy to reserve task orders for small business categories.

With Discovery, users can research contracts by first selecting the contract vehicle of interest and then selecting a NAICS code/description matching the requirement. This will display all of the awarded contractors in that contract pool. A pool is a separate contract with one or more NAICS assigned and a single small business size standard. Each pool has unique qualifications tied to a specific scope identified by an assigned NAICS code.

On the vendor results page, users select a primary NAICS Code to view the vendor contract history, as well as up to date System for Award Management (SAM) registration data. Discovery also loads data from the FPDS to automatically provide you with a context-rich contract history for each contractor, including the amount of the contract, the primary NAICS code and the pricing type.

GSA's eBuy Open, is a web platform that provides access to all electronic Requests for Quote (RFQ) /Proposal (RFP) submitted through the GSA eBuy system from FY14 forward. A variety of data filtering, formatting and reporting features are available to analyze the data.

GSA eLibrary is your one source for the latest GSA contract award information. GSA offers unparalleled acquisition solutions to meet today's acquisition challenges. GSA's key goal is to deliver excellent acquisition services that provide best value, in terms of cost, quality and service, for federal agencies and taxpayers.

The OASIS Price Estimating Tool is designed to assist you in preparing the labor portion of your Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE).

The OASIS Price Estimating Tool User Guide [PDF - 1 MB], in combination with the OASIS Labor Categories Crosswalk [XLSX - 81 KB] companion document, provides detailed step-by-step instructions. For best results, the user must be familiar with the OASIS and OASIS Small Business contracts through self-study or by attending the Delegation of Procurement Authority (DPA) training. It is especially important to have an understanding of the Standardized Labor Categories and how they are priced.

Users can access the OASIS Price Estimating Tool directly (no log in or registration required) or via the GSA ASSIST web portal. Note: if accessing via ASSIST you must be registered in ASSIST.

Performance Based Acquisition (PBA) can be daunting, and guides on the subject can easily run up to 50, 75 and even 100 pages. That can make learning PBA appear more complicated than it really is. A successful acquisition answers four questions: what do I need, when do I need it, who needs to get it to me, and how do I know it's good when I get it?

This guide, geared toward the greater acquisition community (especially program offices), breaks down performance-based service acquisition into eight steps. Within the steps you will find information, references, examples, best practices and templates. The steps cover each aspect of a performance-based acquisition and are recommended to be followed in order. However, you may wish to jump straight to the step on which you are working or that which is of most importance to the work you are doing.

Other Resources

HCaTS contractors are encouraged to join the HCaTS Interact community and reach out to the Vendor Support Center with questions about the FAS Sales Reporting portal, TDR training, user manuals and general vendor inquiries.

HCaTS uses the Interact community to collaborate with industry partners, customers, and other stakeholders. Join today to stay up to date on HCaTS and HCaTS SB.

Contact the GSA Vendor Support Center for all things related to the FAS Sales Reporting portal, TDR training, user manuals and general vendor inquiries.

Last Reviewed: 2021-01-05