FAST GSA Virtual Acquisition Summit FY26 Day 2

Slide presentations are available for download through June 12, and the text transcript from the event is below the table.

Day 2, April 15

FAST GSA Virtual Acquisition Summit FY26 Day 2 transcript

There may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript.

Opening

KELLY: All right. So, um… jumping in here, I did see a question about the content for today. Yesterday and today are different. We have different subject matters, different classes, different topics. So, they are different. And you will get five CLPs if you attend.

So, you don’t have to attend both days but you only get CLPs for the day that is you do attend or the day you attend. Because there are only two days. So, you can attend both and get ten CLPs or attend one and get five CLPs and they are different. Different classes, different topics.

And one of my slides up on the reel had the agenda there, so hopefully you have seen that. Also the agenda and the times are laid out on the landing page.

The link that I put earlier was day one slides. These are day two slides. Let me share that. I apologize for that. So share the link to get slides for day two. Thank you for catching that. All right.

Please take a minute to answer these intro polls. I have three questions for you here. What is your job title, how long have you worked in that position field and to what extent has your environment — work environment changed over the past year.

So, please take a minute to answer those questions. Um… if you don’t get the pop-up with the polls, don’t worry. Attendance is being tracked automatically. We are not tracking attendance through the polls or surveys. We are tracking it through Zoom. So, if you registered and if you logged into Zoom, you are being tracked as attending and you will get your CLPs.

KELLY: We know that there are a lot of people very concerned about the April 30th deadline. So I want to address that one more time. For the April 30th deadline, we will do everything we can to get the CLPs out before then, for you.

So we are going to do what we can to make sure you have your CLPs before the deadline if you need them. All right. With that, I am going to jump in here. I see a few questions.

[Communication in Chat]

KELLY: Let me share the slide deck link in the chat one more time and then I’ll grab the closed caption link for people, um, if they want closed captions for today.

PETER BASTONE: I want to make one note about the slide deck. I don’t know if you left the follow-along. I can finish that out if people want to have a working copy. But just better to cut the slides off — whenever it says, “Live demo.”.

KELLY: Okay. Sure. Sure. Yeah, the slides are already 508 and posted. So they are out there. They have been shared. But yes, that’s a good note.

Let me jump in here. I’m going to go ahead and — here we go. [Clears throat].

Welcome to day two. My name is Kelly and I’ll be your host for today. This training explores upcoming changes, innovative technologies and evolving policies that will shape natural acquisition and management.

Hopefully you were able to join us yesterday. But if not, don’t worry. You will only get CLPs for the days you attend. 5 CLPs for today. If you attend both, 10.

It is being tracked automatically through Zoom, as I mentioned before. So you don’t have to fill out anything or sign anything. It’s automatically tracked. And we will do everything we can to get the CLPs out before the April 30th deadline for you. I know a lot of people were writing me about that yesterday.

All right. Um… this event today ends at 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

Also there’s closed captioning. We will also be posting the FAQ, frequently asked — or the Q&A pod follow-up, I should say. Um, in — on the landing page after the event. So, probably some time next week or the next two or so weeks. Um… all right. I’ll pass it to you, Mika.

TAMIKA: I’m your co-host. Just a few quick housekeeping items before we start. Today’s presentation will be recording, if you do not consent, please drop off the line.

A closed captioning link will be shared in the chat and you can use it to follow along or download today’s transcript. All attendees are in “listen only” mode. Audience interaction will take place. We will review poll results shortly to see who is with us today.

You can submit questions at any time using the Q&A pod and up-vote questions you would like to address live. But due to time constraints, unanswered questions will be responded to, in writing, and posted to the event website.

Normally, we issue CLPs within 3-4 weeks after the event. However, we know you are eager to get your CLPs before the April 30 deadline. We will do everything we can to make this happen. So, Kelly, can you walk us through the poll results?

KELLY: Absolutely. Let me pull those up.

Hopefully everyone got a chance to answer these three questions. If you didn’t, don’t worry. It’s not how we track attendance. It’s just, we like to know who the audience is.

The first one, what is your job title? And we have a lot of CORs. 18% contracting specialist. 23% other. With a handful of mixed in different titles like projects manager, program manager.

So, really great to see that. We appreciate it. We always like knowing the audiences. We have a lot of CORs and COs. Makes sense. It’s a great training for you but also for everyone.

How long have you worked in your acquisition field?

Most people have been there more than 15 years so we have a lot of very experienced professionals who really know what they are talking about. Um… which is great. Because we have a lot of very, very knowledgeable presenters, who will be able to keep up with you.

We also have 20% said 1-5 years. So — and — oh, and 10-15 years. So we have a range of experience here on this call, which is great to see.

KELLY: Um… to what extent has your acquisition environment changed over the last year? Most people said, “Moderately.” That works. Please make sure you close out your poll responses there.

GSA eBuy essentials: Your path to acquisition excellence

All right. Our first session today, so let’s go ahead and jump right in. Our first session is GSA — we are grateful to be joined by our wonderful presenters, Peter, also Michael Jordan will be supporting with the Q&A. So, very, very grateful to have y’all with us today. Peter and Michael — Well, Peter, the floor is yours, go ahead and jump in. Thank you.

PETER BASTONE: Thanks so much. Thanks for this opportunity. I want to make sure everybody can hear me okay. We are going to be doing our interaction with the reactions. I may ask you to show a support with one of the reaction emojis.

So I want to start out by testing something here. The question I’m going to put forth to you is: How familiar you are with eBuy. If you haven’t heard of it, I want you to react with the open mouth and if you’re maybe a little familiar, maybe used it once, do the thumbs up. But if you’re a pro-user and maybe you could teach the course, give me a ta-da.

There is one ta-da. There’s always one! I know who it is. I’m glad he is here. Oh, two! Okay. A lot of folks who are unfamiliar with eBuy. As I was falling asleep last night it hit me that eBuy and I almost have the same service comp date. We have been in the government for about the same amount of time. EBuy was launched in 2001. So it’s a system with longevity. What makes me happy about the reaction, even after all these years of training eBuy, there are folks who have never seen it before.

So, I’m going to go ahead and do my sharing. To make sure that the deck is coming through. And I will maximize it here. So, let’s see. Can you see it? EBuy?

I’m going to jump into the test site and do as live of a demo as I can. And I’m going to take a different path. Normally I go kind of chronologically and show you things on the screen, as you might encounter them. But today I want to go through and post the requests and then we will come back and hit things like the profile or the history page.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: So with that, yeah, going to go past that picture. Here is what we cover.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: I’m going to give you an introduction, talk about what eBuy is, who uses it and how it’s been making people’s lives easier and the programs and vehicles contained there in.

I’ll give a brief overview on how to register. You have to get your FAS ID. But mostly we will go through and prepare a request. I’m going to do that live. Fill out the details. We will post the request. And then we go through amending the requests, doing maybe questions and answers within the request. Attaching something, and making the award notification. I should have all these scenarios ready to go, so, hopefully this will work out well. As was said before, if you have questions, we have team members monitoring the question pod. So we will give you an answer on the spot but we will reserve time at the end for Q&A.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: So what are the takeaways? I want you to understand what eBuy is and how it fits in GSA’s landscape. You’ve seen we have a lot of tools so we will talk about how eBuy fits. Understand how to use eBuy to request quotes or proposals or information or do market research and we will talk about how if you’re a representative for a larger organization, which is there anybody here whose expression function is to learn this so you can teach somebody else? If you react if that’s you or maybe take initiative and do that anyway?

I’ll give you ideas on how you can market eBuy to your office or clients and contract holders. With that, let’s introduce eBuy.

2001, eBuy was created to address the growing need of services in the government. We of course had GSA advantage, our online super store for buying products and commercial off the shelf items. But services were becoming a large part of the market. So we created eBuy as the companion site where federal buyers could have requests.

I would like to think of the functions. Have you been out there and you need a quote or proposal for something?

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: Consulting, generators, construction, you have no idea where to start? Or have you ever needed to buy a large quantity of something, like chairs or monitors and you were hoping that maybe you could get discount off of the pricing on one of our other systems? Or did you just have some requirements that you thought were pretty good but maybe wanted to put out there among industry to get some feedback. That last one is something we in GSA do pretty regularly. We post our — some of our draft solicitations in eBuy and give the industry a chance to comment. So, if any of those needs apply to you, you can do that with eBuy. It was designed with services in mind.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: If you want volume discounts, eBuy is a great way to compete the requirement out among a pool of solutions providers who can maybe give you a better deal on a large discount. Or if you want to do the market research you can post the draft requirements in eBuy and you can get feedback.

Over the years I’ve seen some of the programs in GSA who come up with even more interesting ways to use eBuy. Some of the stars three folks have interesting ways they go through and use eBuy to facilitate their procurements.

It’s simplicity, it’s remained a platform for buyers and sellers to make requests and provide responses. So who can actually use eBuy?

PETER BASTONE:  It started out for federal buyers and the MAS program. It was for federal buyers to post requests against schedules. But over time it’s been expanded to state and local agency buyers under certain authority and native and tribal users as well, depending on the authority they have. And expanded beyond schedules to include a lot of the vehicles that GSA has. IDBs, stuff like that.

As a seller, started out with schedules but it’s been expanded to the other vehicles we have in GSA. So, very large population and a very dedicated population. We have folks who have been using eBuy for as long as it’s been out there. And they still say it works well.

It’s received a lot of interesting enhancements over the year as well. We’ve added new fields and capabilities.

For those of you using it for a while and who have ideas on how you think you can improve it, you can work with your customer service directors or anyone of your GSA contact or send me an e-mail directly with your idea.

A lot of the feedback we have gotten in training sessions like this have been translated into enhancements in the system. So, you know we take that seriously. I think it’s a great thing to be able to implement something that is customer has asked for.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE:  As far as what you can use eBuy for. I pulled interesting examples over the last couple of years of what people have bought or requested quotes or proposals for. And these range from anything from dental assistant services which that one surprised me.

Monitors that does not surprise me. Milk and dairy products… who knew. Bob cat, shoes, painting, radiology.

So, eBuy is for anything that we have under one of our contract vehicles.

As far as the FY2025 stats.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE:  The complete fiscal year, 40,000 requests that closed during that period, receiving about 120,000 quotes.

Certainly! Here’s the cleaned-up transcript with added paragraph breaks for better readability:

The number of requests that got three or more was about 12,000. So one of the fears over the years that customers have expressed is that if they use eBuy, it’s too good at competition. It gives too many people the ability to respond. And “I’m going to get buried in doing evaluations.” Seems that not the case. EBuy will help you get three quotes if that’s the requirement. But still depends on the vehicle. Some vehicles and categories have more activity than others. But, overall, it’s been very healthy for ensuring competition.

As far as the top users of eBuy, we have the Air Force, GSA, we are almost also in the top five. Always a big user of our own system because it works. Navy, Army and at the time, office of Secretary of Defense. Those are the top five users in FY2025.

There were 81 request, 81 awards over $1 million. About a third of the total requests posted. About 80% under schedules with BPAs making up 15% and then the IDVs and the technology contracts, the remainder. I expect that to change over the FY20206 because we made enhancements to support deployment of other IDVs so I think the balance is going to be different in — come September 30th.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: So summarizing what we have talked about so far. You can request quotes, information, or proposals. You can use it in accordance with your purchasing authority, holders of GSA vehicles can respond and its been a steady business volume in terms of what activity goes through and how many responses a user will get.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: So let’s talk about accessing eBuy. Do all of you out there — Is there anybody out there who has not registered for an FAS ID? Physical health if you have not, let’s do the surprised face. The open mouth.

[Pause]

PETER BASTONE: Okay. A good number of folks have not. The federal ID is a correct that the Federal Government puts out. Okay, you’re going to see traffic going through that registration. It’s a fantastic credential that gives you access across a lot of our applications. So no more digital certificates, old school log ins and passwords. Go get a FAS ID. There’s information on that. It’s got a pretty good… I’ll provide those links. You register with your name, agency, credentials, what bureau you’re under, so forth and you get the FASID. You will then be able to do a handshake recognition where it validates that you — You guys know how to register.

If you have an FAS ID, when you go through the registration process it’s going to say this e-mail address is already associated with an ID and it will help you recover it. Or you don’t have one. So complete the registration.

For eBuy specifically, it’s going to link you with GSA advantages registration screen. So, don’t be surprised if after you have done your FAS ID, you see a GSA advantage registration screen. Because the two are still linked in that way.

As you go through the registration, you identify whether you’re a federal user or state and local user, that will give you a slightly different path and show you options for purchasing. For eBuy specifically, you’ll complete an e-mail handshake that is specifically with eBuy. You will also have to set up your multifactor authentication. So you have the option of e-mail, google authenticator… I think OCTA (sp)? Possibly one or two others. No more text. That one was deprecated. But you’re authentication, you will then be able to log into the system.

If you want to go through the additional step of registering your PIV and CAT card, you’ll have to register the card first. That’s another link I’ll provide you. It’s in the GSA advantage registration process. You register the card, click the link. You have to choose the certificate that’s on the card. Most folks only have one certificate but some folks may have two. Sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge to pick the correct one. Once you’ve confirmed the certificate you’ll be able to sign in and get into the system and start posting requests.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: So, as far as the request process the first thing is choose whether you’re requesting a quote, proposal of information.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: This is a brand new capability that eBuy has. Prior to this, it was only requesting quotes with a little check box for sources sought. So now, quotes, proposals, full blown information and you will get a unique prefix in your request number.

Once you chose the request type, you’ll find sources. You can do this by doing keyword searches on — services you want to find. It will search against the vehicle description. So you could be more broad with your searches, as you narrow down categories. You can also use precreated categories to browse. Or you can research through the entire vehicle listing. Which I will show you when I log on to the site.

After you have have chosen your courses and each has rules on how you can select the contract holders. I’ll show you that when we get there. You start entering the details. So you give it a title, choose the — you’ll choose the delivery date, write a description, you’ll have configurable fields. This is what the seller is beginning to see and this is the information they are going to use to respond to you. So, we will spend a bit of time there.

And once you have posted the request, while it’s open, you will wait and see whether you get responses. You can look at responses as you’ve received them but you can’t make an award notification until after the request is closed. You can do amendments, review what has come in and when the request closes. You can do an award notification.

You also have the ability for those of you that work on a team — Is there anybody that does procurements on a team and would need to have multiple people on your request? Give me your reaction if that’s you. I will show you how eBuy let’s you forward and you can give them permissions to edit the request as well.

There are two other ways to get into eBuy. If you’re coming via COM —

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: It is possible to use COM or something we call eBuy connect, which I believe works with VAs ECMS. Ferks ECMS and one or two others. Post it on eBuy and bring your responses back. You can also — this is a known capability but it’s very powerful for volume discounts. If you are in an advantage shopping cart you can click: Get a quote on eBuy. And any item that you have in the cart will be pro-populated. So, lots of entry points. So, with that, let me now log into the test site.

[Slide Changed]

PETER BASTONE: So you’re going to see the test site. You may not see all of the vehicles, you may not see as long a list, but this should still give you a representative example of the experience. So, I clicked the log-in as a buyer button and I’m presented with the FAS ID log-in screen. So just a little note going back to what I said earlier. If you do not have an FAS ID, you can click register here.

So you can start at the eBuy homepage, eBuy.GSA.gov. You can log in and go through and do the FAS ID. If you have a password and need to reset it, all that help is down here. But for those of you that have gone through and done that registration and you got your PIV and CAT card, all set. Select your certificate and it should log you in. I asked the developers to promise to take break from updating while I was presenting. That’s the two factor that I choose.

[Pause]

PETER BASTONE: Because this is a test site, the window on how long I can be inactive is a lot shorter.

[Pause]

PETER BASTONE: Are we back? Can you see the screen.

KELLY: We can see the screen, yeah. We see eBuy.

PETER BASTONE: All right. So you’ll be prompted with the standard morning about government systems and can acknowledge that. As I mentioned before, you got a couple of things you can do from this homepage window, but I want to jump in and start preparing a request, because I want to make sure I’m sensitive of the time. This big button in the middle ear, is where you would go if you want to start a request. So you click prepare a request. You’ll be prompted to check which type of request you want to create.

Each of the vehicles may be — each procurement may be better suited from one type. Some of the vehicles lend themselves a little bit more for one site. I’m going to go with the classic request and click continue and I will arrive at this screen where I have the opportunity to start finding sources.

There’s a couple of ways I can go about this. If I’m having a general idea of what I want to buy but I’m not sure about what vehicles I should use, I’m going to come here and look at the different acquisition solutions. So, when you click on any one of these buttons, a modal will pop up, showing all of the different options available under there.

And you can drill down and read the descriptions. So, we have schedules, we have blanket purchase agreement. You can look through here. We have a couple of new ones that came out recently. Or rather, that we recently added to eBuy. You’ve got IDVs under here. So, building maintenance. Oasis plus. Popular one that we added last year. And technology contracts.

Now, that’s a really, really broad spread of things that I can potentially buy. But you know, let’s go to the audience here. I’m going to pick a couple of random things. What sort of stuff do you folks buy? Is there anybody out there buying those medical services?

[Pause]

PETER BASTONE: Is there anybody buying construction equipment? All right. How about IT? I think I have a feeling where this one is going to go. There it is. IT products and services. Everybody loves IT products and services. We do have a category, precultivated for information technology. Same sort of deal. If you click on this you get a couple of preset categories.

I’m a keyword search person. I’m going to do a keyword search. Let’s see, how about some cloud hosting? Go ahead and type in the keyword and we will get results that match the — match the description of the item.

Now this one, as I said, it’s a test site so you may not see everything that you expect. Um, I have the option of using Polaris, EIS, anything that matches the — what I searched would come up. But, maybe cloud hosting isn’t great. So let’s do camera equipment. This one shows off a couple of different solutions here. And buy photographic supplies. So I would click “select” underneath the vehicle. There’s no contractors loaded to this category. Probably won’t happen in the live site because there’s going to be a more comprehensive list of solutions. But okay, dude… really? All right.

[Pause]

PETER BASTONE: Let’s just jump to the SID, new electronic congresswomen. What can you do; right? Fantastic. [Sarcastic]. I knew there would always be people under that.

So we have done a keyword search. It happened to be an SIN number I’m familiar with and you get to the results page. Here is where you can start to filter down when he shall there’s a large list. You can look at the companies that are available here. We list their city and state. You may want to pick someone that is close to you. But one thing to keep in mind is that it’s a requirement of these contracts that they be able to serve a larger area. So, I — This address could also just be a corporate headquarters. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t have a presence.

So, judging by the really broad list of locations that we saw in the chat, before we started this presentation, there’s probably bound to be something for everybody here. If you are looking to filter down by either socioeconomic designation or business size on the left side of the screen, eBuy will provide filters that help you prefilter the list. And we give you counts on how many of the contractors in the list actually match this designation.

If I was looking to do a veteran-owned small business, I can click this button and filter the list down. You can tell if you go to the middle, click on any one to have icons for a list of definitions for what the business types are.

Right now, doing it this way, this is not a set-aside. This is just me filtering the list. EBuy does allow you to do a small business set aside. Let me untoggle the one limiter and come over here and click, “Is this a small business set aside?”

I get a new list of designations that I can choose from.

If you choose to do a small business set aside, then eBuy will limit visibility of the posting to only the contract holders that meet this designation.

Whereas if you just filter the list, any contract holder will still — who is under the category — will still be able to see the request.

I am not going to do a set-aside in this instance. For example, I’m going to pick everybody. If you’re picking a large number of contract holders, eBuy may give you a warning that it’s a large number. Yes, I want to continue.

Now, why is that important?

Let me take a moment to talk about eBuy founding competition.

The principle is that any contract holder, that holds a contract under the category you’ve selected, will have the opportunity to view and respond to the request. So, that is how eBuy ensures competition.

Just because I may have selected a handful of specific contract holders, it doesn’t mean that the other contract holders won’t have the opportunity to respond. Now, there are some differences in rules for how different vehicles handle notifications. Under schedules, a buyer does have the ability to pick and choose which contract holders get notified.

Under some of the other vehicles, like Oasis, by default all of the contract holders are included.

There was a checkbox at the top of the screen where I had to indicate my acceptance of certain terms, maybe that I would get a specific DPA, delegation of procurement authority. So that’s in there and you may see that under some of the other vehicles. But right now we are going to go ahead and fill out this request.

Now, something interesting about the submit button. We code in a helpful overlay that tells you if something is missing. And item by item, that button will stay unclickable until you have met all the requirements. If you’re not sure what to do, eBuy won’t let you submit the request. You can highlight the submit button to see if there’s anything you have missed.

If you needed to expand the categories contained within the request, you can click the button, where you can add categories to the request. You cannot cross vehicles, but you can add new categories, under certain vehicles. For example, with MAS, I could add another SIN. So, if I wanted those cameras along with the new — the IT equipment, I could add that category, as well.

So the items that you’re going to have to configure here when you’re posting the request, you can choose whether or not you want to allow the contractors to take advantage of any of the complementary SINs. That’s a yes or no. I’m going to choose no.

For title, you want to give your request a very detailed title because under the categories that have a lot of volume, it really helps the contract holders pick out what requests might be of interest to them. Whenever we do the seller trainings, the sellers point out that they take a lot of care in responding to requests. It takes them a good amount of time. Anything you can do to make it easier for them. But for now we put an example title.

I have the option of using my own reference number. This one is internal but it will be viewable by sellers. So don’t put in any number that you don’t want sellers to see.

You can indicate whether the request is a follow-on from a previous task order or whether there was a previous RFI, request for information, posted before.

In either case, if you check one of those boxes, you’ll be asked to post a number. I’m going to opt not to do that.

For my description, I can put anything, it’s a free-form text box. We encourage the buyers to give thought to a good description, perhaps reiterating something that was in the requirements, what you’re asking for or any other terms that may be appropriate to put here.

I have seen requests where someone went through and detailed out a bunch of specific specs in the description. Maybe don’t do that. Maybe use an attachment for that. But, if you want to put in something like, “this request will be for a volume discount,” you know, whatever you think will help the seller provide a better response.

Now, as far as contract types, this is a new field that we added recently. Depending on what vehicle you’ve chosen and depending on whether you chose commercial or non-commercial, certain choices will be preselected or not selectable at all.

Because I chose schedules, the customer only defaults and I have a limited number of contract types I can choose. “Undecided” will only appear if you’re doing a request for information. But, I’m going to stick to form here. Choose firm fixed price. And leave it at that.

The close date is how you select how long you want to give the contract holders to respond to you. You have to click: “I want the request to close on” — the minimum is two calendar days.

The default is five. I’m going to choose the end of the month. I think this is an appropriate amount of time for a volume discount. I can go ahead and choose any closing time I want, so I will choose 10 a.m.

The award method is another new field here. You can choose whichever one best suits your needs.

Some of the other programs make more use of some of these more nonstandard choices but I’m going to go with best value trade-off here.

You can indicate other personnel here. It’s optional.

Your delivery terms, if we are doing products you may want to choose “deliver after the receipt of order.”

If we are doing services, like an analysis project, you may want to choose “date of award to date of completion.” But if you have a specific period of performance, maybe security guard services for a couple of months, you can choose a start and end date. In my case, I want the items ten days after the order is received, so I’m going to choose that one.

At this point, I have filled in enough items that I could submit the request. But I want to go further and make sure I show you all the other options available to you.

Attach documents. This is a straightforward document attachment mechanism here. I can either drag an item in here if I have an example or go through and choose any file to attach to the… to the requests. So let’s see. No, we don’t want to go in there.

As far as adding line items, you click here. Now you can use GSA Advantage to help you do research for specific line items or if you happen to know what it is you need, you can put the items here.

I’m going to put in a manufacturer’s part number. Name. Monitors 4K. I want 2 thousand of them. The unit would be each.

PETER BASTONE: I have the opportunity to change the shipping address.

If you’re going to administer a buy for multiple locations, you can put the same item in for a couple of times if you shift. It will default to whatever is in your profile. You can add additional line items to the request by clicking “add line item” but that’s all I want. I want a volume discount. So that’s what we go with.

At this point, I’m ready to submit. Click submit and I know we’re coming up a little bit on time here, so I want to make sure that I get a chance to show you the award notification process.

This is the review screen. You get a chance to review everything you have put in. If there’s something that is not right, click the cancel button. That will take you back to the editable fields. But if you are ready to submit, you can click the submit button. And your request will be successfully submitted.

Here, you can go into history or survey. I mentioned some capabilities I wanted to show you. So I’m going to go to active and requests. I’m going to go here by way of the top menu. Click on my request and I’ll get a list of all the requests I have in progress.

I can toggle between those that are active and those archived.

This is where you would come after your request is closed, to review quotes and make your award notification. Or before it’s closed you can still review the quotes, but you can’t make the award notification.

You can, however, make amendments or questions and answers.

First, show you how to forward. I’m going to choose a request that is still open.

Here is an example of one earlier.

I come into here and I get all these capabilities up here.

I can forward, I can send a Q&A document. I can make an amendment, or I can cancel the request. So, let me show you forward.

If I wanted to forward the request, I would put in the recipient’s e-mail addresses, one or more, separated by commas into the field.

I have to give it this password. Please help me evaluate and make notifications.

Now, a note about forwarding requests. Do not use the forward function to send the request to a seller. They will not be able to access it. Forwarding the request to another team member is going to give them the equivalent permissions that you have at the time it’s forwarded. If the request is open, the person you forward it to will have the ability to cancel it, to amend it, upload attachments or do any of those functions that you can do.

If the request is closed they do have the ability to make the award notification. Do be mindful if you need to forward it to someone, make sure it’s someone that does have business doing anything that you might be doing. If I needed to amend any other aspect about the request. Perhaps I want to give folks more time, upload an additional attachment, I would click on the amend button. I would put in a reason for amending the response here. I can go through and make any of the changes that I need to make. You have to click… if we are doing the closed date, you have to click this button again. Watch the submit button.

Watch how it’s unclickable right now.

Select number of days for delivery.

Now I have made the amendment and can submit the request. Get the chance to review. Cancel if you don’t like what you see. Click submit if you’re ready to go. So let me show you the award notification process. Let’s find the request that — we will find one that is previously closed.

So this is the one I was working on today. This is one I set up specifically for this scenario. The request closed. The request received one quote.

You would come in, click the hyperlink number to get into the request details and as you scroll down, you will see the one and only quote that I was able to prepare. Because I only have one test to count.

And I cannot submit multiple quotes.

Click on the quote bid number. Just as in the example, I was looking for a volume discount on headsets and monitors. We can see information about the company, their UEI, their contract details, number and the quote price.

Any documents that the contract holder may have attached in their response are located here as well.

Line items, there is the ability to toggle whether I make the award across the board or do partial awards.

Let’s say that one company gave me a great deal on the headsets but another company on the monitors.

I could toggle over here with award line item, whether or not I wanted to make this award to everybody or you know, all the items or just partial awards right here.

But in this case, I am going to go ahead and make the award notification for everything.

I did not get to set up a scenario without line items but the way it works is when you scroll down here you see — if there’s multiple quotes, you will see two options.

You will see “award notify vendor” and “do not award, notify vendor.”

So the best practice for those of us out there doing this regularly, please do take the time when your request is closed, to go through and send the “no award” notices to the contract holders you are not going to notify.

It helps close the loop on what is going on. They will get a mini debriefing in the form of summary information and it stops them from contacting you.

That is one of the most common questions we get on the HelpDesk side and acquisition side.

What happened? I never heard back.

So save yourself a lot of inquiries and do the no award notification.

You’ve got a message center where you can see status.

The one I had closed this morning and the one I just did as an example, you can see there. Submitted at 9:34 a.m.

For those of you busy in the system, you’ll have a lot of messages. But this is a nice way to keep a tab on the activity inside your profile.

With that, I believe now we can move on to… questions and answers.

KELLY: All right. Thank you so much. That was great. I learned a lot myself. Excellent presentation. Thank you so much.

And I see we have a lot of hand clap emojis. So the audience and attendees seem to appreciate the information as well.

All right.

Let’s go ahead and we can jump in and look at this Q&A.

So, Michael, if you want to help me. If you see any particularly great questions that you would like to speak to, go ahead and unmute and jump in. Otherwise I can start pulling questions as I see them.

MICHAEL JORDAN: Peter, first question, how can you differentiate between a GSA schedule versus ASSBPA number?

All of our holders have numbers and GSA creates unique BPAs that agencies can issue tasks off of.

PETER BASTONE: Also the schedule — Well, if you’re — If I understand the question correctly. If you’re browsing eBuy when you go through, you have the ability to choose which contracts you are looking for. So, if you come in under schedules, and you choose schedules, you’re only going to see schedules.

If you come in under BPAs, hopefully there will be one here that has an example in here.

Yeah, one example here.

You will see the BPA holders. I think the UPIT format factors in here. I know the… the prefix for federal supply schedule is D. I’m trying to remember if the prefix for BPA is different.

The schedule contracts will be in the UPIT format. The BPAs may not be.

Does that go with what you’re familiar with as well?

MICHAEL JORDAN: Yes.

PETER BASTONE: So, visually, use of the contract number format. The UPID is about 16 characters.

The next two are the fiscal year. And then the next one is a prefix that corresponds to a particular type with D being federal supply schedules and then it’s a sequence, depending on how the agency has opted to use it.

And I believe we have chosen to use four numeric positions after that.

MICHAEL JORDAN: Next question for you, Peter. Will the eBuy system time out after so many minutes of inactivity or if I forget to log out?

PETER BASTONE: Yes, I believe it’s a 30-minute time out. I haven’t checked the significant duration in a while.

But the system will time out if you forget to log out. To keep it active, you have to do something that refreshes the page. You can’t just — If you were in the screen, for example, the request details and you chose a drop down item, I don’t believe that would count as activity. But if you were to flip around here, and go maybe back to the homepage or go to prepare a new request or continue on from there, that counts as activity.

MICHAEL JORDAN: Great. Thank you for that one, Peter.

Next one: Are there any system limitations to eBuy?

PETER BASTONE: In what way?

MICHAEL JORDAN: It’s a little opened. Pamela, if you want to — Let me see, if you want to expand on that, I’ll give you a moment if you want to drop that back into the Q&A. And we will move on to the next one here.

This one is from Reginald: Can you copy a request if it’s a similar RFQ?

PETER BASTONE: Absolutely and let me show you how to do that. If you’re in my requests and going through the lists, your list of requests, you can choose one of your requests to reissue. So having gone into the details page by way of my request. Right up here on the requests that have closed, is a reissue button.

You get the opportunity to change a few of the details. Some items will be preserved. But a good number of items will need to be redone.

In the case I’m going to leave it as a request and it will retain the category that we have selected before.

If you know, that warehouse equipment supplies just didn’t work out, let’s get rid of it. I can toggle — I can change any toggleable.

So you’re going to have to go back through and select the items that went back to default. Reissuing this request to attempt to better obtain responses. Maybe you just didn’t give them enough time or change the award method. Maybe more documentation would have been helpful.

But either way, what didn’t I do? Always miss this check box here.

There you go. Reissued.

Handy for folks who routinely do this same procurement over and over and who have a recurring obligation that they want to compete. You can go in and reissue it.

So, yes? There you go.

MICHAEL JORDAN: This one is from Hilda: Is there a maximum order limitation for orders in eBuy.

PETER BASTONE: One would have to defer to the rules of each vehicle. I have seen some pretty hefty sized requests, over the years. But one thing to remember is when you’re doing an award notification, you’re not cutting the contract then and there. You’re just notifying the contract holder that you intend to award to them. You would have to proceed in another tool, perhaps your own agencies procurement system, some other mechanism. The only time, like a purchase card limit would come into play, is if you’re cutting a purchase order, through eBuy, which you do have the ability to do and I can try to find it while you read the next question.

MICHAEL JORDAN: Thanks, Peter. With respect to that response, unless a vendor, you know, is unable to fulfill the order, theoretically “no”.

The only thing that would happen is say if you wanted to create maybe a $60 billion requirement and that would hit the ceiling of a specific contract. But theoretically, there’s not generally a maximum order.

Thank you, Peter.

Someone wants to know, how can I access this site that you just gave a demo from?

PETER BASTONE: That’s funny. I went through the whole demo and never gave you the URL. That’s a first.

You would go to WWW.EBUY.GSA.gov. And that is the URL for the production website.

You can also get eBuy from GSA.gov. You can link from GSA Advantage or from a host of other areas. But the URL is eBuy.GSA.GOV.

By the way, let me quickly show you that create purchase order capability. Because I know we are just about out of time.

When you go back to an awarded request, there’s a create PO link right here where you can go through and provide the information that you might need to provide. In this case, I’m going to skip AAC entry. I’m not sure if the test site is going to let me proceed.

Well, you could create the PO from there and you would be able to send it to the contract holder that way.

MICHAEL JORDAN: Do we have time for one more?

KELLY: Really quick one, sure.

MICHAEL JORDAN: Okay. I think: Are we able to utilize the Hub for quotes without an award?

PETER BASTONE: The system — what do you mean? Without doing an award notification? That is… technically capable of the system. But we do prefer that you do provide award notification afterwards. I always tell folks to defer to their agency policy on procurement on what they should do. But in terms of what the system will allow you to do, it is possible to not make an award notification. But we highly discourage it.

MICHAEL JORDAN: The intention would be to use — to go through and make an award. We just don’t want to go out and get quotes just for the sake of getting quotes.

Make sure you cancel or as Peter said, a “no award notification.”

All right. That’s all we have.

KELLY: All right. Awesome. A big “thank you” to both of you. Peter, amazing presentation. Thank you, Michael, for your help. Really appreciate it. This was great. I put a link to a survey in the chat there. So, if you would like to give us feedback on this session, GSA eBuy Essentials, go to that link and you can give us feedback.

But, a big “thank you”. We will capture the Q&A after this event. So, don’t worry if you didn’t get your question answered.

All right. Thank you, thank you. I’m going to go ahead and jump into the next session here. 

Maximizing value and compliance with GWACs

Our next session is maximizing value in compliance with GWAX. Going to discover best practices for leverages GSA GWAC for delivers maximum value. Streamline your processes.

We are lucky to be joined today by Paul Bowen, excellent presenter for this session. Without further ado, I’m going to pass it to Paul. Thank you so much for joining us.

PAUL BOWEN: Thank you so much. Let me bring up — Let me bring up my presentation. And let me know when you can see it.

KELLY: You’re good to go.

PAUL BOWEN: We are going to talk about the GSA GWAC. So let me see.

You can see my picture. You can see me here. But this is my contact information. So, if you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them or get someone who can answer them, to answer them.

PAUL BOWEN: What we are going to be talking about is the GSA GWAC, regarding the value, how you manage compliance through it, how it helps you. And how to choose the best vehicle based upon your mission. Your set aside requirements. We will go through each one of the GSA IT services GWAC.

PAUL BOWEN: And it shortens your procurement lead time. You’ve got access to vetted IT vendors who introduces your acquisition overhead and speeds it up for you. In most of our vehicles, have best-in-class designations. The two newest ones don’t. I’ll get into that.

They don’t yet simply because there’s a change in the program. And there’s a pause on new vehicles being designated best-in-class.

So, supports compliance because the government by FAR 16.5, in contract specific ordering guides. Each one of our contracts has an ordering guide that you can follow.

Each order has to stay within the scope of the GWAC.

And we provide training, delegation of procurement authority. Training for contracting officers in order to use the vehicle.

So, what matters the most is picking the right vehicle first. Determine which one of the — making sure GWAC is the right fit and which one of the vehicles is the right fit for you.

Complete the orders appropriately.

Pricing.

If you use an exception to Fair Opportunity and use a small business GWAC when the missions and goals align.

Maximize value by reducing the acquisition timeline and leveraging the established contract and structures.

So again, a GWAC is a government-wide acquisition contract. For information technology.

And for GSA GWAC, it’s for IT services. It’s not the place where you go buy 100 laptops or routers, etc. It’s for services.

It’s specifically for IT services based solutions. It’s for the entire federal agency. The design to meet the requirements of the entire government.

To establish by one agency for government use. Basically OMB designates an executive agency, in order to have a GWAC and GSA has been designated for the IT services.

And GWACs are not subject to economy act. Under GSA unrestricted vehicles, we have small business vehicles and you can do all the ordering types. Of course, fixed, labor hours, hybrid and cost. All of our vehicles can handle cost with the exception of 8(a) STARS.

Now you can do BPAs on the GWAC which is going to be helpful in many situations.

An important boundary, an order issued against a GWAC has to satisfy the scope. The ordering period in the value. And whether we get into that a bit more. Follow the ordering guides, which are available on the website for each one of our vehicles.

And warranted contracting officer issuing an order, must have a delegation of procurement authority. Giving them permission to use it. So, you as the customer have to define the requirement, clearly. Compete, or use the exception to fair opportunity and document that and evaluate the price and cost.

You can get IT services anywhere in the world. It’s common that we have requirements which cover the world or cover areas of the world. We have a lot of work you know, in hot spots of the world that are covered, that is not an issue. It is not a problem. The highly qualified industry partners. When we write up the solicitations, the RFPs for these vehicles, we do a tremendous amount of work beforehand to make sure we are putting an evaluation criteria, requirements, to ensure we get the best of the best. And they are capable of handling the broad range of requirements that the government is going to have.

Socioeconomic practices. Access to qualified small business and the associated socioeconomic credit. The two unrestricted vehicles align, have tremendous small business set aside goals, that 50% of all of the work which is sub-contracted, must be sub-contracted to a small business. Now, that’s on the lifetime of the GWAC, not on a specific — not on each and every task order.

We don’t want to force them to put a square peg in a round hole. But over the life of the GWAC they have to do that. We have been more than successful and we have exceeded those constantly. And the sub-contracting credit goes to the agencies at the task order level.

We have limited protestability. Task orders are under $10 million cannot be protested. Except on the ground that the order increased in scope.

Since it’s a GSA-issued GWAC the $10 million per task limit fits. Now, as I said before, these are pre-competed. We have done a tremendous amount of work up front. Making sure that we have the best of the best to get in there. So you already have that level of assurance that these companies have been through a tremendous vetting process to get here.

But you will see that in our polls, we, in doing our market research and creating these vehicles, we have been extremely diligent. We did a tremendous amount of work, regarding determining the size of the pools of the GWAC to ensure there are sufficient companies in there to provide effective competition, to ensure that you get the bids that you need.

But we also ensure that we have the best of the best in there. So you are not going to get throw away bids.

You’re not going to have Paul Co put a bid in that, mean, Paul Co is completely incapable of doing the work. Us having done all of the work up front makes it easier for you.

The best-in-class. As I stated, most of our GWAC have best-in-class designation and the two new ones that don’t have it yet, will be pending. Once the program opens up, to authorize new vehicles.

Vetted vendors.

And we have tools and we have training. And you can always reach out to us. We are more than happy to talk your calls to talk to you. We will talk about we have scope reviews so you can have us do a determination to make sure your requirement is within scope.

And something called market research is a service so we can help you with market research to ensure that you’re going to the right vehicle.

As I said before, using them shorten the path. Get a lot of questions. How long will it take to do my acquisition? And that answer is up to you.

The requirement we have is that you as an order in contracting officer need to have a delegation of procurement authority. You can get it through sitting through an hour and a half long training or you can self-certify that you have read the ordering guide and understand it.

We know that you know this stuff. So, how long you put it out. How long your acquisition takes is entirely up to you, at that point.

You want to put it off for three months? That’s fine. That’s your decision.

We are not in the business of getting knee deep into your acquisition. You do not need to come to us for permission in what you do.

You as the warranted contracting officer with a DPA have the authority to utilize this tool that we have created and made available to you. As you see fit.

So, having the GWAC avoids the necessity to create your own vehicle. Most likely we are going to have it covered.

I know a number of years ago one of the agents came to us and say, we are looking to create it do artificial intelligence and we were able to show them that — this is for one particular GWAC we were able to show them hundreds of artificial intelligence past performance requirement and which have been done by our industry partners on this GWAC.

And RPA, robotic process automation.

This was years ago. At this point, just on 1 of our vehicles they had already over-20,000 RPA bots in production at that point. Working for clients.

So, if you feel the need to discuss having a vehicle to support something, check with us. There’s a really, most likely we are going to have it covered. Because the scope of our vehicles is IT services. I’ll tell you, one of the most recent GWAC, we did evaluation criteria on 11 different areas of merging technology.

Where we evaluated, based upon that.

So, our GWAC support for complex and enterprise IT needs. When I first came to the government some 21 years ago, a lot of the requirements we had were “okay, I need a HelpDesk. I need a few people to sit here with the HelpDesk” or I need to develop this website.

Although those still come, what I see now is a lot of requirements that cross multiple IT domains.

Development, HelpDesk, robotic process automation. As requirements become more complex, it’s a perfect place for the GWACs and of course the GWACs are FAR compliant. The commercial value, multiple award structures. You can have hybrid contracts, cost, you can have firm fix price all within one vehicle.

You can structure your requirement, as best serves you. You want to have an optional cleanse, you can have. Of course the strategic values.

Small business GWAC, supporting the socioeconomic goal.

We have the best in the best of the small businesses, on our small business GWAC.

It’s not if you can flag a mirror. We do not have hundreds upon hundreds of awardees in our vehicles.

We have the appropriate number to ensure that we have the best of the best in each pool.

Compliance. Either through training or review of the applicable or guide. Make sure that it’s an IT services based solution. And I’ll be getting into scope a bit more.

Apply FAR 16 fair opportunity producers or document the exception.

You as the ordering contracting officer with a DPA have the ability to make that determination.

Keep each other within the scope. The ordering period which I’ll get into. And then that contract maximum value, which I’ll get into as well.

Evaluate the cost of price and document the basis for awards.

Because you would do it with any award. And of course maintain the file.

GWAC standardize the framework, but the agency must execute the award correctly and we do not stand in your way.

All right. Here are the GSA IT services GWAC.

We have a line or two. There are 37 awardees on it. Not hundreds, not thousands. Thirty-seven.

We have maintained effective competition of 3 or more bids, average, on every competed task order.

It’s a 90.75 bidding ceiling. Open for orders through June 30, 2028.

And a task order issued on the last day can run through June 30, 2023 and you can do a 6 month extension should you need to. Tends to have large complex enterprise IT requirements.

Our orders, half of them are above and half below. Around $44 million.

So half are under $44 million.

A quarter of them are under $7.5 million.

We have a lot of cost contracts. Cost contracts tend to be significantly larger in value. Um, but if you have a complex enterprise, IT requirement, then Alliant2 or 3 will fit.

Three is the newest unrestricted vehicle. It has no ceiling. So you don’t have to be concerned about that.

The base period, we started on March 10th. With a five year base and option.

Again, you can have ten years worth of performance on a task order.

So, it’s not yet best-in-class designated. Because of that pause that I had mentioned previously.

Then we have 8(a) STARS. It’s active.

Currently active through July 1 and we intend on exercising an option which brings it out through June of 2029 and the order can extend five years beyond that.

Active, taking orders through February 22, of 2028.

The orders can run five years past them.

On VETS2 we have 36 companies on them.

Now, Polaris, they have a hub zone, service disabled veteran owned business pool. All of which are live right now. There’s no ceiling on them and there’s a small business pool coming. The best-in-class is pending on that as well, because it’s a newer vehicle and we are waiting for them to open up the forum again.

So the big decision is generally about is it an IT and which GWAC is the appropriate one. And I will tell you, we at GSA, you know, I don’t get paid a bonus if somebody uses a GWAC A or B or at all.

It is our priority that you get what you need. And if a GWAC is not the best fit we are going to let you know that. We are committed to the taxpayer. These are great vehicles. But we want to make sure that you are successful. That the taxpayers get the best for their value.

We’re not trying to sell you on a vehicle. We’re trying to make sure that you get the best solution you can.

We have standardized labor categories on the GWACs. We have — there are 3 types here. The standardized IT service labor categories.

And ancillary support.

Now, on the second bullet here, we have on AD STARS, we have 31 standard labor categories. Polaris has 48. They have been built that way. They have different skill levels and pricing based upon that.

The way I look at standardized labor categories is we don’t require you stick to it.

Imagine that you’re going to be redoing your bathroom and you go to Home Depot, you need to buy screws, you can buy them. You’ve decided that you want to put in some very specialized marble countertop. Well that’s something you probably don’t want to buy at Home Depot.

They are the common things at Home Depot. The things used across multiple solutions but we don’t restrict you to just those. There are times you need to do something beyond standard and you have the ability to have nonstandard IT service categories. We don’t say: Hey, here is what you get. You have to build out of this. Good luck.

No: Here are some foundational ones you can use that have standardized pricing. But you have the flexibility to go get what you need.

Ancillary service labor categories. Any labor category that does not fit within the standard services. Those from Home Depot, aisle 5 and pick it out.

They are not authorized for use on a task order.

And I’ll talk more about how to use that.

PAUL BOWEN: Nonstandard IT service labor category. So, imagine that you have a requirement for an open claw, which is artificial intelligence helper at this point.

You need an open claw expert. You’re not going to find that in one of the standard IT labor category.

Is it an IT service? Absolutely.

So you as the ordering contracting officer, can create your own functional labor category. Or more often what happens is you allow industry to actually bid a solution.

And they include the labor categories that they feel are necessary to meet the requirement.

Now, ancillary labor categories. What does that mean? The use of non-IT labor categories must be integral and necessary, and part of the integrated IT service solution within the scope to have master contract.

And I’ll talk about scope more.

But the example I generally use is you have a requirement to build a tax preparation software. So we go by intent. The intent of the project an IT services?

Now it’s absolutely an IT services requirement.

Development is a significant amount of work that is done on the GWAC. So you’re going to create tax preparation software. You can’t do that without tax experts. Tax experts are not IT labor. But they are integral and necessary to meet the IT services requirements which is to create the software to do the taxes.

So, it’s perfectly appropriate for industry to propose those and you as the ordering contracting officer, have the ability to accept those. The OCO is responsible to ensure the appliance with service labor standards, wage rate requirements if it’s contraction. Or other clauses and weight determination. It gives you tremendous flexibility. Getting you there. Whatever it is you need to meet the requirements and I have unhesitating confidence in the ability of our pool to get you the solution. Best of the best and can pull it off.

All right. You can use labor hours, you can do time and material contracts. You can set up separate — passing orders, firm fix price. You can use cost. You can separate cleanse so you can have it be labor hour or firm fix pricing. Whatever you need the flexibility to meet your requirement. Other than that, which does not have cost on.

[Slide Changed]

PAUL BOWEN: Talking about the different GWACs. Alliant 2 and 3.

PAUL BOWEN: We need broad flexibility. Modernization efforts.

Our industry partners for the GWACs, they can subcontract to whoever they need to get the job done. If they need an expert from a company over here, they can subcontract to it. They subcontract as needed. They can create the labor categories, for the OCO to accept. Tremendous flexibility. Our Alliant 2 with 37 awardees. Effective competition and average bid rate of slightly over 3 for competed task orders.

Ordering available through June 2028 with tasks going through June 20, 2033.

Alliant 3 just awarded, we have 43 awardees, with a max number of 76 in total.

You can have a ten-year period of performance. Supports all contract types.

Alliant 2 has best-in-class designation.

BPAs are allowed. Now that is — I am incredibly excited about that. Because so many of our clients can now use the flexibility of BPAs versus trying to think they need to do their own IDIQs.

Now, on the Alliant 2 and 3, we also have requirements contracts. So, requirements contracts for those who aren’t familiar with it, give some of the flexibility. It has an advantage in that rather than issuing orders off the BPA there are optional clauses on the — one task order.

There’s complexity in some ways, more management than a BPA, as far as managing the one task. But they have the advantage of only having one task to close out. But you can do both. Requirements contract or BPA on, on Alliant or Alliant 2.

We want you to have the maximum flexibility. We built the vehicles as a tool for you to have maximum success.

So we wanted to give you the maximum flexibility.

We don’t require you to set labor categories. We offer some. We don’t require you to use a particular system to do your acquisition. We give you that flexibility.

You don’t have to come to us to get approval beyond DPA.

Not the vehicle, if your strategy depends on this. And you know, the needs, discipline evaluation to award customization or hard to administer orders.

That goes with any vehicle that you do.

A great thing about a GWAC is your ability to set the evaluation criteria, to ensure that you get the best solution you need.

Available in situations where you need the flexibility of an 8(a) program. So highlighted emerging technology. And needs. Market research support faster scoping in rate analysis.

8(a).

As I said previously, current period of orders is open until July 2026 but we have every intent of exercising the option which will bring us through 2029.

As the ordering period.

And then orders can extend five years past there.

So let me see. VETS or Polaris.

Oh, until 2028 for orders.

And then we have Polaris which has the women-owned small business pool. Opened for you to take orders. That’s a great fit when you want a next-generation. With pool specific competition strategies.

And again, on the hub zone, we have 30 awardees. We anticipate a maximum of 60.

On women-owned small business, we have 52 and anticipate a maximum of 80.

And we anticipate a maximum of 70.

When you do your… competition, you know that we have selected the best of the best. And you’re going to get effective competition from a pre-vetted capable pool.

You’re not going to be getting a proposal from Paul Co, the bad company that you don’t want putting a proposal in that underbids everybody by 50% and they are not capable of doing a good job.

Order process, most of you know this.

PAUL BOWEN: Receive the training, get your DPA.

Develop your acquisition strategy. Define the requirements. Do your market research. You can come to us, you can get a scope determination, which I’ll go into more. You can use market research as a service, where GSA will help you go do that. Issue the RFP to all in the appropriate area. They compete, receive the proposals. You do what you do.

Do the work, be successful. Do your performance evaluations along the way.

All right. Common mistakes. Requirement does not… clearly fit the chosen GWAC.

The ordering period. Make sure that you have your order done before the end of the GWACs ordering period.

Under-documenting the competition. That will go with any acquisition out there. The file does not clearly support fair opportunity or the exception used.

Again, getting a scope review. If you do that, you get a letter from the GSA contracting letter saying if the requirement is within scope or not, that’s good to have in a contract file.

That’s the intent, it’s in scope. So, um… or if you overcomplicate the order.

Again, avoided scope review. Etc.

Make sure that the contract and pool availability for the dates, etc., etc. I don’t need to go through that with you.

Simple, selection matrix. If you need unrestricted, then you want to go to Alliant 2 or 3. Between those two, you want to check the ordering period. The length of the order that you can have after. We actually have a lot of orders that go 7, 8 or more years on task orders that go out there.

If you need a long one, you wouldn’t want to do Alliant 2, you could go to Alliant 3.

Then of course you can look at the STARS, the VETS, Polaris.

Service disabled veteran and business emphasis.

Then you go to Polaris, this just talks about which one of the vehicles is new or not. Um… and if you need a nearly open next Gen small business pool, you go to Polaris and this goes into the different contract types allowed.

Between fixed price, cost reimbursement, labor hours, hybrids and BPAs.

The only exception here is in STARS you can’t do cost. And on BPAs on Alliant 2 and 3, yes, you can do BPA and do requirements orders.

I don’t think I made it into this slide here.

Ancillary services, you don’t need to come to us to get them. But they must be integral and necessary to the IT services based solution.

I talked about if you’re going to be developing tax software, develop software but you need IT — you need tax experts. That’s ancillary support. Those are integral and necessary to the IT services based solution. Which is the development of the software. Additionally, ancillary service, clerical support. Training, construction, alteration and repairs. If you need to get cable laid for the IT services outcome, you can do it. Clerical support.

If it’s ancillary, but necessary, you can do it. Hardware, software, licenses, racks, etc., you can absolutely get them through there.

But again, the intent is not to buy — even IT equipment. It’s for IT services.

It’s not the place you get one hundred laptops. You’re going to put a HelpDesk in place. And you need 100 laptops. Absolutely you can get them. As part of the IT services requirements of the IT services HelpDesk. Which is going to be set up.

Telecommunications, the same thing.

If you needed to support, you can procure it.

GSA certainly has solutions for IT that are better for you than the GWACs. Same with 100 laptops, the GWACs is not the place to get them, other than in support of an IT services arrangement. And you can have clear structuring. Not product only or facilities, vehicles, ancillary is allowed only to the extent it supports the IT services outcome.

Additionally, um, you know, focus on scope. And there’s the example I talked about the tax preparation software.

Ancillary supports expands the flexibility. But it does not change the core scope task. The requirement must still be an IT services based solution. And again, we go by what is the intent of the project. Developing tax preparation software, 100% IT services. But if the requirement is I need 100 people to do taxes and they need software to do it, well the intent is to do taxes which is not an IT services requirement.

So you can see the difference between the two. It’s the intent of the end project.

[Slide Changed] [reading].

PAUL BOWEN: The use of lease-like incremental payment arrangements to purchase items which report to permit the government to receive delivery of items and pay for the cost of permitted items over time, are not permitted.

If you need 500 people for tax preparation, that’s not an IT services requirement.

It’s just for IT service and no letter contracts. It’s not a permissible award type.

You get a DPA, you, your contracting officer, your agency, can do the acquisition yourself. Direct. You handle it all. You basically just have to get the DPA saying, I can use this and you’re good to go.

You don’t need to use MRAS. You’re good to go. You’re empowered to use this tool as you see fit. Or if you need acquisition assistance. We have, you know, AAS, etc. Where you can contract with another agency, such as GSA to do the acquisition on their behalf. For a theme.

PAUL BOWEN: At this point we have 46 billion dollars obligated against it. Close to a thousand task orders.

This one I’m proud of. It was done a number of years ago. $800 million awarded to bring artificial intelligence into the military. To deliver AI enabled products to support warfighting and expand AI to decision-making analysis across DOD operations. This was years ago. We did it to bring AI to the DOD which you see a lot of being used right now with what is going on.

Something that we do on the Alliant program and will continue is we have industry report to us on the different elements that go into any solution. And it helps us keep track to ensure that we have the correct pool and direction to ensure that we meet the future needs of you.

I don’t know how many of you are involved in doing contract work in places like Iraq, Afghanistan. I know I did for a number of years and all the requirements needed there, developed a demanding license requirement and GSA worked with the client, worked through the market research and in the end, determined 8(a) was the best way to go and we have a successful task in over $50 million on 8(a).

That’s two recently. Partnered to modernize IT delivered for the Department of Energy.

Increased operational efficiencies. Cyber, resilience. Using service disabled veteran owned business.

So, really fantastic. Again, we vet these companies.

We have capable companies here doing it.

We don’t have hundreds of awardees. You’re not going to have Paul Co toss the bid and be incapable of meeting the objective of the environment.

[Slide Changed]

PAUL BOWEN: Scope, review. We offer free and optional scope review. You don’t have to do it. If you want to, more than happy to do it. The link is over there to do it.

If you do it and it’s within scope you get a letter back from a contracting officer saying this is in scope. We will provide a written response within five days or less. You can put in your acquisition file saying I went and checked with GSA and this is within scope. So that’s a good thing to have there.

If it’s not within scope we are going to let you know it’s not within scope and if we know a good fit, we are going to let you know that. I’m not trying to put you in a GWAC today. I want to make sure you get a successful outcome. Whether it’s using our GWAC or we are going to direct you to the best way that we know. Because we work for the taxpayers.

The key takeaways. Maximize value by acquisition times.

Vetted IT capabilities.

You maximize compliance when you — the correct vehicle. The biggest decision you may have to make once determining it’s in scope is which vehicle to use. As far as that goes.

The GWAC is not a shortcut around acquisition. It’s a structured way to make them efficient, allow you to do streamline procedures as outlined if FAR 16.5. These are flexible tools that will help you get to where you need.

A couple of other points I didn’t put on the slides here is, make sure that you know, let industry know this is coming beforehand. I know there’s a tendency to hold things and give out limited information because you think you’re protecting yourself.

But, putting yourself in the position of one of these companies. If the first time they see a complex requirement is the day you drop the RFP, they are not going to bid on it.

Companies have limited resources. They have limited capabilities, as far as addressing how many proposals come in.

And their leadership, the first question — If I go and I say to my leadership, I would like to go after this requirement, the first question is when did you know about this?

Their leadership is most likely not going to give them the resources they need to put a quality bid in. They probably won’t bid it at all.

So, let them know beforehand. Especially if it’s more complex or not guilty. Whether you do RFIs, um, whether you do industry meetings.

I know that in my group which is the enterprise GWAC and the others, when we meet with clients and they are worried about competition, they put an RFI out. We will send a note to the industry partner saying, pay attention to this RFI that came out.

Because a lot of RFIs go out there and companies don’t make money responding to RFIs.

So, when we let them know, this is coming out, you know, take a look at it.

That is a cue that this is real.

Even when there’s a time that you have a requirement, we can facilitate that. We offer that if you need it.

But the more you let them know, the more advanced notice they have, the more — the better proposals you’re going to get.

You’re going to get proposals, as far as them getting the resources they need.

So, I just wanted to talk about that.

Additionally, when you write a requirement, if I’m Paul Co and responding and you have a specific requirement, make sure that is actually exactly what you need.

Because when you put in things very specifically, and don’t allow industry to actually propose something slightly different, you have eliminated their ability to actually um… offer efficiencies, to offer robotic processing.

To offer an artificial intelligence solution.

You’re handcuffing them because the evaluation is going to be based upon what you want.

So, if you write it so strictly into each one of these specific um… you know, requirements, you limit their ability to offer you a solution perhaps you haven’t thought of. And in doing work beforehand, through the RFIs or engaging with industry, at that point, sometimes they can offer you potential alternatives.

I have seen requirements which have started at over a billion four. Dropped down to $700 million dollars, when the client allowed industry to actually offer innovative solutions. Using RPA. Using strategies that the client had not thought of themselves.

But if the client did not put a requirement out which allowed industry to actually offer those things, then industry would have written to the RFA.

Here are the references.

[Slide Changed]

PAUL BOWEN: The websites. If you go to the GWAC page on GSA you’ll see all of the ordering guides there and you will see the BPA tool kit which is a step-by-step on how you can do BPAs again.

KELLY: Great job. Lots of good information. Lots of happy emojis coming in. I love seeing them. The hand claps, everything.

So, love that. People really got a lot out of it. Lots of good information. Thank you. Okay, well, we have a few minutes, so Paul, if you are —

PAUL BOWEN: I see questions and I will address them. A few.

KELLY: Okay, go ahead.

PAUL BOWEN: Lots of good questions in the Q&A.

A question from a brave one. My issue with GSA that’s what I spoke about. If I’m one of the GWAC or any vehicle and I do not know that the requirement is coming, I’m not going to get the resources to actually go after it.

So, and you have to look at it from their point, how many things they get it. So the more information, the more likely you are to get proposals and you will get better proposals.

They are all there.

We certainly do it when we do the award and at that point it comes down to customers, if there is an issue which I think has only happened once in the 16 years I’ve worked with GWAC. We get involved with the company.

We are doing them when they do the award. Although they have been debarred.

That award lasts as long as the task award lasts.

Let’s say you award to Paul Co.

And you awarded a five year contract on it.

Or ten year contract on it.

The task order continues.

This is an IT service scope. It absolutely is. Which we want to consider as well.

I’m not going to say bring all of your services to us. You bring them to us, but we may say, you know what, this vehicle may be a better fit.

Or GWAC may be a better fit. We want to make sure you get the best fit. Is it a good fit? Yes.

The best fit? I don’t know if you see the requirement.

Can you negotiate discounts?

Absolutely.

At that point you’re going to negotiate at that point. Those rates in there, those are ceiling rates. You go… there’s competition among the companies to get on the GWAC and competition among the task orders to get them. Well that’s a pathway to having hundreds of awardees.

You have to compete to work on it. Purchase we have performance metrics they must meet. So they have to be working to stay on the vehicle. So, you negotiate discounts.
Let them fight it out for pricing and get it far down as far as you can get it.
Past performance experience?
Mainly for IT services, what other type of services?
They are for IT services requirements. That’s what they are. Now, as I spoke, you can have ancillary requirements, ancillary services, which you are required to meet the IT services requirement. But, the scope of the GWAC is for IT services. That’s it.

If you have professional services, you can go to Oasis. If you want hardware, software, make those. And then we fit the multiple award schedules and other vehicles. But these are for IT services requirements. If you have a requirement that is suitable for small business, if you need it to go to 8(a), you can pick that. Service disabled, then you can have service disabled veteran. Um… the vets one or you can go to Polaris. We will help you out with that. In the market research is a service. That will basically input what your requirement is.

Which is the best vehicle to use for your requirement. If you have a billion dollar requirement complex all over the world, you’re going to introduce Alliant two or three and the choice between there.

Question here, couldn’t you use generative AI [reading].

When we get in something, we use AI to help us do the first vet. Be you want to talk to the experts. We don’t want to turn everything over to AI.

AI is not going to know about the one task order that was put out in 2016 that had this problem and Paul knows you should do this to avoid that sort of problem or things like that. AI is good at the facts and just the facts. But there’s also an art to acquisition.

Here’s the cleaned-up text:

And that’s where you have off. The GWAC staff. We know the art. The magic behind it, an OK versus called OK, it fits this order or scope. A lot of things we talk about — how you can structure your requirements so that it makes it easier to get there. And we would love to talk to you about it. That’s not a problem.

One last question. For orders placed that will go past… [reading]. That is at the point again where it will be up to the ordering contract officer to ensure that the pricing on it is acceptable to them. I don’t want to be a hog when it comes to time.

KELLY: Thank you so much, Paul. This was great. Lots of good information. So just a big “thank you”. Another round of applause in the emojis. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Great job. I’m going ahead and putting in the survey link in the chat. If you would like to give us feedback on the session, please do. This was um… our GWAC session. So, maximizing value and compliance with GWACs if you’re looking for it on the survey. Great job, Paul. Do you have any last thoughts or comments before we move to the next class?

PAUL BOWEN: I don’t. The labor on the pricing will apply only to time and material labor hours, obviously fixed price.

Achieving the next level of acquisition excellence with OASIS+

KELLY: We have a question, is this being recorded? Yes. We are recording today and yesterday. All right. Thank you so much, Paul. Let’s jump to the next session. This is session that we have right before lunch. Q&A at the hour and then you get a break. If you’re on the East Coast you get a lunch break. Our next session. Without further ado, I’m going to go ahead and pass it over to our wonderful presenters, Nicki and Tony. Thank you so much for joining us.

NICKI: Good morning or good afternoon, everyone. We are excited to present on achieving the next level of excellence of acquisition excellence with Oasis plus. We’re building on the theme of great contract vehicles available to you from not only GWAC but also, professional services contracts.

The OASIS+ services. My name is Nicole. The program manager for OASIS+ and here with me is Tony. And we are here to answer questions you have today. And we have our wonderful procurement analyst, Beverly. So she will try to answer questions that we can get to today. All right. So, to kick us off here.

[Slide Changed]

NICKI: [Reading]. Services based needs. The scope of the contract is organized into specialized functional groupings called domains. We have six solicitation categories or contract categories. Which include the unrestricted contract, and five categories dedicated to small business. So, we have a total small business, SBA certified 8(a), SBA certified hub zone and woman owned small business.

All right. So, we will look next about how OASIS+ is structured.

[Slide Changed]

NICKI: So it has a lot of unique features that distinguish it. We have vetted highly qualified contractors and flexible structure. We re-opened our contracts to include 5 additional domains, bringing our total domain offerings to 13 areas.

We will talk more about what those domains are in a bit. The contract offers a ten year ordering period with a base of 5 years and a 15 year option period.

And crucially maximizes small business participation. There is no contract dollar ceiling. So no worries if your requirement is $3 million or a billion. And we have no cap on awarded contractors. So this means that we are not limited to 350 contractors or 500 contractors.

The program is growing. It supports multiple types of contract types for both commercial and noncommercial services acquisitions. And is an open contract with continuous onramping. So, all this is underpinned by FAR parts 16.5 and the ordering procedures as Mr. Bowen was saying.

[Slide Changed]

NICKI: So we will talk about best-in-class. So, OASIS+ supports category management objectives. What is category management? Category management is the practice of buying common goods and services as an organized enterprise to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of acquisition.

For the government this means buying as an enterprise to get more value and savings by identifying core areas. So categories of spend, using data to consolidate and reduce contracts when possible. And we are proud that the OASIS+ contract is designated as a tier 3 best-in-class contract solution supporting OMB’s spent under management objectives.

Best-in-class contracts are pre-vetted, well managed solutions that meet defined criteria for management maturity and data sharing. The BIC eval weights process is used through a mix of category management and subject matter experts. We do have professionals within our office to help you with professional services category management needs.

So now I’m going to turn over the podium to my colleague, Tony and he is going to talk to us about OASIS+ domains.

TONY: Thanks, Nicki. Can everybody hear me okay?

I’m going to be talking about the OASIS+ domains, there are 13 domains. And these domains are service functional groups of related services.

Each domain encompasses multiple contract line items that correspond to North American Industry Classification System codes. Contractors have the opportunity to qualify for any number of the codes within the domain and they can qualify for multiple domains. These 13 domains are listed on the right side of the slide and I’ll be discussing them in greater detail here in a minute or two. Next slide.

When ordering from the OASIS+ contract the ordering contracting officer (OCO), begins by selecting one of the 6 OASIS+ contracts. These contracts include, I think Nicki mentioned these, but I’ll repeat them for your knowledge, they are the small business contract, SBA certified 8(a) contract, hub zone, service disabled veteran contract and small business contract.

They then choose a specific OASIS+ domain. And a specific code within the domain. A quick example may be a small business contract, selecting the issuing domain and selecting NAICS code 541330, engineering services so the opportunity like number so that’s kind of the key of the crux to ordering from the OASIS+ contract and identifying the contract. Identify the domain. Identify the NAICS code that represents the opportunity or requirement. Next slide, please.

I’m going to take a closer look at those. Next slide, please.

[Slide Changed]

TONY: So the management advisory domain. This domain encompasses design to enhance performance. Assist in achieving mission objectives. And offer operational guidance in administrative matters. This domain includes services such as, and again this is representative. Generally speaking, program and project management, strategy development, consulting development and requirements analysis. As you can see, this domain encompasses NAICS codes and you may see some NAICS codes represented in multiple domains, that’s okay. Doesn’t really affect anything. Just know that it’s a choice that can be used to support requirements that fit within this domain.

Next slide please.

The engineering domain [reading]… And they provide services, again, this is not an exhaustive list that I’m about to provide. Just highlights. Basically all types of engineering. If it’s an engineering requirement, it can support any type of engineering. Operations and tests is what I see often, also modeling and simulation. It’s one of the larger domains and encompasses 16 NAICS codes. Next slide please.

Another popular domain that I see scopes for frequently is this domain, a broad range of scientific inquiry including basic and applied research along with the experimental development. This category spans the physical engineering and life sciences, as well as emerging fields such as nanotechnology and biotechnology.

It also includes work in the social sciences and key areas within the R&D domain include design, construction and testing of pre-production prototype types and models. Technical research consulting, development and consultation services and as I mentioned physical and science research.

Again, 16 NAICS codes in this domain. On the right side of the screen. Next slide, please.

Logistics domain involves planning, design, [reading]… modes of transport. And services encompassed in this domain include deployment logistics, life cycle sustainment and logistics studies and evaluations. And there are 19 NAICS codes with this domain. Next slide, please.

The environmental domain includes services delivered by multiple teams. These consist of scientists and engineers who specialize in the fields. Remediation, and water quality the domain includes environmental service, hazardous material management, planning, disposal and also water and waste water and groundwater monitoring. This domain includes 11 NAICS codes. Next slide, please.

Here is a domain that — for intelligence services. Not called out under our OASIS contract. Under OASIS+ we have a key to support this. Dedicated to developing organizational and technological capabilities. The primary goal is to enhance the strategies and improve situational awareness across the defense and intelligence settings. Include positioning, navigation and timing capabilities. Army, Air Force, DOC.

We are seeing more requirements supporting this. And systems, something we are seeing more and more of as we support our troops. NAICS codes are on the right.

Facilities domain. This is one of the larger NAICS code. Largest domain in terms of NAICS codes. Includes all services, paid service, utilities infrastructure, and real property assets. Facility domain scope again, include but not limited to base operation.

This is a large list, many, many things to be accomplished in this domain. Something Paul said, we do offer scope views and encourage people to do that so that we can assist them in identifying the right one for the arrangement. Next slide, please.

So the enterprise solution domain is a special domain. Um, it is for unrestricted contracts only. So the five small business contracts are not eligible to compete on this. There may however be — a particular small business who can fit within this domain. But generally, you can only offer under the unrestricted contract.

This domain supports large highly complex integrated professional services requirements, offering is spanning multiple disciplines and there’s a buy-in. There’s a minimum order threshold of $250 million. So, if your requirement is not that large, it will fit in one of the other domains and we are happy to help you find that specific domain.

And when we say complexity, here are a couple of examples. The requirement may be geographically dispersed and have dispersed project offices and again, usually when you’re handling something this large, we want to see robust accounting systems and estimating systems and invoice systems. There are 17 NAICS codes aligned with this domain. Next slide, please.

So as Nicki mentioned, we did introduce five new domains and we will talk about those now. We are glad to do that because it expands services that we are able to um… support under our legacy OASIS+ contract and we are now able to do it more specifically under the OASIS+ contracts. Those domains are the business administration, financial services domain, human capital domain. Marketing public relations and social services domains.

These domains are not available for ordering. We are in the process of evaluating vendors right now. Stay tuned for details on when these domains will be available for ordering. The first is the administration domain which supports requirements including providing assistance with the administrative, clerical and business management services. Such as language services, document management and data services there are 16 NAICS codes associated with this domain.

The next new domain is the financial services domain. This supports financial objectives like accounting, budgeting, financial advising, loan services and asset management services. And there are 15 NAICS associated with this domain. Next slide.

The Human Capital Services domain covers training and development and organizational performance improvement. Also includes employee monetary disbursement management such as payroll. For those of you that are familiar with HCATS that contract is sunsetting and the OASIS+ human capital services domain encompasses that entire contract. There are 14 NAICS codes associated with this particular domain. Next slide.

The marketing and public relations domain, advertising, marketing, production and media services. And this is another large domain in terms of NAICS codes, 27 with this particular domain.

The social services domain. Supports requirements for government services, provide for the benefit of community and society, services included in this domain, included in education, medical care and housing services. And there are 19 NAICS codes associated with this domain. Once again, these five domains are not yet available for ordering. But we will announce when there is fair opportunity available for these domains.

So that’s what we are waiting on right now. That’s the review process we go through now. Vendor submissions. Once we have enough of those submissions approved, we will make an announcement that the domains are available for ordering. Next slide, please.

So what are some key takeaways?

First of all, the slide shows there are a large number of NAICS codes available within each domain. I mentioned that some span multiple domains. Additionally, OASIS+ is being populated by the best-in-class contracts. I mentioned the legacy OASIS contract but also, the building management operations BMO contract and the HCATS contract.

Now I’ll turn it over to Nicki to discuss how we are transitioning away from the legacy OASIS contracts to the new OASIS+ contract.

NICKI: Let’s talk about this program evolution. The transition from the legacy OASIS to OASIS+. We have moved from pool to structured domain and expanded the scope of the contract as Tony was just going through and talking with all of us about.

OASIS+ is a government-wide scalable professional platform designed to support complex integrated mission needs.

Note that IT services, while generally not the principal purpose of the requirement, can continue to play a leading role in supporting the federal workforce and can be included as ancillary to the overall mission arrangement.

So we are kind of doing the opposite hand-holding with the GWAC. While they support principal purpose IT requirements they say some other services they can be ancillary and we’re the opposite of that. We say, as long as your requirement is professional services and principal purpose in nature you can have ancillary IT to go with it.

So our HCATS transition. Regarding human capital and training solutions training.

The 8(a) contract concluded in December 2025 and ordering deadlines for 2026 are: unrestricted ends in September and small business ends in November. So you have time available to you if you do need to services for your contracts.

And we do work with the HCATS program team. If you have scope for this, our advisor Tony can guide you to the program to utilize in the meantime. But we do expect this in 26 quarter three.

Capturing BMO scope.

As the BMO contracts are coming to a close here in the near future, and present, we are increasing market coverage by breaking out of the old zone format. So, BMO had contracts awarded by zone. And offering services to all CONUS locations. And lastly, a more expansive selection of contract holders to compete for requirements so we have hundreds of contractors versus BMO may have a much shorter list of contractors that are still available for ordering.

So what is the value in utilizing OASIS+ for your requirements? Okay. Federal agencies can focus on their core expertise [reading]. Also designed for a long period of use. Through 2029 and 2034 [reading]. Okay. All right. As we have stated previously, so, there is no maximum order or ceiling limitations.

So again, you can have a project that is either $300 million or a billion. Without worrying if OASIS+ meets the cap. It allows for ancillary support components, known as ODSs. It’s important with no cap as long as the principal and primary NAICS code is not IT based. Allows for wide-ranging non-labor categories and under the revolutionary, now permits the establishment of blank purchase agreements.

Similar to the GWAC programs, we are allowing blanket purchase agreements and we just released new information on the website within the last week or so that guides ordering officials in the establishment of BPAs. And I’m going to turn it over to Tony, where he is going to talk to us about the ordering efficiencies you can achieve under OASIS+. Take it away, Tony.

— the GSA class deviation under the revolutionary RFO, 2025-16.

Here are some key points regarding these orders. As Nicki mentioned, there are no maximum order limits. However, the recommended minimum order is the acquisition threshold of 350 thousand.

There are no formal solicitation periods required. There are no requirements for an evaluation board and setting a competitive range. Conducting formal discussions under FAR 16.5 is not required. However, negotiations are always encouraged. Next slide, please.

When it comes to source selection, available contract formats under OASIS+ include task orders and blanket agreements. We have seen requests for that already. When it comes to protests, they are generally not phrased. For example, when the ordering increases the scope period of the underlying contract and when the order exceeds $10 million. Your agency may have a different protest threshold. An authorized case protests must be filed exclusively with the GAO. And this is specified at FAR 33.185. Small business size standard is determined in accordance with FAR 19.201-2. Post-award debriefings are mandatory for orders exceeding $7.5 million dollars, following the procedures.

So it’s easy to order under OASIS+. Here is a high-level view of the ordering steps in the ordering process under OASIS+. So, firstly you’re going to want to assess if OASIS+ aligns with your needs. Part of my daily function is reviewing scopes, so I’m happy to do that for you. The different contracts that are available by considering available set-asides or contract types. As soon as the performance periods and considering order limitations.

To repeat myself, utilize our complementary scope service to confirm your requirement fits within the OASIS+ scope. We do that quickly, usually within 48 hours. We are generally faster than that. But we try to get 48-72 hours.

We encourage you to explore the federal market. Leveraging tools and opportunities for vendors and subcontracting. You can learn about GSA research services, such as challenges and scope reviews. And take advantage of the GSA’s free market research service which was mentioned before. For conducting requests for information. It’s a fantastic tool. Get lots of positive feedback from that tool.

And as we’ve mentioned a couple of times, ordering contracting officers must have or hold an OASIS+ delegation so you want to make sure you’re a contract officer for 2.101. You want to register and attend OASIS+ training, that is available online. You want to review the buyers guide, which is on the OASIS+ website. Once you have attended the training, you want to make sure you submit your DPA request online to GSA.

Step four, you want to make sure that you consult the OASIS+ buyers guide. And view it — release during GSA eBuy. That’s a mandatory requirement. You want to familiarize yourself with the requirements and final task award. The quality assurance aspect. Subcontracting oversight and contracting evaluations and close out procedures when it comes to managing your task order. Next slide please.

Rather than the much more extensive FAR 15 Open Market process, under FAR 16.5 the steps are streamlined. The requested work is within the scope IDIQ contract. You want to obtain the task request statement of work, IDIQ contract and evaluation criteria. You want to verify that the contract establishes pricing and assess and evaluate submitted quotes. You also want to prepare the official task award document and finalize the award and complete necessary reporting.

This process, as I mentioned, has the benefit of no protest under $10 million. And for FAR 15 Open Market process, many more steps as you can see, including determining the RFI synopsis of multiple advisory steps, determining the lowest price accepted. And conducting discussions, price analysis and post-award debriefings.

So we recommend several best ordering practices. Again, using FAR 16.5 terminology, develop a clear and precise request. Holding due diligence. You want to use streamlined evaluation methodologies which, that’s your choice, what those evaluation methodologies look like. We encourage the use of multiphase or advisory multiphase techniques or presentations, performing comparative analysis. And awarding on initial responses when possible.

All right. Nicki, back to you for metrics and growth.

Thank you, Tony. We have a lot of exciting new developments with OASIS+. We are going to take a look at the health of the OASIS+ program. Even though we are new, we continue to see new OASIS+ awards weekly. And today we have over $540 million with estimated value exceeding $2.5 billion across all task orders. This is increased order volume aligned with government-wide.

Traffic from the DHS programs. And our friends at the VA are looking to utilize the contracts as well and demonstrates increased reliance upon OASIS+. We look forward to engaging with other agencies as their IDIQ GWACs start to sunset and we can absorb some of their growth in the name of procurement.

Just with some differences so where growth is concentrated. Increased DOD share of obligations and significant growth for the technical and engineering and R&D domains. And even though we are seeing greater scrutiny on generalized management advisory services, we continue to see it more in the domain. And lastly we have continued to… through our customer and industry engagement teams. The part that Tony does with his team and industry relations team, we try to expand the use and adoption of the OASIS+ vehicle.

Our competitive environment is driving innovation and value. Seeing an average of 7 offers per task order and 80% of awarded task orders have gone to small businesses, totaling almost $2 billion in total estimated value. Unrestricted awards are accounting for about $630 million.

And we are also seeing a strong 8(a) and small business engagement across all domains.

NICKI: So we are excited to see the program grow and continue to achieve a lot of those needs for professional services type requirements and we are always happy to help you get you started. We are going to turn it back over to Tony to talk about the OASIS+ program team and how they can support you with your requirements.

TONY: We have covered a lot of information but now we are nearing the conclusion of the presentation and I would like to take time to dedicate the final moments to discuss some of the free resources, specifically market representative assistants which doesn’t encompass scope views.

Next slide, please.

Offers an optional award scope review. To analyze the scope and domain and assignment of your proposal requirement. All you have to do is complete the online survey form. You can find reference to that inside the OASIS+ guide and it’s also that link to the guide is on the OASIS+ website.

You will need to choose a domain and include the statement of work and your IGCE if it’s available.

We are pretty quick about turning around scope views. There are a few of us covering all the agencies across the government so we try to get it done within 48-72 hours but mostly we get done within two days, depending on the complexity of the requirement. Next slide, please.

So, MRAS. It does — it’s a great tool. It assists the government agencies such as yourselves, in quickly finding capable industry partners.

They provide a great report and that report helps you visualize the competition.

RFI participation is elevated due to the easy to use online format and we encourage you to take a look at our online request form. Again, super great tool. Encourage you to use it. Next slide please.

Obtaining a DPA, delegated procurement authority. It’s critical for the OASIS+ program. You must have a warrant.

Contract specialists again, need to take the DPA training because we want them to be familiar with the program. They will not receive a DPA since they are not warranted at this point. DPA is only for warranted contracting officers. To obtain the DPA, must attend the training, be warranted. FAR 2.101 and apply with the training number and certificate. It’s available online or on demand through the FAIC side under the course FAC154.

If you have questions, they should be directed to OASIS+DPA@GSA.gov.

Next slide.

We have many resources available for preparation. Which we like to do our one-stop-shop. We have our OASIS+ blog. We have fact sheets and training. And for solicitations, evaluation and award. Please, again, refer back to the OASIS+ guide. It’s a valuable resource that does step you through these processes.

Again, we are always available to answer questions, um… next slide. GSA also has social media offerings. So you can stay engaged by joining the community on G—buy GSA.gov.

You can also follow us on X and LinkedIn using GSA professional services.

Next slide.

TONY: This is the general common mailbox. This gives you access to the OASIS+ program team at GSA.gov and we would be happy to assist you with any other questions that you may have. Um… and so, I’m going to go ahead and start looking at the Q&A here. Looks like Beverly has been in the Q&A and has been rapidly answering questions.

KELLY: Absolutely. If you go to the answer tab, you’ll be able to see those. And see if there are any that you would like to talk about. She has been very busy answering everything. So hopefully everyone is getting the answers they need.

NICKI: Right, I’m looking through all of the questions. Um… here we go. Are any of the domains non-labor our services?

So that does include fixed price, cost reimbursement, time and material. So you’re allowed to see any of those types of contract types for your particular BPAs.

When can we anticipate the new domains to be added to OASIS+? Is there a timeline?

We are evaluating proposals currently. So, we are trying to get them as expeditiously as possible. So maybe late Q3 of fiscal year ‘26 or beginning of Q4.

How long does it take for pharmacy to become part of the OASIS+ and when do firms apply, get admitted?

We just re-opened our solicitations continuously. So we do not have a closing date for contractors. Um… so basically, they can submit their proposal at any time.

Um, and there isn’t really a good time in terms of awarding process just because we are kicking things off and getting things rolling.

But we will be making awards on a rolling and continuous basis. We continue to evaluate government needs.

It will just depend on the business case and if we believe there are some sunsetting contracts that are from another agency, that may have previously — does not have the scope of OASIS+, we may decide that in the name of procurement consolidation that we absorb those types of scope into our contracts. We will see. In the future. What the future holds for us.

Are we allowed to award contracts as long as the requirement falls within the domain?

Yes you are but we don’t have SCOS labor standards at the master contract level. We have to do those at the task order level. So it’s up to the task ordering officer to ensure those are captured in your requirement.

Let’s see, I believe Beverly answered this. Says the solicitation can only be issued under one domain and assigned NAICS code. And this is because the fair opportunity happens at that level.

So they may partner with other contract holders or non-OASIS contract holders but they are basically beholden to that rule of three.

One contract, one domain, one NAICS code.

Yes, you can set up new BPAs under OASIS+.

Pre-award scope reviews are complementary. We have the contract fee. It’s the lowest so we like to brag about that a little bit. And then we have one last question in here. How long is the DPA training?

Generally around 1.5 hours. You get CLPs for attending the training. If you have limited time we encourage taking the course. That’s been updated so maybe in the next 30-60 days you’ll see the content of that course change.

So, and we do have a DPA training that we offer on a quarterly basis.

So the next training we had and we will be presenting our next DPA training in July. But I do believe that answers all of the questions that came in, Kelly unless there’s anything else that you’re seeing.

KELLY: Great information. Great Q&A. I appreciate everyone and you, you know, Tony and Nicki. This was excellent. Thank you so much, as well as Beverly with the help with the Q&A and thank you to our attendees for all of the engagement and feedback y’all have been giving us. Speaking of feedback, I am going to — yet again — add this survey link into the chat.

With that, do you have any final comments or thoughts? Nicki or Tony?

NICKI: I did see a couple of more questions coming in. I’m going to answer those.

Are all of those available for overseas acquisitions? Yes, you can use OASIS+ for OCONUS requirements. A lot of our contract holders do business in CONUS and OCONUS locations or some are OCONUS only. It really depends on um… what your requirement is and um, but we do have contractors that are able to meet OCONUS components.

And when should we use eBuy versus SAM.gov?

We use eBuy. You must use GSA eBuy for OASIS+ requirements. Okay?

And I think that’s it now. Thank you, Kelly.

KELLY: All right. Excellent. Thank you so much. Lots of good questions came in.

All right. Well, it’s a little early, but I’ll give you a little extra time here. It is time for a break, now. So we are going to go into our break and we will come back at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, 10 a.m. Pacific Time. We have two more trainings. They are elevate your acquisitions with procurement consolidation and bridging CO and PM workflows. So, contracting officer and project manager workflows. How they can work together better. We will start again at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. 10 a.m. Pacific Time. Thank you so much and you are all welcome to go, take a break, take an hour, a little over an hour and join us again please by 1 o’clock Eastern Time. So go enjoy your lunch if that’s where you’re headed. Thank you, everyone.

KELLY: Hello, everyone. It is 1 o’clock Eastern Time. Hopefully everybody is back from lunch. Hello. Let’s get started.

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a good lunch or break. Slide decks can be downloaded from the landing page and we’ve a link for closed captioning.

We will do everything we can to get the CLPs issued before the April 30th deadline, for those of you that made it. Because I know a bunch of you need that and have been asking me about it. So, we will aim to get those CLPs out as quickly as we can.

All right. Um, Tamika, did I forget anything?

TAMIKA: I don’t think you forgot anything. I do want to remind everybody that is coming in, maybe some new folks. If they have any questions, please put those in the Q&A pod. Other than that, I think we’re good to go.

KELLY: Wonderful reminder, thank you.

Yep. All right. And as I said, I’m just putting those links into the chat right now. Um… here we go. There you go.

KELLY: So links for slide decks and closed captions are there. Our next session is elevate your acquisitions with procurement consolidation. We will discover how procurement consolidation… improve outcomes. Learn to optimize your operations, eliminate redundancies and ensure continuity with special focus on GSA’s vital role in managing disruptions. Lots of good information. Looking forward to the session. Now I’m going to pass it over to our awesome presenters Josilyn Reed.

JOSILYN REED: Thank you, I’m going to take over the sharing screen quickly.

Elevate your acquisitions with procurement consolidation

JOSILYN REED: What a great day. I’m excited to share the information. Right after lunch, you’re full and energized or ready to hear or you’re sleepy and either way I think we’re in a good position. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I am excited to discuss procurement consolidation. Before we dive in I want to take a look at what we will cover today. We are going to — procurement consolidation overview. We will cover the communication and training strategy before wrapping up with Q&A. As Tamika and Kelly said we will try to answer questions as time allowed. So, now, let’s dive into our discussion for today.

Today’s session is focused on procurement consolidation. What it is, why it matters and what it means for the Federal Government. Last year the administration issued executive order 14240 which I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with. That was then followed by an OMB memo, M2531. Together, they direct agencies to reduce duplication, eliminate waste and better leverage the government’s buying power. At a high level, this effort is about doing procurement smarter. And at a scale. So, agencies can spend less time managing duplicative contracts and focus on their core missions.

We submitted the procurement consolidation plan to OMB in November of last year. Over the last five months we’ve been preparing for this moment. The moment where we prepare our teams and our customers, for the implementation of this big effort. As we enter into this implication phase, it is very important to note that this is just not a policy change. It’s essentially an operational shift that relies on GSA’s expertise, collaboration and leadership. This government-wide effort is fundamentally about doing procurement smarter and at a scale to make sure that we support your agency.

So, how do we achieve this? Well, this is going to be done in three steps. The first is focusing on your core mission. Our goal is to ensure that your agency spends less time managing those duplicative contracts and instead can focus on the time and resources on achieving your core missions and priority. GSA will serve as the expert advisor, partnering with you to review your current spend and personalized solutions based on your specific scenarios and goals.

The second way this can be done is achieving measurable cost savings. By better leveraging the government’s buying power, we aim to eliminate contract duplication and standardize your ordering process. We are seeing savings and success. Our assisted acquisition services has demonstrated a reduced procurement lead time for some of those pilot agencies.

The third is being a strong partner. So the implementation is structured in that phased roll-out that minimizes risk and built on the foundation of the continuous collaboration and refinement. So those decisions regarding the transitions, are data-driven and implemented through mutually agreeable procurement transition plans. We provide targeted training, customized by role and function, emphasizing the practical day-to-day impacts for your program and your acquisition staff professionals.

So, let’s dive a little bit deeper into this discussion. To further empower your agency’s mission, the procurement consolidation effort was structured into two distinct work streams. Each designed to enable your agency to focus its time and talent on those core priorities.

As you see in this. Work stream one leverages our core expertise to create and manage government-wide contracts, such as our schedules and GWAC programs. To benefit you — this allows your agency to tap directly into the government’s collective buying power and standardized solutions which eliminates the waste and efforts. And in work stream two, it provides a direct targeted support where your agency needs it most. The Federal Government acts as a true partner, a force multiplier, stepping in to fulfill the requirements where internal capacity is limited or where the acquisition process would detract.

By defining these two pathways, we are creating a streamlined acquisition, essentially ecosystem that simplifies common procurement and provides expert support for those complex needs, while ensuring that the operational shift results overall in a greater focus and efficiency for your mission.

Let’s go through the work streams individually. Work stream one, dedicated to delivering standardized solutions. This is focused on maximizing value, saving your agency time and streamlining your procurement processes through 3 key shifts. First, elevating proven acquisition vehicles. The work stream leverages our traditional strength in creating and managing those government-wide contracts. We provide the ready-to-use vehicles such as the GWACs and IDIQs such as OASIS+ which you learned earlier about. Alongside essential shared services like fleet and GSA flight way.

OMB’s direction is clear. We’re growing this capability to ensure the solutions become the default answer for common — for all common and semi-common requirements across the Federal Government. This means other federal agencies are being asked to align with what GSA is offering.

And then we have innovation and growth. Within that we are continuing to identify and fill in the gaps, bringing forth new and innovative players to the market to make sure that we enhance efficiencies. The goal is simple, when you have a common need, the most efficient and compliant solution will be ready and available through GSA.

JOSILYN REED: To support this effort, the FAR has been updated. In FAR part includes preference for using the existing contracts. Agencies must document if they are not using the required use contracts, which have not been established yet or existing contracts. The FAR counsel is in the process of codifying these requirements. And regulations which will involve putting those rules out for a public comment.

Now let’s move on to work stream two. In today’s world we recognize that GSA provides all sorts of assisted acquisition for customer agencies which falls under different priorities. In both services. So, under different names, like RWAs, requisitions, assisted acquisition and etc. Lots of names for the concept, but, for the history, a big part of GSA’s mission and focus has been helping customers obtain the product, service solution they need.

Within today’s FAS other business portfolio has some business — the largest is AAS, concentrates on a high dollar, high complex actions where we provide contracting staff and support. For many years, customers have asked GSA for acquisition support on lower dollar actions. Particularly for those commonly used products and services. Whether for cost reasons or resources or other commitments, GSA hadn’t built out this offering. Well, with this EO, we have a clear direction.

JOSILYN REED: So as you can see on the next slide, in work stream one if they don’t use them they have to justify. But for work two it’s different. Our solutions will be available on the opt-in basis. Providing dedicated assisted acquisition support through the businesses like AAS and OCAS. The execution on this, GSA is fully committed to understanding the entire federal marketplace and your specific needs. We look at the data to analyze your existing contract inventory, track renewal days. So, essentially that is the implementation. Now I’m going to pass it over to José who is going to talk to you about the impact of the implementation of procurement consolidation.

JOSÉ: You just heard how we built the consolidation plan, 14240 and OMB’s implementation guidance. What I’m going to walk you through now is how we are actually putting that plan into motion and what we are already starting to see.

So the approach is simple. We keep agencies focused on mission. We make decisions based on data and we implement in phases, together. This aligns directly with OMB’s direction: data-driven decision, phased implementation and strong agency partnership. As we move into implementation, GSA’s role is to advise. The easiest way to think about our role is like a financial advisor. We are here to help agencies make efficient and cost-saving acquisition decisions, all based on their goals, their constraints and their reality. And that’s how we approach both work streams. We look at the data, we align to the best solution and we roll it out in phases adjusting as we go.

So, we have already started engaging agencies based on a prioritized approach. Looking at contract portfolios, areas of duplications. And align them to the most effective acquisition solution. A shared service. If you’re working with an agency interested, don’t wait for us to come knocking at your door. Just send them our way. It can be reached at customer.engagement@GSA.gov. Feel free to take a snapshot, jot it down, use it when appropriate.

Our process does four things. First, agency contract inventories. Then we synthesize the data and develop recommendations. Next we partner with the agency to align on the path forward which is formalized through an MOU and procurement transition plan and last thing we do is stay engaged. This is ongoing support and alignment. And like any process we will continue to mature and refine as we move forward.

Across the Federal Government there’s about $64 billion in spend that is suitable for consolidation. Done right, that’s $1 billion and up to $4 billion in savings over time. This supports broader federal priorities. Category management. Shared service. But this isn’t just about savings. This is about eliminated contract duplication. Giving time back and capacity to the mission at an agency level. So in the short-term, reduce burden and in the long-term, create a more consistent efficient acquisition experience across government. And this approach reinforces what we already see in FAR part 8. And this only works if all of us are a part of it. Yes, a small group may manage the transition. But at the end of the day we are still responsible for delivering for our customers. And as we onboard more customers and more spend, we also take on greater opportunities to support the mission across government.

And we are already seeing results. We have reduced procurement lead times by around 20 days for some agencies. We have centralized over 900 contracts across pilot efforts and see real cost savings and this is just the beginning. So, what you’re seeing is not just the plan. It’s actually a model that we are actively putting into practice. And with that, I’ll turn it back over to walk through next steps and training and communications on procurement consolidation. This comes to a clear multilayer communication and effective management.

JOSILYN REED: So, how do we manage this. Strong communication and training are essential to making the procurement consolidation successful. Therefore a lot of planning has gone on to — in developing our communications and training plan. This comes down to clear, multilayered communication and effective training. The strategy is built on 3 core communication pillars and commitment to capability building.

The first core is that clear consistent messaging. We want to ensure that a unified message is provided across all channels. To prevent conflicting information about GSA’s role, or the consolidation goals. We also want to make sure that you get timely updates. So we will provide that immediate and relevant update to eliminate uncertainty through transparency. And then plain language explanations. Lastly we will translate policy and technical aspects into clear explanations of what is changing and why it matters to the individual work and agency mission. So, really, those are the three core pillars that we are building for our communication strategy. Now, let’s take a look at the slide.

The agency by agency engagement. And continuous support. The process we will use a structured phased roll-out of work streams, to minimize risk and allow for learning and adjustment. So, what does this mean for you? As your leadership begins to shift the way procurements are done? You will need to know how to utilize different government-wide contracts. And that is why we are here today. We want to make sure to help you gain knowledge on what you can do at your level within your role.

And in the second column we will see, there’s communication. The communication, again, is focused on that consistent transparent messaging. I’ll say that again, it is very important to know that it’s consistent and transparent. We will do this via monthly awareness campaigns. And resources hub. So just like you received the — maybe you received previous invitations, to different trainings, we promise not to bombard you but we want to make sure we communicate on future trainings and resources so you can understand the offerings that align with your core missions. Our goal is to provide you with the tools to start the process of shifting behaviors. That’s why we are here.

We want to make sure that you have targeted training, offered by a role and function. So we understand that not one size fits all approach. We want to emphasize practical day-to-day impacts, different acquisition professionals, leadership and partner agencies. And we are offering one CLP each training session. So each session will have those. We are doing these bimonthly that will go over procurement consolidation and specific offerings. So, some future topics will be MAS, OASIS+, OCAS, and we will recap on how this helps and consolidates with these procurement consolidation goals. These will be regular informal forums where there will be established to ensure a two-way dialogue. So we are able to handle your questions, receive that immediate feedback, which will be vital for capturing friction points. This will happen right after each training. And so, we want to make sure that you know and we want to actually be important to get the feedback from you, so we can better shape and mold the training and information that we provide to support you.

You look at the slide. You have a blueprint of what we are doing in terms of our next steps and implementation. But the strategy is a method based. A long-term deployment. It’s not a single launch effort. This will have many trainings. As you can see on the next slide, this slide it says our forward look. So, we will have our next procurement consolidation training, April 21. And we will follow that by an open office hours.

We are making sure we have training surveys that will allow you to give us feedback and give us continuous refinement. And so, as you can see, the future look, again, we are going to do procurement consolidation every Tuesday, and we will put the link in for the next one but we want to make sure that getting you learning more about procurement consolidation, what is offered. And what the information can provide for you. If we have any questions, we can kind of jump into the Q&A.

JOSÉ: I just put the link for the training session. I put OCAS, mistakenly. Can you tell who is being highlighted?

JOSILYN REED: Our next session is the RFAL as it relates to procurement consolidation. Right on time. Kicking off after we did a kick off a couple of weeks ago and this is where we dive into the information and the policies surrounding the procurement consolidation effort. So, thank you for that link, José.

KELLY: Thank you. I will jump into the Q&A, feel free to jump in for answers or if you see something that you would like to address, interrupt me. No problem. We have a question from Stefan asking when will contracting for FAS and FEBS are going to be consolidated? I guess that’s around dates for consolidation efforts. Do we have specifics we would like to share?

JOSÉ: I’m going to take that. So the approach for engagement is prioritized. Each agency provided their list of — or their contract inventory and that is being looked at and determined who has priority in complexity or you know, the scale of it. There’s different variables in place as to who is getting approached first. But again, we put the e-mail out there, if someone has any question as far as timing for a specific agency. Feel free to e-mail them back. The team that has access to that mailbox is the team that is taking all the engagement and they are initiating everything with the agencies correctly. I’m sorry I don’t have a specific time but there’s a process that goes through on how those agencies are selected.

KELLY: [Reading] will you please put the link for the next training? I just copied what José put in the chat and put it in the Q&A. So, all right. We have a question: Will the links for registration of the future procurement consolidation training be shared via e-mail? So, how do we communicate that out? Or how do we do it in the future?

JOSÉ: Can you repeat that?

KELLY: So, for future procurement consolidation trainings, how will those registration links be shared out? In future, moving forward.

JOSÉ: I’m going to reiterate. We don’t want to bombard your inbox. You’ll see trainings 2x a month. What you will see a website that will contain the training information. So, what you’ll get is one invitation a month directing you to the website so you can access the trainings and register for whatever is appropriate for your certain situation.

KELLY: All right. Thank you. Okay. We have a question from Elizabeth asking: Under the administration, is GSA going to be the one-stop-shop for all acquisitions, across all agencies? If so, how will this affect other agencies that perform contracting, such as DLA, WHS, etc.

JOSÉ: I’ll take this as part of my impact piece.

JOSÉ: GSA’s role is advising. Agency will have the acquisition teams at whatever level. They may be able to manage all the acquisition and hop into work stream one. It all depends on the need of each agency. We will be there to advise and guide as needed and offer up a CO if needed or a COR or whatever the situation lands for each agency, whether to support. So, as much as I one-stop-shop for anything sound fantastic, there is a reality. I mentioned that. Looking at agency constraints and ultimately, their reality. They have an acquisition team in place that whatever that looks like, GSA will fill in the gaps and advise and move forward.

KELLY: As far as the end goal, is the end goal to simply consolidate duplicative efforts or is the end goal to have all federal contracts administered by GSA. For example, there will be no other contracting offices outside of GSA for federal contracts? And I know you spoke to that but do you want to add anything as far as that question goes?

JOSILYN REED: The end goal is to offer a solution to reduce redundancy to help support their mission. So the end goal is for GSA to assist in any way we can to help support the agency meet their needs and whether that be providing different types of solutions. So yes, we are as advisor. The keyword there is “support.” The end goal is for GSA to support your agency to help meet your needs. As far as end goal and part of what I explained, you know, it’s really aligning with what exists, category management, shared services. Those solutions have always been there or just putting a workflow in place to really streamline how that is accomplished with now the support of GSA and its entities.

KELLY: All right. Excellent. We have a question that links into that from Elizabeth going with that being said, so with what we were just talking about, um, will there be opportunities for CORs and contract specialists and COs in the future and my answer will be whatever happens in the future, not only now but also, in the future, there are opportunities. So absolutely, there are currently and will be more. Do you want to add to that. The administrator said the ramp up for these types of positions.

JOSILYN REED: I’m not one to be a contracting acquisition personnel.

KELLY: Okay, referring back procurement consolidation trainings bimonthly, she asks: Will future trainings include requirements for consolidation analysis? And/or determinations and impacts on small businesses, etc.

JOSILYN REED: Future trainings will be focused on different offerings and different requirements under. We are still building the plan so we’re looking for feedback in other areas. The goal is to highlight and feature a different topic. And so, if there’s an area of interest, we urge you to you know, communicate and provide that information.

KELLY: We are talking about goods or services that are universally used not specialized specific contracts for good. Is that right when we are referring to this?

JOSILYN REED: Yes, common goods and services. So, if there’s an agency need that doesn’t fit that category, um, that would be correct. We are talking about identifying those most common good things that are used, commonly across the government in different various acquisitions.

KELLY: All right. Thank you.

KELLY: Question from Peter asking, can you please share any information regarding GSA management oversight of NASA SEWP given procurement consolidation. That’s more specific of a question but do you have anything to mention there?

JOSILYN REED: I don’t have an answer but I can capture that and get a more qualified person to get that answer to you.

KELLY: All right. Thank you. And a question from Tanuk: People are very curious about these bimonthly procurement consolidation trainings. A lot of the questions about that regarding future trainings. Which is exciting to see. Regarding future training, just curious as to why your next training is not listed on — GSA events? I may have missed the question. So, I would have to go look to see if it’s listed there. If it’s not, we might have not gotten the link out there. I don’t know, Josilyn?

JOSILYN REED: If it’s not, it will be coming. So that’s a great question. Yes, we want to make sure that it’s in all places and Kelly, I’m just as excited to see. I would love to make sure — I see you all on the next training. But yes, it will be there if you don’t see it right now, it will be populating.

KELLY: The way we work these trainings they are not always listed out there 6 months, 7 months. Even 3 or 4 months in advance. Sometimes it’s a month ahead of time the link pops up. So it sometimes — it’s — we are working quickly to turn these around. So we have a short take-off, you know, run way, sometime, for these events. All right. We have — Oh, you’re welcome. I’m guessing a procurement consolidation on April 21st, and if so, one hour would be one CLP.

JOSILYN REED: That is correct.

KELLY: Typically it’s a one-to-one ratio, as far as time and CLPs. One hour, one CLP, two hours, two CLPs that’s a general rule.

Daisy: Will there be trainings for CORs who want to progress for the next phase of procurement? I don’t know if you can use — These would count as, I imagine, CLPs toward maintaining your certifications. I don’t think they are used to get a certification. And Josilyn, José?

JOSÉ: Yeah, I think the trainings are to maintain. But as far as proceeding with you know, any more certifications, it would be a question within your own office and going up, as far as available trainings and what you can do. I’m currently a COR2 and I’m in a training right now for my FACC that was offered through my office. So get with your supervisor and work up from there with offerings and availability.

KELLY: Can GSA and the FAR counsel consider clarifying or creating a distinction between what is meant by customer for GSA versus in an agency? This would help to better clearly define roles within the acquisition process, helping the process to be more effective.

JOSILYN REED: I don’t have an answer to that question but this is — this would be more in a policy realm and I think we can forward that question to someone in policy to see if a change can be developed or pass that feedback.

KELLY: We did get a message, only counts to maintain your training. New training would have to be after May 1. So I believe that is correct, but then I believe there’s a two year type span to get the CLPs so you have a nice long time to get the CLPs for the next round. The important thing is to make sure you’re ready for April 30th.

JOSILYN REED: That is good and that falls into this last question: Do you have a list for classes in May? And well, yes we do. And so, as José mentioned, you’ll get that information via e-mail and start early. Get the CLPs in early versus like me waiting until the last minute to get it done.

KELLY: Don’t procrastinate. I know it’s easy to say it. But it’s always stressful last minute trying to get CLPs. Generally we put on multiple big events every year and are offering lots of CLPs for maintaining certifications. We have a question, do we have any hint on when… before the current fiscal area?

JOSILYN REED: I do not have any indication of that. But I think as soon as we hear something, we will definitely publicize it and make sure it’s known.

KELLY: How will the consolidation affect how GPC card holders and billing officials operate, if at all?

JOSILYN REED: I don’t particularly think it would change as operations and it may just be better streamlined and under a different — once your agency decides what is your best method to streamline under a different tool or resource.

KELLY: All right. Thank you. Okay. Our CLPs a yearly requirement or every two years, so my understanding and again, please keep me honest here, José and Josilyn. For maintaining your certification. Typically there’s a time period of 2 years and you have to meet whatever your CLP requirement is in that span of time. So, Kirsten just put in some more information in the chat. Because this is in April, it applies towards April, whereas before the April 30th deadline. I believe that’s the way they are working of looking at it as a chunk of time. You don’t get the span over if you’re close enough. It’s within a certain period of time, you have to have however many CLPs for whatever certification you have. And that can vary, based on what your certification is. And I do believe it is two years. Correct me if I’m wrong.

JOSILYN REED: That’s correct.

KELLY: Do you have classes just for PPM? Interesting question. I don’t specifically — so in our events we sometimes — or the events I run, we do sometimes have classes that look at PPM marker or panel that will have a PM perspective. But I do not — personally I don’t run events just for PPM. Do you, Josilyn and José, have thoughts on that?

JOSILYN REED: No but a lot of the sessions that we offer count towards your PPM levels as well. Yeah, I don’t know if we have anything specifically but a lot of the information transfers over from those different certificates. Yeah, different requirements, sorry.

KELLY: Exactly. No, you’re exactly right. Especially if we are considering fast events or ATRW events. Those are going to be broad acquisition focused and they do count towards a certification for PM or core. It’s acquisition focused so it’s all encompassing there.

JOSILYN REED: Yeah.

KELLY: All right. And 1:45. We still have some time. Feel free if you see any questions you want to pull out. We have three questions in here right now. Can we not put these into the system until April 30th so some of us can use — Mark, I don’t believe that’s how this works. I believe because the training is before April 30th, it has to apply to the previous. Is my understanding with this. And you can talk to FAIC side and — But my understanding, it is based on the date, not based on when you get your CLPs, if that makes sense. But you need to have your CLPs in before April 30th. It just doesn’t — it’s not a — Does that make sense?

JOSILYN REED: It doesn’t roll over, unfortunately. I wish it did, though.

KELLY: All right. Well, so Elizabeth says, without me having to go to the site to see if an agency has signed up with GSA for this consolidation effort, can you verify — We are going to test your memory here, how much do you off the top of your head. You verify if DCAA or WHS has signed up.

JOSILYN REED: I do not have that information, um, whether —

KELLY: We have to go look into the site. Yeah. Yeah, this is… all new and changing stuff. So… it’s best to double check yourself anyway.

LIZ: This is Liz chiming in. On the last question, they may want to check on that with the coordinator. I believe the April 30th was an extension of the original date when it was supposed to be completed. So they may actually consider this extension as part of the next leg. So just keep that in mind. See how they are doing that.

JOSILYN REED: That is a great point, Liz. You’re right about that. Yeah, I forgot that was an extension. So yeah, there may be some flexibility. There’s hope after all.

KELLY: I might have misspoken then. Excellent thought there Liz. I could be wrong about that. All right.

Michelle says, does the professional PMP week long course provide any CLPs. There was a great deal related to contract management and if so, do you know how many? I am not sure that I would have to go do some research for that. Um… José and Josilyn? Do either of you know any more about that? I would have to look into it?

JOSILYN REED: Yeah, I’m not 100% about the PMP categories. And all that.

KELLY: Yeah, you’re going to have to — we will have to go look into that. 

Matthew asks, is there a single link for services? Are there any fees for support services? So that’s a broad question. These are different offices in different departments.

JOSÉ: That’s a great question. Considering the procurement consolidation website and how we are seeing it as a hub for all things, these are certainly areas of interest and resources are going to be a part of that hub and these fall right in line with that. So it could be where we add these two. But does that exist today? I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t think so. And then of course for the fees for support services, I don’t have an answer for that but we can certainly take that back and respond later. Looks like those are the only questions for now. And it seems like we have conflicting thoughts and opinions about the PLC. So I would say go talk to your agency PLC. And if you can carry over or not.

All right. So, with that, thank you, everyone. This has been an excellent session. Really great information. A big “thank you” to Josilyn and José. Just, wonderful presenters. And also just wonderful. They are actually both on my team. So, always fun to work with them on a presentation.

JOSILYN REED: Thank you for attending. Feel free to sign up for our future sessions. Twice a month every Tuesday — every other Tuesday, training at 1 p.m. Eastern standard time. Followed by open office hours session. So we would love to have your participation. And feel free to check us out.

JOSÉ: The trainings are essential because you hear from different entities. The RFO is huge, we mentioned it in both segments. Everything spawns off of that and getting us into an alignment of where we should be across the government. So join the sessions. I put the link in the chat. Hop on and learn all the things as we move forward.

KELLY: I do encourage you to check out GSA.gov/events. That’s a great place to look at training. It’s worth repeating. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. We are at 1:52 Eastern Time. Hi, Lenear, I see you on, Nicole. And Greg. Okay. The gang is here for next round. Um… but we — Let’s give it a couple of minutes before we start. I know we are just a little bit early here. I’m going to give us a brief pause and we will kick this off right at 2 o’clock, so, take five minutes, if you need it, go grab some water, whatever you need. Five minutes and we will start this at 2 o’clock. Thank you, very much, everyone.

[Break was taken at 12:52 p.m. CST].

KELLY: All right. Excellent. Well, let’s go ahead here, and we can go ahead — Here we go. And get ready for the next session. So, hopefully everyone can see my screen. I’m going to go ahead and get us started. All right. Hello. I see Greg on. I see Liniar on and Nicole on. So excited to see everyone. It is 2 o’clock so we are ready. Our final session today. We are joined by a CO and PM for a dynamic session packed with the best tips and tricks for winning partnership. Our moderator is Greg and the panelists. I’m going to let them introduce themselves. Really excited to have her with us today. And Nicole is from GSA which is where I’m from and Greg is from.

GREGORY: I’ll let Liniar and Nicole introduce themselves.

Bridging CO and PM workflows

LINET: Thanks. I do work at NOAA. I’ve had a long story career, starting back 35 years ago in acquisitions. I like to say if you see me in public, I’m only 29. I learned how to buy for the government and I enjoyed every interaction, every problem, every success. Um, over these many years and I still stay very closely in tune with teaching acquisition courses, as well. So, super fun and I’m happy to be here. Go ahead, Nicole.

NICOLE: Hi, I transitioned to acquisition and I’m a COR level two and PM. I lead a COR community of practice and various different things at GSA. I’m excited to talk with you today and to discuss some things about bridging the gap in PM workflows.

GREGORY: And I’m Gregory, I’m your moderator for the session. I work on the same team with Kelly and Josilyn and many others. I’m thrilled to get the opportunity to speak with you too. You’re like… virtual event royalty at this point. For so many trainings that you have both been on and shared your knowledge. And Linet is an honorary employee. I’m thrilled to be your host, co-host for this event here. And I’m glad we have a strong turn out. And this is going to be a great conversation, so really looking to get into this conversation. So, do keep the energy levels high. Engage with us, like you’re doing now with the chats. And the emojis, let us know as you’re hearing what we have to say here in the conversation. If you agree with some things. Insight you may want to share. Let’s get into our first topic.

So let’s start on a high note. We’ve all been on projects where the CO and PM partnership just clicked. Everything just worked. So strong partnerships build strong projects and I’d love to hear some of your success stories. So who would like to share first about a time when this collaboration just truly shined? And what were the key ingredients that made it effective.

NICOLE: I’ll go first. I’m in one of the best CO-PM relationships I’ve been in. And I will shout-out my CO if she’s on here. I’ve had great ones. But I will tell why ours is so good. Communication styles, references, and that gave an awesome solid foundation. We also meet regularly. We talk several times throughout the day but meet once a week for an initial meeting and we talk about things that aren’t going well, are going well. And all of those types of things. And I think what has helped us most is that we come from a solution-oriented place when issues come up. And they will. I don’t think you’ll have an acquisition with no issues but we focus on the problem. We focus on the solution and not the problem. And that’s helped us to move forward. So we have a strong level of respect for one another. It’s mutual and even though she ultimately has the authority, she consistently pulls me in as I’m the day-to-day person that is seeing everything happening and unfolding. That keeps us aligned. So at the end of the day, comes down to the trust and communication, shared ownership. And I would say if you have a symbiotic relationship that’s what contributes to the most success.

GREGORY: I love that message of mutual respect. And how you met together to talk about your communication styles to give each other the level of respect. I love that. How about you? Do you have any Liniar?

LINET: Yeah, perfectly aligned from a contracting officer representative. It’s also critical to communicate with each other. And for me, the best relationship was when my PM was calling. Because that meant that they were sharing information and looking forward to that symbiotic relationship, as well. When we have solutions. How can I help you today? Or, what is the moment or even if they: I have a question? There’s no problem, how can I learn more? Grow more? What is the value from contracts? We know we have needs to be met. But you have things to protect the government’s interest in terms of the contract relationship, this legal relationship. Between the two parties it’s the bridge and the connector for everything else that comes after it. And even before we add the contractor to the teams. So, they were willing to take my call and I was willing to take their call. That made it a perfect relationship.

GREGORY: I love that. I love that. Prioritizing each other and then prioritizing the work. I love it. That’s inspiring. I love these examples. Because we know that every challenge is a lesson in disguise, while success stories are inspiring, we know that great partnerships face hurdles. So I’m sure many of us have faced complex situations. What are some of the significant challenges that you encounter in the PM role and how do you successfully overcome them.

LINET: When I meet new customers or clients, there wasn’t necessarily an automatic trust that was there. And the program manager said to me. I know you’re interested in what our mission is. And I said, how about you invite her to the meeting. I said, I want to sit in the corner and learn about the program and what matters about your mission and how we move forward together. He was like, sit at the table? No. You can introduce me as someone who is here to support your mission. But I don’t want a formal role in your meeting. And that created the, I’m the first phone call when you think something is going wrong. Versus how we started out the relationship. I don’t trust you. And I know that you got your contract stuff going and I got my program stuff going. And so, there’s this contractor in the middle. It was such a beautiful like, blossoming, I think of, it’s a blooming onion and how it’s fried and then opens up it was just a great relationship after that.

GREGORY: That’s awesome. Going to make me hungry. All right. Nicole, did you have anything on this topic?

NICOLE: Yeah, I would like to add right now we are probably experiencing the biggest challenges that we have experienced. Just with the lack of staffing and budget constraints, CRs, all these challenges that are happening and I think the difficulty is balancing the need, the mission with all those things happening. We just recently overhauled the FAR so there’s new things to learn about it and moving forward with the acquisitions. And I just think that — we have to be proactive with that, because we need clarity on how to move forward. Keeping your leadership at the forefront and talking with them, will help you to overcome the challenges. We haven’t overcome yet but we are always overcoming. I think we are just in the process of redefining, re-adjusting.

GREGORY: I love this theme of respect and communication and productivity and learning from those lessons and being able to communicate that well. That the priority is the mission. And that you can work together. Despite these challenges. And so, with those valuable insights, one of the — I want to focus in now on what advice would you give someone new? To their role as a CO or PM? So, Nicole, let’s start with you. And I want to imagine you’re talking to someone starting out in the journey as CO or PM and the first project they are on together with you we often say building bridges not walls. What is one piece of advice, that golden nugget that you would offer them to foster a strong and effective relationship.

NICOLE: The first thing is that you’re on the same team. You have the same goal. While different roles, the goals are the same. We want to get it across the finish line. I think I would say to a new person, find your tribe, find your people. We have lots of COR community of practice, PM community of practice. I run one. I think that is helpful if you find your people, they will going to give you the best advice. If you can’t find one, start one. That newbie is going to need your help so ask a lot of questions, be clear in what you’re not understanding. And I think those tools will help you. And communicate early and often.

I love that and today’s Newbie is tomorrow’s SME.

Absolutely. Everything that Nicole said was spot on. In the beginning it’s hard to get connected and you don’t know so these forums are amazing opportunities to be connected as well and kudos to you at GSA for picking up that made and making these operational, making these scenario based for folks who are new and don’t know where to go.

One of the things that I’m surprised that I would say this after all these years, part one is the first thing that I would have anybody relating to contracts read. The “why” of the system, the whole point of team, and that everybody has something to contribute and the value of that as Nicole noted, these community of practice, allows us to relate to we are all on money team hear. Even though we have different roles, everyone has something to contribute. So, a huge proponent of understanding our why, at the same time we are out there learning together. So, thank you.

Beautiful, I love this. Understand your “why”. Understand your role. And understand how to communicate the learning. I love it. All right. So let’s transition to our next question.

I’m going to call on you first, Linear and Nicole, if you anything to add, you can join in after. Building on the discussion of collaboration, let’s zoom out a bit talk about government environment as a whole and how diverse stakeholders that we have to deal with, how we can have the competing priorities but they are still one goal. So what strategies have you seen or implemented that are effectively getting everyone on the same page?

As I mentioned before, FAR PAR102 actually starts to give us our guidance about the value of team. We also have to think about risk. We have to think about things outside of our control like the budget process or you know, the people coming and going. We have to also look to how can I bring value while being resilient. Because I am a value member of the team and the expectation of us in government is that we are going to find a way to get it done and serve the American public. And we do that and so the earlier we can get on board together, find common goal, commonality, and learn to respect each other. How we connect and communicate, will make the biggest difference. And if anybody else has really great ideas that you’ve used to get everyone on board as a team. Please drop this in the chat. We are all here as some form of expertise as government employees.

Yes, Linear and Nicole are wonder women, superheroes in this industry, I’m sure that you recognize them from all the advice they have given. But please do engage, share your wisdom, share your nuggets in the chat so we can learn and grow together.

Understanding the why. If you can, when you’re building that team, really effectively communicate the why I think it gives people purpose. Induces pride and we all want to be on the same foot and we all want to complete the mission. But when we understand the “why” of it, I think it is just — you have a better time and that’s how we can effectively build a team.

It’s so important to know how we connect, what our connections are.

All right. So, I want to talk about effective communications since that’s a theme that we have been talking about. Effective communication is one of those bedrock principles we have to have in strong relationships. So it’s often said clarity cuts through complexity. So let’s leave the floor to some practicable actionable tips. What are some of your go to strategies for clear, concise and impactful communication in your roles? Whoever wants to join.

You’ll probably hear me say this a lot. But early and often. Those are the words for effective communication. If you establish a regular cadence with your CO and. I think that’s helpful because you’re getting two perspectives here. And how they work but if you establish a regular cadence, from the onset and stick to it as much as possible, then you don’t just talk when there’s a problem, just regularly you’re talking when the problem comes up it’s more seamless to transition.

Be up front and transparent. Don’t be afraid to pick up that phone and call, hey, something doesn’t feel right. It’s often to me, I don’t know. Can you advise me on how best to move forward on this. Your CO is your best good friend.

So, call them if you’re having any questions or just concerns. Um, meet each other halfway. Try to understand from the CO’s perspective what they are looking at and the CO should try to learn what we are looking at on the PM side. Like, what our challenges are. What we have to understand what the expectations are that way we’re working more seamlessly.

And document, document, document. I like to keep a nice clean contract file. But there may be some things that you feel don’t belong in there. Add some things that just make this process go smoothly. But those are my communication tips.

GREGORY: I love that. Communicating throughout. How about you?

LINET: Maybe even start in the beginning with rules and rules of behavior. I also love brainstorming. I am not the only expert in the room and sometimes I have no idea what my program office is dealing with, what they are interested, the need, pressure points or any of that stuff comes in. I also appreciate that now the government we are starting to talk about risk. Not risk avoidance. How can we manage the risk?

The only way to know what the risks are is in our communication and collaboration. What are your pain points program office? And asking and having them say, those are my pain points. How we can grow together and can we get a coffee. Or you know, can you stop by and we do a water cooler chat.

We have just a few minutes when things are not everybody asking. As Nicole mentioned, I’ve been through a number of audits. I expect the auditors to come. The documentation would be speaking from the auditor and CO side so we can be on the beach on vacation and not have to worry about being called back for the audit. Because the file speaks for itself. And I think especially as we learn to automate more things, we are going to have to figure out how to create these linkages that once we could hand over paper files.

About how our — you understanding what my role and intention was, as writing this documentation. But I must rely on your feedback, your input, your guidance for what is important to your program.

GREGORY: I love it. Watching each other’s back because nobody — I don’t care what your favorite color is, looks good in the orange. Trying to make sure — seriously, we try to make sure that we communicate in a way that helps everybody stay safe and effective, right? One thing that I thought about there is that no surprises, just solutions. So we communicate often to get that end result.

So on to our next topic. Let’s move to something more challenging, but equally insightful and in this scenario, I want to think about somewhere we have all been. There’s a contract and nothing seems to be going right. There’s roadblocks everywhere and it just feels like it’s completely stalled or broken. Have you been there and what did you do when that scenario looked like that? What did you eventually do?

LINET: I’ll take this one or at least to start. And you all certainly drop in the chat, too. That was one of the easiest contracts I had ever worked on because everybody including the contractor was used to doing these types of contracts.

The hardest contract was $40,000. Nothing went right. The contractor couldn’t get their stuff in on time, we couldn’t seem to figure out how to have them get paid on time, the invoicing, stuff was getting delivered to the wrong point of entry for the government. It was just all these crazy things. And at some point we know we spent more than $40,000 in the administration of the contract.

So we started to capture, what are the things that we might have communicated better? Or prepared for? Like, oftentimes we hope the contract goes well but nothing about contracts was designed to be helpful. It was designed for us to put in the planning and effort. One of the — you’ll hear me, I always preach in market research. You have to understand the capabilities of the marketplace.

Not just the vendors who would satisfy it. But are the answers given, is the performance problems they are encountering customary to the marketplace. Could this have been predicted so we could have had a mitigation strategy in case it came up? Lots of good lessons learned.

NICOLE: I think I want to say something different and I want to thank you for the answer prior to this, this was the perfect answer. I thought that was so beautifully stated. That helped me learn something new and I’m always trying to learn something new, too.

I think if I were to give advice, we have to be as intentional with high complexity or high visibility contracts as we do with the lower visibility ones and that’s why the contracts end up being more difficult. Because people assume they are easy, oh, it’s this, oh I just have to do this contract for ten — $30,000. And it should take me five minutes and there’s not much to put into it. And we get complacent and that’s how we end up in a disaster type of situation. So that’s my comment.

GREGORY: Very good. I appreciate you sharing your insights. One of the things I was thinking about is how it’s important to learn from our failures. I’ve heard you say before that failure is not fatal. But failure to learn is.

So as we transition here, I wanted to discuss some challenges talking about growth. We have conducted after action reviews. But how do we translate the lessons observed to lessons learned?

NICOLE: I love this question. My advice would be to use a wash, rinse, repeat cycle. Not a lot of thought. But I believe that practice makes habit. So when you have something happening over and over and over again, it becomes your habit. The first thing is capture what worked really well and what didn’t. And then tough agree on that. I might say this worked well and Liniar may say that didn’t work well. We come up with what worked really well. And it’s going to depend on type of contracts. Then we standardize that and that looks like getting others’ input. Other people from other teams. We are going to tweak it and share across the teams. When you do that I think reinforcing it. Once it becomes embedded, it becomes second nature and then a win. So, wash, rinse, repeat.

GREGORY: That’s interesting.

LINET: I’ve worked in a number of organizations where we have been good at doing lessons learned and after action reviews. Yet we are hearing consistent themes of things that we knew were a problem in priority lessons learned but yet, we are not implementing them.

So I think one of the folks in the chat said, if it didn’t work last time, it’s probably predictable, it may not work this time. And so we expect, I think they said insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So how do we take that and come up with ideas on what we are going to do differently. And if that was a success, repeat it. Start small, create wins. How can we learn faster with each other? And then take that and um implement it and once it becomes a success, repeat it. So we repeat that. How do we get it out to everybody?

There are some great teams doing amazing things in government acquisitions. And we just don’t know about it. How do I get some of that at the lowest levels of our organization? So how do we share and I think certainly when we are able to share across multiple agencies in some of these communities of practices and Listservs.

Oh, I just saw someone ask a question about that! I’m going to connect you with so-and-so I know who just did that and then created a success. Right?

I said, don’t include me in the lessons learned until we are going to do something with them. Because they are counterproductive and I’m losing my mind. Like, I think I heard this 15 times before. So I encourage organizations.

As Nicole mentioned, it’s a changing time with the new guidance coming up. More often than ever before, we are going to have to leverage team and even as gracious as you are in talking about the CO and PM relationship. It’s just a one piece of a bigger puzzle of a team that we’ve got to get more facts out on our feet. We’ve got to include the other members of the team.

We want to engage and fulfill on the acquisition initiatives. But none of us by ourselves will be effective.

NICOLE: And I’ve seen so many great things in the chat too, as well. I saw someone talked about having a meeting first and communicating clearly from the start. And I liked your point about making sure we don’t just record these things but that we actually review these things before we start again. Because what’s the point of saying what we observed if we don’t make it a lesson.

We covered a lot of ground today, from successes to challenges to communication to best practices. And if you could, offer just one overarching, your best piece of advice for fostering truly successful relationships between COs and PMs, what would that be?

NICOLE: So, I think we have shared so many tips in here. And I think you — I don’t know about the best tip. I think the best tip is putting all of those things together. I don’t know that we can have an effective strategy by doing one thing. But my one thing would be early and often communication. I stand by it. The earlier we are talking, the more effective. It’s going to go better for us if we do that. Some things I heard though, so, regular communication, mitigates surprises. And mitigates risk because Liniar talked about being risk avoidant and learning how to deal with the risk when they come.

And then, if you don’t have surprises, that helps you. In early engagement you work hand-in-hand to shape environment. So come up with a strategy and determine priorities. And have each other’s back. I’m not going to make a decision without this person, and they are not going to do anything without conferring with me and that keeps us — just becoming — We are starting here and end here. And we are going down the road of success together. And I think that’s how we get there.

LINET: You have to have this communication and level of trust that what is important for me to know is important for you to know. So we share that information.

LINET: First of all, I have grown children. But, I am always interested in the fact that when they were little and I probably did this with my parents, I would try to get the parent to play off of each other. I would ask my dad and he would say no. I would ask my mom and she would say yes and then my parents would be arguing. And then I get to do what I want to do. It was the perfect upset. Every single time.

Until my parents got on the same page and they were like, if your dad said no, don’t ask me. Or don’t get me to go and get involved in it. Before so one of the best tips for successful contracts is to make sure that we are working together. Communication is going to be the access to that. I have two quotes that I often, even though they weren’t acquisition quotes, I have adopted them.

Sharing is caring. My expectation is that we are sharing. And then the second one is um, for Maya Angelou. I did the best I could with what I knew. Thank you for asking.

GREGORY: I love the feedback about communicating and shared goals and I would say that communication is that especially proactive communication is a superpower and it really brings this all together and it develops the trust that is inviting to the relationship. I really enjoy listening to people who have been doing this for a while has been doing this and is so successful at it. So….

GREGORY: Did you want to have any closing remarks?

LINET: Thank you, I want to acknowledge Nicole. When we first met and she said, I started a community of practice. I was like, kudos to you. Because that’s what it is going to take for us across government, especially in these challenging times now.

You might have different COs for different projects. And that community of practice and bringing the new people on into that community is going to make a difference and also love that we don’t just always have acquisition folks or contracting folks that we’ve got program folks and our small business liaison folks that are also there. Because we all have to work together.

And one other place that we have not done a great job tapping into in the government, yet, is the customers in the public that we serve. They have no idea what we are doing and what it takes to deliver the goods and services and they deserve to know that we are here for them. So, thank you.

GREGORY: Thank you for being such great sources of information and champions for this industry. And this space. So with that said, Kelly, back over to you.

KELLY: All right. I loved this session. It was so good. I loved the advice and the conversation and I loved the comments in the chat. I’m going to save the chat and I don’t know, I want to frame it on a website for everyone to look at because it was amazing.

Really great stuff. We do have a few questions. So I would like to address some of those before we end. Let’s see. We have a question from David asking, did the initial meeting set the tone for your relationships? So, so that’s an interesting point and question. I know those initial meetings can sometimes you know, they are powerful, the first impressions. So, any thoughts on that?

NICOLE: I do, Kelly. Because I think I was talking about that might have been Liniar or me. I was talking about initial meetings and I would say “yes”. But I do think we have to give a little credence for people’s personalities. I tend to have a big one. And so I ask a lot of questions. I ask questions because I want to understand how best that people work and so one of my questions is how do you like to be communicated to?

NICOLE: Do you like chats? Meetings? Phone calls? I think those things are helpful to ask and I think knowing those make a meeting more effective. Because if they don’t like to chat, we can hit the points and get off or we may be a person that likes to dive deep over discussing or looking at the requirements in a very detailed way. Learning about my COs has been helpful for me. So that’s what I do in my initial meetings and I think that sets the tone for the rest of them.

LINET: The only thing I want to add in there, we all know, we have all been trained that there’s a forming, storming, norming. You might have loved your last CO and they retired after 50 years of federal service and now you’re stuck with me; right? So the one thing I will say I always bring is respect to every meeting for everybody in the meeting.

And then, the norming of life, some people love a chat. So those kind of things will get learned and I acknowledge that there are times where things didn’t go great the first time around. And then so what? We’ve got to figure out how to work together so could we set aside the initial feelings and get to the business of government; right? Absolutely.

KELLY: While you were speaking I was thinking about how in movies when a character comes in and a new actor comes in to replace and you’re like, wait a second that’s not the same character. That’s not the same person.

LINET: And then you watch and you’re like, they are great too. Staples, the first impressions may be weird but if you give it grace and time it can turn out to be really great. Algorithms, I love the talk about how they like communication and meeting in the middle. It made me think of the love languages concept. Do you like getting ten text messages or do you want everything in one e-mail? Do you prefer a phone call or do you prefer so you have to communicate what you want and find out what they want. And be willing to meet in the middle. So I think that’s really great.

KELLY: We have a question asking how do you bring this CO, CS on board to understand the nature of our organization?

LINET: We used to put out opening remarks ever OrgCharts. One of the best things — I did this with contracts sometimes. Let me explain to you the OrgChart. And who might pop into the meeting using the actual OrgChart itself. And if you can, it’s nice to have some meet and greet time. Maybe we have donuts for an hour or whatever and that will give people the opportunity to come in and out. What about you, Nicole?

NICOLE: I like a thing called office hours or open forums and I think those help. It’s like a meet and greet. But you do it more and it’s less formal than a meeting and everybody gets a feel for other people. And I think it takes the pressure off. Open spaces where people can be themselves, take the work hat off for a minute and put their people work hard on.

LINET: I think it’s important that you help employees understand it’s a process of growth. It doesn’t happen overnight and that there are lessons to be learned, sometimes failure is where we learn the most. So we have to create those spaces as well and control as much as we can, environments.

NICOLE: Fail, fail again, fail better?

LINET: I love all the quotes. We have had a couple of Maya Angelou quotes. Fail, fail again, fail better. How to adjust when PMO leadership is not on board with the project? Motor vehicle when we say this is what we are going for the organization, contract holders don’t care, whether it’s one part of the organization or another part of the organization. They see the government and how we have to assess how can we help you understand how can we get — and sometimes you have to say to people, how can we get on the same page? And let them tell us. It may just be, I want to hear my voice. I want you to hear that I’m not on board so I can get on board.

KELLY: We have a lot of experience and knowledge, so let’s see. In an integrated team, who is responsible for making sure there is enough funding in the account to pay the invoices? Would it be better to remind a customer to add funding when it goes below a certain amount? As far as an integrated team, you know, that integrative procurement team and roles and then communication with the customer, what are your thoughts there?

NICOLE: I think it has to be collective. A person looking at those, run sheet or something. Where you look at where we are going. How we are trending. Then you have on my team, a budget person that is like, hey, we are getting to where we don’t have this, we don’t have that. And I think the CO is paying attention. Everybody is paying attention to working collectively, especially right now when things are tight and looks at the smallest penny to make sure we are spending thoughtfully. I think that has to be collaborative.

LINET: I agree. I’ve had funding meetings before. Everybody is going to be in the room together and we hash out these details and the people who have the role of going to seek the funding, ultimately from a contract perspective, it doesn’t care where the money is coming from, about the account code. It just knows that we can’t be deficient and that money better be there before the work actually happens. We are all in the same room, we figure it out.

NICOLE: If you see it, don’t be the person “it’s not me, it’s you.” Right now it’s all of us. We are all in it together. I think they say that in the metro, if you see something, say something.

LINET: If you see something, say something.

KELLY: All right. We have a question here oh, and I was going to say, brings back that point of we are all in the same team. You’ve got to remember we are all on the same team. That’s so important. I think this is more — yeah. Exactly.

KELLY: This is I believe more of a reciprocal question here from Barbara. What would be a reason to not have trust in a CO-PM relationship? Isn’t the objective the same? And I think there was more talk earlier. Ideally yes, the objective is the same you’re on the same wavelength. United front. Just like parents being a united front with a kid. Hopefully you’re a united front and on the same wavelength. In reality, sometimes there’s some — it’s not always as easy as how it sounds. You want to have the same objective and also be clear on what that objective is. You don’t want a person having a different translation of what that is to the other.

LINET: Even the courts and boards are saying, can we separate personalities and can we deal with what the issues are? And sometimes even in our organization, we have facilitators who are willing to come together for the good of this team so that we can talk out the things in a safe space. There are the nature of contracts and risk unto itself does create an intense pressure for people because as Greg mentioned, none of us look good in orange.

NICOLE: We are following the law and there’s latitude. But there’s always going to be opinions about we could have done it better or different. How did we manage those conversations in ways that support people because we are not going to be perfect all the time.

LINET: People are different and we might be different. That doesn’t mean one person is right and one person is wrong. That’s such an important, very important, especially when you’re on the team. You might be different. It doesn’t make you right and wrong.

KELLY: How are your vendors responding to your lapses? Anyone have comments or thoughts on that?

LINET: I don’t work at DHS so, I don’t know. I know that we have had in the past every organization I worked for. Some type of lapse. At some point when the money comes through. There will be contract modifications to rework the process. And if we can have empathy for what folks both the government and the contractors have gone through to try and support the mission, and facilitate, that’s my best advice. Um, because it’s outside of our control.

NICOLE: It’s also important to try to come up with contingency plans. When we get close to things like shutdowns we run a report and say, who can continue working and who would manage that person and who can’t. And how do we communicate that? How do we communicate it effectively? If you have that early and often communication, it really does help, like, someone is going to be less upset if you can give them what they need to know prior to the thing happening it’s worse to have the big thing happen and then you’re like, sorry. So I think it’s nice to have those contingency plans built into place. And take care when you’re having the conversations. Nobody wants to go unpaid just like the people working at DHS. Nobody wants to be unpaid.

LINET: I would echo that answer because it does include, proactive conversation and having those plans before you need them is so crucial.

NICOLE: Absolutely. And you never know what someone’s situation is. You don’t know what their life is outside of work, necessarily.

KELLY: Thank you, everyone. I believe those are all the questions we made it through. So really big thank you to both Nicole and Liniar and Gregory. This was amazing. Enjoyed this conversation. What a wonderful way to end this fast acquisition summit event with this conversation. Thank you for all of your engagement. This was such a great chat. If you want, go and give us feedback. I am going to put the survey link in the chat now. Go to that survey link if you want to give us feedback. Any final comments?

LINET: I’ll just say a long, long time ago I worked at GSA so you all have not lost me. I am still — you all were my first love. So, thank you.

NICOLE: You were awesome. Thanks, everybody for coming because I think it makes us all who are doing the presenting feel good to have the laughs. We don’t want to have boring presentations and GSA has done well of having informative but fun things. So thanks for coming and being with us.

GREGORY: Yes, I will echo that sentiment. Also, it’s my pleasure to have the conversation with the two of you. It’s been my joy doing that. We are all better together.

KELLY: Thank you, thank you. Thank you to everyone attending. You have made it to the end. So impressed. And we have most of our audience still with us. Which is awesome. Thank you for joining us. You have been a great audience. Please feel free to reach out to us with questions we have a lot of contacts in the slides. You can use that or contact me.

Before you go, let me put up the final polls take just a minute to answer these four questions. We would appreciate that feedback very much.