The Gormley Group’s Deep Dive into the 2019-2020
$30+ Billion GSA Multiple Award Schedules Consolidation
The pending GSA Schedule Consolidation or Modernization will revolutionize the selling and buying of commercial solutions! This restructured acquisition platform will be the “go-to buying source” within the Federal Marketplace! Read The Gormley Group’s exclusive insights on the upcoming GSA Schedule Consolidation from both industry and government perspectives below.
Future of the GSA Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) Program
The GSA MAS Program is reviewing several upcoming initiatives to improve the buying and selling experience of its customers and industry partners. GSA’s objective is to use data analytics to get actionable insights to find and buy solutions on schedules, vendors will have the ability to offer their solutions in a way that fits their model and the way their customers buy. GSA will be utilizing the advances in technology and explore legislation and policy reform that will support agility, transparency and competition. GSA will also promote government-wide and other interagency contracts by removing outdated reporting requirements for contracting officers. In addition, GSA has the opportunity to increase competition at the task order level with the use of unpriced contracts for services; true competition will take place at the task order level.
GSA Schedule Consolidation Phasing
GSA has prioritized these upcoming initiatives based on what will provide the greatest value and the GSA Schedule Consolidation has been identified as the #1 priority. Consolidating the 24 individual schedules into one Schedule will eliminate the need for industry to deal with multiple schedules contracts, multiple contracting officers and multiple sets of terms and conditions. GSA’s intent is to implement this Consolidation in three Phases:
Phase 1
Phase 1 is the largest phase and started last fiscal year. GSA began by reviewing all terms and conditions across schedules, isolating what terms and conditions are for all vendors and what are very specific to a category or subcategory. Also reviewed was SIN duplication and overlap. GSA anticipates that Phase 1 will conclude at the end of 2019 with the release of the new GSA Schedule.
Phase 2
GSA, under Phase 2, will issue a Mass Mod to all vendors holding a single GSA schedule contract. This Mass Mod will migrate contractors to the new terms and conditions under their new GSA Schedule contract, keeping the same contract number, existing task orders and BPA’s.
Phase 3
Phase 3 will only apply to contractors that hold multiple schedule vehicles. This process will be customized based on the contractor, the number of schedules vehicles they have and where those schedules are in their life cycle.
Other GSA MAS Program Initiatives
eBuy Project: The eBuy Project is a one year effort. It is designed to increase transparency and competition by studying the effects of releasing post–award RFQ information on FedBizOpps. The project eBuy will collect and analyze data from a test group as well as a control group. The test group includes contracting officers from the GSA Office of Internal Acquisition, and the FAS Region 7 Southwest Supply and Acquisition Center for GSA Funded Procurements. These test groups were selected because they are the most active on eBuy. During the pilot, the test group will upload the award notice of each individual eBuy award, including a copy of the RFQ, on FedBizOpps for public viewing. The pilot will run until October 9, 2019.
FAS Contract Writing System: The General Services Administration (GSA) has posted an update on e-Buy on the Federal Acquisition Service’s (FAS) Contract Writing System (CWS) project. Initiated in June 2018, the CWS project seeks to identify an enterprise-wide CWS that supports the entire acquisition lifecycle for all of FAS’ major programs. To date, the CWS project team has conducted market research, inventoried internal systems, and examined existing solutions. Based on these efforts, FAS has identified the following CWS alternatives to its current systems:
- Purchase a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) CWS
- Reuse an internal FAS system
- Utilize a shared-service solution
Moving forward, GSA anticipates that it will select one of these alternatives by the end of February 2019, with a specific solution identified by the second quarter of calendar year 2019. Further, GSA expects it will begin piloting that solution by the third or fourth quarter of calendar year 2019.
Catalog Management: With the GSA Schedule Consolidation, GSA has recognized that reorganization of its operations based categories of services and goods is required to facilitate GSA operating more like the commercial market. GSA has an internal team assigned to realign operations to match the structure of the supply market. They anticipate an announcement of progress made in mid to late 2019. Once this realignment of categories to the commercial market has been completed, GSA expects that they will have removed confusion and duplication in contracting, thereby reducing the time and cost to do business with the government through its Consolidated GSA Schedule.
GSA has said while restructuring the Schedule platform, it is business as usual so DON’T WAIT to get begin the process to obtain your schedule. Let the Gormley Group guide your company through these revolutionary changes and keep you up to date with the initiatives outlined above and more!