“Hundreds of small businesses are now in an unenviable position of having to make a tough decision — to bid or not to bid on the Polaris governmentwide acquisition contract.
For those small businesses not in a mentor-protégé joint venture relationship with a large business, they now have to weigh their chances of winning based on a last minute change to the solicitation for this potential 10-year contract with a $10 billion ceiling…”
“On March 18, GSA released new details under the section for joint ventures and mentor-protégés that removes any requirement for the small business to submit any relevant experience or past performance as part of the bid.
‘The [mentor-protégés joint ventures (MP-JV)] with a large business can max out their scores because now you have small businesses competing with multi-billion dollar corporations, and they just can’t win. The MP-JVs can max out almost every category based on the experience of mentors,’ said Stephanie Mitchell, co-owner of BD Squared, a bid and proposal consulting firm. ‘The optics are terrible here. This will be a small business vehicle controlled by large businesses when they already have Alliant 2 and now rolling into Alliant 3. Based on the new information from GSA, they are not evaluating small businesses at all in Polaris, since the information in the bids will mainly come from large businesses.’…”
“On one hand, SBA has been pushing agencies to make sure small businesses have more contracting opportunities as it has seen the growth of ‘best-in-class’ (BIC) contracts and category management.
‘As agencies are putting more BICs together and making them bigger so it’s less likely small business can secure an award, SBA has been pushing joint-ventures and mentor-protégés to combat that,’ [Cy Alba, a partner with PilieroMazza] said. ‘That way the government is less likely to say small businesses can’t do the work and therefore it will be set aside. It’s clear the opportunities for joint ventures and mentor-protégé relationships are growing.’…” Read the full article here.
Source: Why GSA just made Polaris a no-win situation for many small firms – By Jason Miller, March 29, 2022. Federal News Network.
