This week I am going to go over BIC or “Best in Class” Federal Contracts. In case you were not aware, in recent news the OPM (Office of Personnel and Management) is now slated to become part of the GSA. This will move OPM’s IT, fee-for-service HR Solutions, retirement, and health and insurance services to GSA. It is yet another example of the Federal Governments to consolidate and centralize the management of spending. This further consolidates more “Best in Class” contracts into GSA.
Now I am going to further build upon why firm’s wanting to play in the federal space need to look to the future which is BIC or “Best in Class Contracts”.
What makes a contract “Best in Class”?
To understand what makes a contract best in class we must first look at how the federal government tiers contracts.
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Tier |
Manager/User |
Federal Government Future Goal |
|---|---|---|
|
0 |
Unmanaged Contract – “Wild West of Federal Contracting”. Agency spending is not aligned to category management principals. |
Decrease by 20% |
|
1 |
Single Agency – Contract is managed however it is setup for only one agency to utilize the contract creating mass redundancy at multiple agencies with multiple suboptimal solutions. |
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2 |
Multi Agency – Contract is managed and utilized by multiple agencies but not necessarily government-wide. |
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3 |
Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) = BIC “Best in Class”. These are contracts that all agencies can use providing quick accesses to solutions and competent vendors. |
Increase to 35% of Federal Spending |
The federal government wants to migrate away from unmanaged single use contracts to managed government-wide contracts. The theory is, the more that can be brought under one roof, the better the oversight, FAR compliance, solution finding, and pricing will be.Now let’s look at the contracts the Federal Government has determined to be BIC. I have sorted the BIC Contracts by Industry, the Contracts in Bold are managed by the GSA or will be after the OPM/GSA merger.
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Facilities & Construction
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Human Capital
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Industrial Products & Services
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Information Technology
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Medical
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Office Management
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Professional Services
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Security & Protection
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Transportation & Logistics Services
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Travel & Lodging
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Looking forward it should be every federal contractor’s goal to get on the “Best in Class” contracting vehicle for their industry. The natural transition for doing this is to start first by obtaining a GSA Schedule Contract and then leverage that contracting vehicle to then later obtain a place on a “Best in Class” contract.
