Polaris is the long anticipated follow-on to GSA Alliant Small Business. Now the final RFP has been released, What do we know? What do we expect? What can we do now? How do make productive use of this unexpected period where we’re waiting for GSA to issue the next amendment? We tackle all these issues and give our listeners recommendations on moving forward and being prepared to win.
Polaris is the long anticipated follow-on to GSA Alliant Small Business. Now the final RFP has been released, What do we know? What do we expect? What can we do now? How do make productive use of this unexpected period where we’re waiting for GSA to issue the next amendment? We tackle all these issues and give our listeners recommendations on moving forward and being prepared to win.
Welcome to GovCon Growth Bytes Hey there Industry!! And welcome to episode three of GovCon Growth Bytes. Your source for expert advice and key strategies to grow your business one bite at a time. I'm your host, Maggie Bennett, and I am joined again today by Robert Turner, founder of rTurner Solutions. And we're going to talk about Polaris, the vehicle, the myth, the legend. Will it ever happen or do we know what we expect and what can we be doing now? But first, let me say a really quick thank you to our client of the day for providing the following feedback with the initials B, B. He is the general manager of his company, and he says, quote, I know I relied on you guys a lot, but thank you for all your support and help. I cannot express my gratitude enough for all your contributions to our NIH proposal. It was a big lift, but we did it. We put together an amazing technical approach, and I know we are price to win. I look forward to working with you upon notice of a new award. Thank you again. Well, we are so thrilled to hear about your positive experience with our team. We are really thankful for the opportunity to work with you. For those who are listening, I would love to give a shout out to your company. If you'd like to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Give us a review. Tell us how we're doing. We would love the feedback. We want to know what you want to hear, and I would love to give a shout out to your company if you'd like to leave the name of your company along with your review. All right. With all that out of the way. Greetings, Robert, and welcome back, Maggie. Glad to be here. Excellent. Can you give us a real quick introduction to the listeners? Who are you and why are you here? Yeah, Robert Turner, founder of rTurner Consulting. Now our rTurner Solutions. We are very excited about the balance of 2022 and how we're organized to add value and help to help our customers win business. We've got now products and services and solutions in proposals consulting, training and pipeline. We've launched FedPipeline.com We've launched our GovCon Growth Academy. We're about ready to launch a new agency overview series. We're still working on the name. So just lots of talk about great to be here and so glad to have you. It looks like you have a whole lot going on. And in the midst of all the different things that you're doing, I really appreciate you taking the time to give our listeners a little bit of expert advice. I know that fitting this into your day, when you have all those pillars that you're working with and all the different activities that you're taking on to give us your expert advice, after 20 years in this industry, it's very valuable. So we appreciate it. Let's dive right in. Waste no time, Polaris. Talk about it. What do we know so far? Right. So GSA Polaris is the reboot of GSA’s Alliant II small business GWAC Right. The one of the largest small business I.T. services contracts that the government has. Certainly, the GSA has Alliant II small business was canceled because of protest several years ago with with lots of problems. And they're they've they've released it they released the RFP several weeks ago. And then because of a protest and really because of industry feedback on the number of problems that were with Polaris, they put it on pause and they said, hold on, wait for an amendment. They still accept. We're accepting questions, but at any rate, it's on pause. As we all know, there are four RFP, small business woman owned, small business service, disabled, veteran owned, small business and hub zones. There's a there's an RFP for each of those tracks. They've released Small Business and woman owned. Now, those we expect to get kind of reopened here. I think we're all hoping in May. We don't really know yet, but we're hoping that they come up with some good answers on the problems that were uncovered with mentor protege joint ventures and that they get this thing back on track. It sounds like there's a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of questions. We know a lot, but we also have a lot of information still lacking. So with all of that, do you have a gauge, a pulse on the industry? What can we expect moving forward? I think these are very subjective things and I don't claim to have any particular insight into how GSA is looking at this and when they expect to have it unraveled. I think we all hope that it's going to get untangled here shortly and that by the first couple of weeks in May that they will rerelease the RFP. But we will see. I think what we can expect is that they will fix the requirements and try to try to try to provide some equity in the competition relative to mentor protege joint ventures and how much a large business can contribute to a small businesses proposal so that there's not this imbalance in in this procurement. It's a small business vehicle. Large business shouldn't be able to drive. Show? Absolutely. Can you kind of flesh that out a little bit more? What kind of imbalance are we looking at and what kind of issues are they having to deal with before they can get this back on track? Right. So that the way the RFP was originally released or a mentor protege joint venture, which is a joint venture between a small company and potentially a large company, it could be one of the billion dollar titans around the Beltway. It could get all of their points from the large business mentor. So here we have a contract that's supposed to be a pillar small business vehicle. Driven by large business and go to GSA dot gov or SBA dot gov. There are 1500 joint or protege joint venture agreements. GSA is only going to release 100 contract awards in each of these tracks. So it's completely conceivable under the current RFP that all of those could go to being a protege. Joint ventures that are connected to these monsters that are connected to these large businesses. And it's just not fair. GSA sees that, and that's why they put it on pause. So we're we're hoping and I think we can reasonably expect that they will provide some kind of equity that they won't let potentially all the points come from the large business or potentially they'll open up and allow small business primes to get some of their points from their subcontracting team partners. So those are some of the things I think we can expect. Are there other kinds of difficulties that they're wrestling with right now, or is that the kind of primary issue? I think that's really the primary thing there. There are there are lots of changes that lots of industry would like to see. But I think the primary issue right now is the the the real imbalance that exists because of these mentor protege joint ventures. And, you know, it's not the GSA is being hard to get along with. They're just following the rules. If you look at 13 C.F.R. 125 and 128 and you look at look at how the SBA regulations are written, we've covered this in our webinars that we've done on Polaris. This is what the regulation says. The regulation says that the government must evaluate, must evaluate a mentor-protege joint venture in the aggregate so they can't separate between the small business and the between the protege and the mentor. They have to evaluate in the aggregate, and that applies to all socioeconomic categories. So GSA is trying to follow the rules. Well, but it just creates more problems. So this is kind of what happens when we try and engineer the way things go. A lot of times we box ourselves into a corner so NITAAC had the same problem with the CIO-SP4 they had a particular solution. We're hopeful that GSA will will have something that'll work for everybody. No one likes to be a box into a corner. You got it. Cramped place to be. It is. I know you referenced a webinar and I had the privilege of attending one of the recent ones. I think there were well over, what, 90, nearly 100 folks that were on that webinar for a good 2 hours. If our listeners missed that, is there an opportunity to get like a back ticket and get a recording or anything like that they can reach out to you? There is I would just encourage folks just to reach out to us via email through the contact information they'll find with the podcast, and then we'll we'll be happy to get them connected with that. Excellent. Great. So definitely check out those show notes if that is something you'd like to hear more about. I know that we've got a couple of different experts on that podcast, on that webinar as well. So we have a kind of an idea of what our current understanding is, a little bit of what to expect, some changes we're hoping to look into. But with that said, even though we are looking for changes, we're not looking for whole scale changes across the entire RFP. I mean, there are some things that look kind of consistent. What kinds of things can we do now informed by the RFP as it is so that we can be actively strategizing for our future? All right. So, I mean, all the clients I'm talking about, everybody excuse me, is actively involved in building their team. There are some companies that have all that squared away, but I think a lot of companies and a lot of primes are still working on their teams. I even think that there is still an opportunity to form a joint venture. You know, if you formed a joint venture just among small business, two or more small businesses, you could then aggregate systems and certifications, clearances. A number of things that you maybe wouldn't have yourself. You could kind of aggregate all that together. So I think there's enough time to to build a joint venture, get that company registered in SAM and get it approved by GSA. I think there's still a window of time to do that. Certainly there's no time to waste. That needs to be done quickly. I think that's something that can be that can be done. You know, I think some of the things that that bidders can do now, if you're if you're planning on priming polaris, especially pay attention to the organizational risk assessment piece. And that one obviously requires that you show a prior business relationship between a prime and all of their teammates or between members of a joint venture. So there are some there are some pretty easy ways you can do that if you read the RFP, literally. GSA does not put really any guardrails on what an acceptable subcontract could be. It doesn't have to be a year long. It doesn't have to already be in place. It doesn't have to be effective as of a certain date. It doesn't have to be of a certain size, then have to be any of that. So I really believe and this is the advice I've given to all of our clients in issue a subcontract for a fixed scope of work, get it invoiced and get it paid and get that done. Now you have the entire paper trail to show a prior business relationship. I don't see any reason that that would not continue to be acceptable when GSA releases the RFP, and that's a very easy thing to do to secure those 5000 points. Something else I think you can really do is look at your statements of work. Look, you're going to want to get as many points as you can on Polaris. And one of the ways you can do that is by showing that you have coverage across all five NAICS codes So the five NAICS codes for Polaris. 541511, 541512 541513, 541519 and 518210. Those are the Polaris NAICS codes and you want to get coverage across all of those. So you may be in a situation where you need to rewrite the narrative. It may be 541330, but it's really it's services. So let's rewrite that. Right. Well, if you read your RFP, you'll see that GSA wants to see a copy of your statement of work. Well, what if this is a subcontractor and you don't have a detailed statement to work? Well, according to the RFP, you still really need one. So my recommendation is work with your customer to generate the documentation from their site, with your prime contractor, with whomever. Get that documentation created. This is a good time pre RFP to get all that documentation all squared away. I can be happy to talk to any any customers who have questions about that as well. Excellent. That looks like some really actionable steps. I mean, just recap really quick. the 4 ones I think I heard I heard that we can work on some teaming opportunities, getting those in place. We can look at our risk assessment and get that written up. We can take advantage of that paper trail flexibility and get some prior business relationships established. And then we need to really dive into our statements of work to make sure we have the right coverage across NAICS And if it's not substantiated, work with our clients. That's right. If the FPDS reports that you're going to generate, don't verify all the and validate all the points that you're claiming. You're going to have to have additional paper. And so now is a good time to get those documents all squared away. Absolutely. That sounds like some really valuable prep work that will then cut down the man hours necessary for getting it to the finish line once it gets released as a final. I know that's great advice for what our clients can start actioning on. Is there anything that on the inside rTurner Solutions is working on to set up our clients for success? Well, yes. So we have several offerings we've worked on. We've developed the entire survey of salaries for all the labor categories. There are well over 100 labor categories that you need to price. We researched, That's a big deal. The professional employee compensation plan is a pass fail item, but it requires that you submit salary ranges, salaries and salary ranges for all of the labor categories. So if if you need that, you can buy that from us We've got that available. We've got a turnkey proposal package. So you know Polaris that these big. GWACs are they're not complex proposals to do but you know the busy season has started. And so you're going to want to put your core internal resources to work on on revenue generating opportunities. Polaris is not yet revenue generating. It's just a vehicle. So great opportunity to bring in a consultant. We've got a fixed price offering. We give you data calls, you respond. We create your entire proposal for you from A to Z. So that's available. And you know, we're really encouraging that clients really shoot for 90,000 points. So, you know, if your score sheet is not at 90,000, give us a call. We may be able to help you with teaming recommendations or with some other strategic advice to help you get to that threshold. So excellent. So it sounds like there's a lot of opportunities for work to be done now and ways that you can take advantage of the work that rTurner Solutions has already done. It sounds like there are a substantial amount of pieces of information coming together in the labor categories and the pricing. I think that's going to save people a lot of time if they need that opportunity. And then you make a really good point. I mean, this is not necessarily immediately revenue producing. And so giving rTurner Solutions an opportunity to wrap up a really quick proposal for you while they while the client works on their other revenue and income as well. Right. And I've been talking to some customers this week. And, you know, the way I the way I couch it is that we one of the things that we're doing differently that a lot of other firms are not doing is we've built a scalable IDIQ proposal factory, and we've used this to build proposals. We built dozens of proposals for Seaport NextGen GSA Stars III FAA eFast CIO-SP4 and now we're at Polaris. So, you know, we've done this a lot. We've got a great team were organized, we've got the process, the collaboration tools, the compliance checks. We I think 100% of our client base got an award on Stars III. Nobody nobody was thrown out of compliance problem. And so we're expecting the same thing on Polaris we can help you get really squeeze out and maximize all the points that you're that you deserve for for Polaris. And so this is a good opportunity to use consulting because you want your core folks to be bidding, you know, task orders and contracts that are going to get evaluated this year, that you can transition this year and start hiring people and put money on the table. Polaris is not going to start producing revenue for some time now. So reminds me from episode two asking those hard questions as a manager, is it worth my time to get this done or should I just have it done so I can focus on the higher value items? That's right. Love it. Are there any other kind of general recommendations that you can make towards listeners as they get their bidding strategy together? Yeah, I mean, you know, some of the things we've talked about, right? Put your put your partners on subcontract, look and really see if this is an opportunity to build a joint venture . And, you know, whether or not you choose to work with us or anybody else, really, if you're going to if you're going to outsource this bid, get that consultant selected. Now, there's only so much of us to go around. And I anticipate Polaris to have a lot of interest. And GSA should expect hundreds and hundreds of proposals, I imagine at least. Excellent. Well, that is a lot of excellent information. There's a lot going on there. Where can our listeners find you if they need more information, if they have questions that they want to follow? Yeah, we're launching our new website. It's still a little bit under construction, but it's out there rTurner. net my email Robert@rTurner.net and I'm on LinkedIn you know search for me by name or look up rTurner Consulting you'll find us on LinkedIn. I think we're we're doing some good stuff to increase our visibility there and yeah. Brilliant. Excellent. I think that's a really helpful way for folks to be able to follow up and get some of those questions clarified and to be able to look out for more Polaris updates. I imagine we'll be doing another webinar and with the volume of interest we've had recently, I think that those are going to continue to be really valuable. I hope so, yeah. I mean, we've already started planning on on what we're going to cover when when the next amendment comes out. So yeah, we're going to launch that thing as soon as GSA starts to score clock again. So we can all hope. We're just waiting with great hope and anticipation. I mean, you know, sometimes you got to wait on the government, right? Nobody likes it. But sometimes we're just the way to get it is. Well, instead of just waiting, let's call the day and get back to work. Let's do it. Thank you. Thank you for your time.