In the first episode of season 2, we explore the topic of OASIS+.
1. What is it?
2. Is it right for me?
3. How does it fit within GSA's portfolio of contract vehicles?
4. What do I need to win a place on OASIS+?
and more.
In the first episode of season 2, we explore the topic of OASIS+.
1. What is it?
2. Is it right for me?
3. How does it fit within GSA's portfolio of contract vehicles?
4. What do I need to win a place on OASIS+?
and more.
Hey there industry and welcome to season two 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 today I am joined by Robert Turner, CEO of r Turner Consulting, and one of our favorite topics for this season is Oasis. Plus. To kick off the season in this topic today, we're focusing on just what is Oasis Plus and is it for me? But first, let me say a really quick thank you to our client, Brian Jason, senior vice president of Allied Associates, for providing the following feedback. To quote him, he says, rTurner Consulting provided our company with excellent proposal support for our Polaris bid. Their data calls, templates, reference material and compliance checks created a very efficient process. Their service has freed up our staff to focus on day to day work instead of overburdening them to develop our own proposal and have to play catch up on their other responsibilities. Their team was outstanding. Based on our experience, we will gladly work with our Turner again in the future. I recommend Turner Consulting as a cost effective path for small businesses to navigate the complicated GSA bid process. Well, thank you so much, Brian. We are thrilled that you were so happy with rTurner and we had a fabulous time working with you as well. Speaking of rTurner, the man, The Myth, the Legend. Robert Turner, founder and president of rTurner Consulting, providing business development support to GovCon firms for ten years. Greetings. Welcome back. Thank you, Maggie. We're having a great time and we've got a great topic today. I know Oasis Plus. Tell me everything. Well, you know, the first thing we really want to talk about as we kick off this season of our podcast and as everybody's dealing with Oasis Plus. Let's talk about what it is and then we'll talk about where we go from here. So Oasis Plus is the next generation of GSA’s, fabulously successful Oasis contract, and Oasis, the first generation, had, I believe, four domains management program management I think was pool one. There's also financial functional areas. Financial and accounting services are in there, some engineering is in there, and other such topics. So GSA had had a couple of different names that they were throwing around for a while. Big Mac Services, Mac trying to figure out what they were going to call the next generation of Oasis and what its scope would be. So they finally landed on the name Oasis Plus very creative, I think. And they've they've landed on on how they're going to organize the content. So it's eight domains. One of them is reserved exclusively for the largest businesses in our market. And then seven other domains for both small business and other than small business. And so we'll talk about that here in a minute. But it's really the the next generation professional services, multiple award IDIQ for use across the entire federal government ...That’s awesome I think it's a I think it's hopeful that what they lack in creativity they're going to make up for in clarity right with the oasis plus. Well that's what we're hoping. And we've seen a lot of good changes to how they're running this procurement, how they're going to do evaluation, how you create your proposal. So still lots of work to be done, but I'm personally very encouraged with what I'm seeing. That's great. It sounds like there's also going to be a lot of opportunity for, as you said, every participant really in the industry. What kind of question should I ask myself if I'm trying to figure out is OASIS Plus for me? Well, I think the first thing you need to do is look at the statement of work within the draft RFP and ask yourself, do you have contracts in or do the contracts that you have have scope that lines up with any of these seven domains that I mentioned? So the seven domains management and advisory is one technical and engineering is another. Facilities, logistics, environmental intelligence services and research and development. Those are the seven primary domains. So I think if you're a business owner or a business development executive, ask yourself, do I have contracts that are that have either complete scope or partial scope within any of these seven domains? And if the answer is yes, I think you can make a very fast. And I think there can be a very quick path toward making a positive bid decision for Oasis Plus. I like it. I like it when there's a lot of opportunity and you can do so many different things within one major project. If they have something that they're like. I think this fit in scope. It may not fit in scope. What's the best place for them to go with those kinds of questions? Yeah, So I think a couple of things. One, you know, you want to look at how GSA has defined the domains. They've done a very good job of providing a bullet, a very long bulleted list for each domain. So you've got plenty of subject areas. They are plenty of keywords, plenty of topics to look up and then match those against the contracts you have. And then just ask yourself a general question Do I provide program management, professional services, thought leadership, subject expertise of some kind to my customers? You know, that goes beyond that goes beyond the information technology area. If you do, it's highly likely that Oasis Plus is going to be a great contract for you. Just one, you know, kind of quick example that we have seen recently. EPA has a contract called its BIS4 I.T solutions business information strategic support services 4 and so this has got a lot of i.t in it, but it's but it's not, it's not building software and it's not network engineering. It's as the title talks about it. Strategic support. Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics and another firm had their contracts extended on this vehicle. And this is the kind of work that at one point in time the EPA was looking at moving to the Oasis contract and then competing task orders on that Oasis vehicle. Well, so if they're going to move it to Oasis, it's going to have applicability to Oasis Plus. And so here we see even a piece of work that might be traditionally considered information technology work being applicable and within scope of Oasis. And so thereby also within Oasis Plus. So it's got very, very broad, very, very broad scope. And there's a number of reasons that a lot of vendors are going to win Oasis plus contracts. And I think also that a large majority of our federal agency friends are going to use this contract for their needs. It sounds like a lot of pie to go around for everybody. How would you say that Oasis Post really fits within the GSA contract portfolio? Right? So if you look at GSA and their major contracts, they've got let's say we could organize them in in two areas at the highest level. One is the federal supply schedule program. So of course, recently GSA has consolidated multiple schedules under what we call MAS multiple award schedule. So we've got one single schedule with multiple areas or SINS underneath it that define a particular functional area. So that's one that's one program. And of course the federal supply schedule is has got its own set of FAR clauses that govern how you how you do things and what can be done. So that's one piece. And then GSA has their their multiple award IDIQ and government wide acquisition contracts. So right now they've got Allient, the Allient program for I.T services for large business. They've recently completed and accepted proposals for Polaris, which is their I.T services vehicle for small business and they've currently got Oasis which is going to be now be re competed under Oasis plus which is going to be every other almost professional services category. They've got these eight domains now and then they've got growth plans to add additional domains. So if you look at it from a multiple award IQ perspective, GSA is going to have kind of three major contracts. They're going to have a client and Polaris for I.T services and then everything else is going to be under Oasis Plus. So if you're one of those vendors that does, yes, I do IT, but I also do a lot of other stuff. You're going to see that kind of work show up under Oasis Plus your customers are going to use the vehicle. If they're not if they're not doing it now, they will certainly do it later because Oasis Plus is going to be kind of that catchall for everything services based that is non information technology. And so for that reason and others that we'll get to, I think it's a it's a must, a must bid must win vehicle. I completely agree. So speaking of the must bid, must win, let's say that I've evaluated and I've decided, yep, I not only do I work in all these different places and do all these different things that would that would fit within the categories that have been given, I want this. How do I know whether or not I can win this? Right? So so Oasis Plus is also part of this new generation of multiple award vehicles that is evaluated with a scoring sheet. So for Oasis Plus, if you go to the SAM dot gov page, which will link as part of this podcast episode, you'll see a big Excel workbook with what GSA is calling qualification matrices. So each domain has its own qualification matrix that lists out how you would be evaluated with your proposal for your corporate experience and your past performance and systems and certifications and all kinds of things. And so I think the first step is to look at that qualification matrix and see if you have the assets to generate enough points to win. And you know, Oasis Plus, if you haven't seen this already, has this just absolutely wonderful characteristic to it in that like what we saw in the Air Force with EC2 what we saw at DIA was site three. Oasis Plus is a minimum qualification contract. So you're not competing for, let's say, 100 slots and you want your proposal to be one of the top 100. GSA has set a minimum score for each domain and for each business size. So for small business, you need 36 out of 50 points. For large business, you need you need I think it's almost somewhere over 80% of the available points. Small business, only 72% of the available points. And so if you can if you can put together a proposal with the right number of relevant pass performance references and other pieces that get you to that 72 to 73% level, if you can get to the minimum score, you can win a contract. And that should be very encouraging to a lot of companies that maybe have considered these type of large multiple award IDIQs to be so far out of reach. Now that's brilliant that I'm completely accessible and just going in and seeing ahead of time like, yes, I can get these points that makes it absolutely worth my time. What do I do then. Yeah. And so I think the other thing you need to do is to also look at not only your own contract portfolio and your own corporate assets that go into the contract, but also look at your team members. There is an absolute rush of teaming discussions that are happening with Oasis Plus because you can get most of your points that count toward that minimum score. You can get most of those from your partners. So if you've got friends in industry or you can make new friends over the next 30, 60, 90 days, you've got plenty of time to build a relationship, establish a teaming agreement, and work out how you can help others win on Oasis, how they can help you win on Oasis. Maybe you can bid more than one domain, you know, maybe you can bid on more than one contract. There are going to be contracts for each socioeconomic designation. So there will be a contract for large business. There will be a contract for all small business, and then there will be separate contracts for each of the four major socioeconomic classes 8(a), service disabled, small hub zone and woman own small business. So start to look at that and then start to put your hands around what contract references am I going to use? And do they meet the standards that are set up, that are set in the qualification matrix? If you need help with that, Of course we've got teams that that are helping clients understand that and get prepared. We're also helping clients build teaming relationships and really get ready for the drop of the final RFP, which according to recent information released by GSA, should occur in the latter part of April 1st or latter part of March 1st, part of April. So really, the two major things you want to do now, identify your relevant projects, start really analyzing them against the qualification matrix standards, and also look at what teaming arrangements you can build and establish to increase your point score. Start to frame up those pieces of your proposal and you'll be in good shape when the final RFP drops later this spring. That's fantastic. It sounds like there's a ton of opportunity and a ton of reasons to go for it. I think we should get back to work. In the meantime, we look forward to doing more. more OASIS plus discussion on future episodes. Where can a listener find you between now and then, especially if they need a consultant on some of this? Yeah. So we we have a very good presence on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn, reach out to us on email info@rTurner.net. We've also just recently released a new Web site where we've brought together two Web properties and integrated our eCommerce store and all kinds of cool stuff. So go to rTurner.net, check out our new website, subscribe to our mailing list and what we're doing and keep up with us on the podcast because we're going to be talking about Oasis Plus in depth over the next 90 days, sharing insights, capture strategies, proposal strategies, things we learned from GSA and from other partners in industry. And this is going to be a very exciting time over the next several months. I'm looking forward to it and I'm looking forward to discussing all things OASIS Plus with you over the next few weeks. Until then, talk to you later. Thank you, Maggie. Thank you.