The General Services Administration (GSA) has become a sales and marketing machine. The thrust of its pitch is that the agency makes things "easy" for everyone,especially government buyers and end-users.

As one GSA web page puts it, "Federal Supply Schedules make it possible for your staff to go to the store without leaving their desk." Translation: you're overworked and stressed; we feel your pain; we'll help make life eeeeeeeasy.

(Easy purchasing means more GSA sales. More GSA sales means more money flowing to the agency through vendor-paid Industrial Funding Fees. More money means greater power and justification and a smaller chance of getting whacked into oblivion by Congress.)

A contractor teaming arrangement is an arrangement in which-

1. Two or more companies form a partnership or joint venture to act as a potential prime contractor; or
   
2. A potential prime contractor agrees with one or more other companies to have them act as its subcontractors under a specified Government contract or acquisition program. FAR 9.601.

In a true teaming arrangement, all team members must be on the Schedule.

Teaming arrangements play an important role in making life easy. GSA explicitly promotes teaming arrangements to help buyers purchase complex multi-vendor solutions "on Schedule." According to GSA, "Using Contractor Team Arrangements is a way to achieve flexibility and is a powerful acquisition strategy. Teaming allows Schedule contractors to deliver an end-to-end solution from multiple industries." "Multiple Award Schedules Program Owner's Manual," Spring 2001.

Where Schedule holders team properly, even the most complex solutions can be acquired one-hundred percent on Schedule. In other words, traditional, time-consuming full and open competition procedures can be avoided altogether. See Pyxis Corp., B-282469, July 15, 1999 (off schedule items must be acquired in accordance with applicable acquisition regulations no matter how "incidental" to Schedule orders).

Teams are typically formed before the submission of the offer, but they don't have to be. Teams are valid as long as "the arrangements are identified and company relationships are fully disclosed in an offer or, for arrangements entered into after submission of an offer, before the arrangement becomes effective." FAR 9.603.

So, when might you form a team? Simple, really. When a procurement calls for solutions that you can't meet all by yourself. A warehousing contract, for example, might require bar code equipment, software programming, logistics consulting and a labor force hired to operate forklifts and pack boxes. Few, if any, companies acting alone could meet all the requirements under such a contract.

A teaming agreement should be drafted carefully, with due consideration given to such issues as proprietary information, the roles and responsibilities of each party and contract duration.

GSA states that an ordering agency's RFQ should require vendors to specifically identify their teaming arrangements, and that arrangements should "designate all team members, their corresponding GSA Schedule contract numbers, and describe the tasks to be performed by each team member, along with the associated proposed prices (e.g., unit prices, labor categories and rates). If applicable, the team leader should also be identified."

http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/content/offerings_content.jsp?contentOID=116432&contentType=1004#002

Bottom line: think big. If you're on the Schedule but missing out on lucrative, complex opportunities, look around for the right teaming partners, so you can play with the big boys and girls.