Blanket Purchasing Contracts: The Wave of the Future in Federal Contracting

Federal purchasing is based on many of the same principles as commercial contracting, but is subject to laws and regulations that require competition when taxpayer's dollars are being spent. In the commercial sector companies can purchase more freely with limited competition. The commercial sector uses blanket purchasing agreements with predefined pricing but are not usually required to include a number of vendors in a blanket agreement.

The counterparts of blanket purchasing agreements in the federal government are contracts with pre-approved vendor price lists, awarded to a number of vendors (multi-vendor contracts). Purchases are made over the term of the contract (usually five years) by placing individual orders as needs arise.

Multi-vendor contracts are the wave of the future in federal purchasing because purchases can be made quickly with less red tape. The requirement to use pre-approved prices to satisfy individual orders allows federal buyers to reduce purchasing lead-time from months to weeks or even days. Competitive purchases made through single-vendor contracts can take over 6 months of elapsed time and burdensome red tape requiring an excessive number of purchasing staff hours. Single-vendor contracts are not only unduly expensive but are impractical in meeting the requirements of time sensitive federal programs like disaster response. A commercial company could go out of business if purchases took six months or more.

Federal multi vendor contracts are most often called Indefinite Quantity/ Indefinite Delivery (IDIQ) contracts but a dozen or more names and acronyms are used to describe the same thing. Finding the publicly posted bidding opportunities to win multi-vendor contracts is difficult because non-standard naming conventions are used across federal agencies. Fedmarket recently announced a new online subscription service for finding federal bidding opportunities for multiple vendor contracts. The new service allows companies to find bidding opportunities for multi vendor contracts quickly and easily. The IDIQ Search Engine uses advanced key word, key phrase, and key acronym searches of publicly posted bidding opportunities. The IDIQ Search Engine is priced at $ 990 for a one-year subscription. Call 888 661 4094, Ext.2 to learn more.

Regards,
Richard White
President
Fedmarket
rwhite@fedmarket.com
888-661-4094, Ext. 125 (office)
301-908-0546 (cell)