GSA is discouraging small businesses from bidding for Alliant 2 SB. The Alliant 2 SB RFP requirements favor large, small businesses. This became even more apparent based on three comments from GSA during the recent Bidders Conference.

GSA Comment: GSA estimates that 60,000 evaluation points will be needed to win.
Counterpoint: The 60,000 point number will obviously discourage small businesses from bidding. Fedmarket estimates that around 40,000 points will be required based on the hundreds of small businesses we are working with. We are both guessing because it's impossible to know the project experience and related qualifications of thousands of small IT companies.

The only thing that can be said definitively is that the 60,000 point guess will reduce the number of bidders and the lower the number of bidders the lower the winning score will need to be.

GSA Comment: The security clearance level of a bidding team will be the lowest level of the cleared partners.
Counterpoint:

1. This would apply to Joint Venture bidders. For CTA bidders the security level for the bid would be lowest level of the partners participating in the bid.
2. Most task orders will not have a security requirement.

GSA Comment: Most task orders will be over $ 10 million dollars.
Counterpoint:

1. Thousands of task orders will be let by any federal contracting officer requiring IT services during a ten year $ 30 billion dollar GWAC. They will all be set-aside for small businesses and can be of any size. After all, it is a small business GWAC.
2. This should not be a deterrent; who wouldn't want a large task order. GSA's comment implies that large small businesses are less risky than medium-sized small businesses and that task order evaluations will favor larger small businesses. And you don't have to bid on what appears to be a biased task order.

Bottom Line: Alliant 2 SB is a huge opportunity and uncertainty about eligibility should not be a reason for not submitting a bid. The worst that can happen is that you lose.

Fedmarket can reduce your bidding costs.

Our Alliant 2 Small Business Services are:

• Alliant 2 Model Proposal The model includes a model JV and CTA agreements; both compliant with RFP requirements.
• Alliant 2 Model proposal and Full-Service Proposal Writing
• Complimentary expert advice of any aspect of bidding Alliant 2.

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