Compliance Stuff

Many joint venture (JV) contractors have spent weeks of painstaking effort developing proposals only to learn later after winning a significant contract award that they are ineligible because of the failure to follow the mandatory regulations for JV agreements under the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) All-Small Mentor-Protégé Program (ASMPP). I f a JV agreement fails to include every mandatory provision required by SBA’s regulations, that JV contractor can be determined ineligible for award. Therefore, at the beginning of the proposal process, contractors must review closely SBA’s regulations associated with the ASMPP to make sure that they have a compliant JV agreement.  A failure to do so can result in the loss of millions of dollars in contracts.  In this alert, we provide steps to make sure your JV agreement is compliant.   1. Understand which SBA regulations apply to that particular JV and to the particular set-aside contract that the JV is pursuing.   ...

  The recent rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 6—governing “Competition Requirements”—is prompting questions about whether the changes may signal a shift in federal small business contracting policy . In particular, the removal of explicit references to certain socioeconomic program provisions raises concerns in the small business community.   In this blog, PilieroMazza dissects the FAR Part 6 rewrite, concluding that most revisions appear to be structural rather than substantive. However, the unresolved status of the “Rule of Two” continues to raise concerns regarding the protection of small business set-aside opportunities. A. The Rule of Two: Why Statutory Codification Is Essential As most federal contractors are well aware, the FAR Overhaul is well underway, with an overarching goal of eliminating regulations that are not explicitly grounded in statutory authority. While we have yet to see the revised FAR Part 19—which currently houses the “Rule of T...