Find news and information for the executive corporate security director, CSO, facility manager and assets protection manager on issues of policy, products, incidents, risk management, threat assessments and preparedness.
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SPECIAL FOCUS GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING "The best way to ensure recurring revenue is with superior performance, so that when the contract is re-bid you have an outstanding reputation to leverage," says Jim Cotter of Kratos. Getting Started "I recommend someone new to the process review the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARS) to better understand the requirements," Holmes says. "Once you have gained familiarity with the FARS, you will find the first step in the procurement process is that the government must advertise and publish in THE LOCAL LEVEL State and municipal governments have security needs too If contracting with the government on a national or federal scale seems daunting, there are still plenty of local opportunities with your state and municipal governments. "In some cases, local municipalities may favor firms that have a local office," says Kratos' Jim Cotter. "They also place high value on experience and expertise in providing a solution that solves both their security concerns as well as meeting their budgetary expectations." "Having a local presence when considering a municipality can be a benefit," adds G4S' Keith Jernigan. "Local firms may have advantages due to proximity, but I am not sure that I would say that they are given favoritism." He also says that lower overhead and knowledge of the local market certainly gives local firms a leg up. "Seasoned sales professionals understand that more face-to-face meetings with a customer tend to breed better project understanding and concurrence between customer and integrator. Such concurrence on project approach and equipment solutions may be more readily available to a relationship between local companies and municipalities than between large national companies and local municipalities," says Honeywell's Brian Holmes. Many states, cities and municipalities are beginning to adopt and take advantage of the federal schedules for use in their own procurement activities. "Unless smaller local companies petition to be included on the federal schedules, they may find themselves losing ground as slowing economies and strained budgets are pushing more awards toward the lowest priced technically compliant (LPTC) criteria vs. the virtues of an award based purely on relationships," Holmes warns. ❚ 26 an open and public forum, its requests for quotes and proposals (RFQ/RFP)." A popular location for advertisements and announcements is at www.fbo.gov, but it is not the only place projects and programs are advertised. "It is important to have a good relationship with the end-user and their contracting office to understand specifically where they advertise their business opportunities," Holmes says. Just as with anything else, a good place to start is on the Internet. Look at sites like gsa.gov or fbo.gov for contracts coming up. GSA schedules are an efficient way for government organizations to quickly obtain pricing from commercial firms; however, a GSA contract is not required. "Although Kratos has several GSA contracts, there are multiple paths to being awarded a federal contract, including direct awards from government agencies and other ID/IQ contracts," Cotter explains. One tip Rogers would offer the newbie is to move away from project work and look for programs. He finds that federal projects have "a gazillion" people bidding, and competition gets extreme. "It becomes irrational. You'll never win," Rogers states. He prefers to look at programs and works with GSA Advantage. "It is very beneficial to have a GSA schedule as it offers several advantages for you as a supplier, and more importantly, it holds many benefits for the procurement activity as well," Holmes says, noting that a GSA Schedule is effectively a contract with the government, where the government has analyzed your pricing and found it to be fair and reasonable. Accepted items go on a Federal Schedule. This means that, in some special circumstances, an opportunity does not have to be bid competitively in a full and open environment, which immediately enhances your probability of securing new or additional business. In addition to vigilant website monitoring, Cotter says his firm employs a variety of tools and resources to help identify and pursue bids, including paid subscription services which collect and integrate potential opportunities from thousands of resources, includ- www.SecurityInfoWatch.com | SD&I; | November 2013