By Jeff Erlichman

The “G” stands for Government-Wide – that means it is open to you. That’s one reason to consider a GWAC. And here are 5 more reasons why using a GWAC just might be right for your next IT product or service buy.

Government procurement and contracting officials face challenge after challenge. On one hand, they must be sure they are making “best value” buying decisions while complying with the growing number of complicated mandates and requirements – including those for transparency. Then, they must efficiently and effectively manage the workloads dictated by the program requirements.

Successful acquisition professionals have devised strategies to confront the challenges. Some are obvious such as the importance of communicating early and often, engaging all involved personnel and talking with PMs about planned and unplanned IT requirements and, of course, deadlines.

Your customers’ IT requirements will not fall into a “one-size-fits-all” category. There are more contracting vehicles available than ever and a GWAC just may be the
right vehicle for you. Here are five reasons why.


1. Get Convenience with Confidence

GWACs offer both convenience and confidence. Contractors on a GWAC are pre-approved, having already gone through one level of competition just to get on the GWAC, so be confident because whoever wins your task order has been vetted.

Plus task orders placed via GWACs have the advantage that other companies have limited protest options depending upon the GWAC. For example on Alliant and Alliant SB, no protests on orders $10 million and under are allowed, except on the grounds that the order increases the scope, period, or maximum value of the GWAC. And with the way GWACs are making sure that all IT is in scope, that possibility is diminished.


2. Buy From A Supplier Whose Trust Must Be Earned

For IT providers both big, small and minority, the GWAC is their “hunting license”. A GWAC is an IDIQ contract and being on a GWAC doesn’t guarantee business. Companies have to earn your business and trust by winning your task orders. You benefit from two levels of competition.


3. Meet Your Small Business Purchasing Goals

Some GWACs permit only small businesses to gain a slot. Using a small-business GWAC for an in-scope requirement is an easy way to guarantee that small businesses will gain a
contract. Small-business set aside GWACs includes GSA’s STARS, COMMITS and the new Alliant SB.

One reason to use a small business is they are usually innovative and will adopt technological innovations faster than larger businesses that aren’t as nimble. Countless technologies we use today grew from small business roots with less bureaucracy.


4. Pay To Invest In The Experts.

Depending upon how big or how backlogged your agency contracting shop is you can take advantage of fee based assisted-services to help you define requirements, perform the
necessary market research and write your contracts.

These fees are typically added into the contract price so you never see a bill from the GWAC holder. GSA’s basic fee is 0.0075% throughout their portfolio. NASA SEWP is 0.006%. NIH’s is 1.5%. However if you want to have GSA’s Assisted Acquisition Services (AAS) or Interiors’ Acquisition Services Directorate (ASD) help you, you will be paying an additional fee.


5. Use Friendly Online Tools

Visit the SEWP, NITAAC or GSA websites and you’ll find easy to use online tools that assist you with every step of the acquisition.  Today product delivery times are measured in months, weeks or days depending upon the requirement – not in years as was the case during the 20th century.

For example according to NITAAC, to place and complete an order on the NIH CIO-SP2i contract takes with Fair Opportunity 14 working days, the same for Time & Material (T&M) and 21 working days for Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF) /Cost Plus Award Fee (CPAF). The ordering timelines for GSA’s many GWACs is comparable.

On NASA SEWP, new product/solutions are added in one business day and their customer service SEWP BOWL team turns around customer issues and requests in 1 business day.
All have customer service representatives to help you at every turn – and will come to you to help solve your problems.


Finally, Don’t Mistake a MAC for a GWAC

MAC stands for multi-agency contract. They are also IDIQ contracts, but they are agency specific. Unless you are part of that agency, you must have permission to use another agency’s MAC. An agency placing a MAC order with another must also attest that the order is in the best interest of the government and whatever is bought can’t be obtained elsewhere as conveniently or economically. Agencies often create MACs for internal use. An example is the DHS EAGLE contract which is open only to DHS components and selected agencies.