SBA’s 8a certification is an important marketing vehicle for economically and socially disadvantaged small business to access the federal government market. To begin with, contracting under the 8(a) Business Development Program may look more complicated than other procedures. However, it’s no more difficult than contracting under a standard form of competition via sealed bid procurement method and it offers several benefits for both the 8a contractor as well as the government.
Benefits to the Federal Government
A huge benefit for government procurement personnel in choosing the 8a contracting procedure is that the agency doesn’t need to solicit bids and can select a particular 8a contractor for fulfilling its needs. For the sole-source needs under the competitive thresholds, contracting organization may identify the 8a business to make a contract by naming that firm in an offering letter to Small Business Administration. Obviously, this doesn’t happen all by itself. The 8a company should self-market actively with contracting organization or be acquainted with the contractor by a recommendation. For SBA 8a certification requirements, the contracting organization doesn’t have the same capacity to select a contractor, although the competition may be limited to qualified 8a companies within a specific geographic location.
Another benefit for the federal government is that they may often obtain what they require faster by contracting through 8a program. This is mainly because the competitive requirements should be synopsized in FedBizOpps and the resulting solicitation should be open on street for at least a month. This standard form of competition where all responsible parties are qualified to compete may take many months. 8a contracts do not have any synopsis requirements and contracting organizations are not needed to let 8a companies thirty days to respond to solicitation. Thus, 8a contracts may be finalized much quickly.
Benefits to the 8a Program Contractor
The benefits obtained by an 8a firm are great. The 8a firm should acquire federal contracts on a limited competition or a sole-source basis must faster than in a standard form of competition. For small firms, the costs of preparing proposals are exorbitant. If the contract is a sole-source, an 8a company doesn’t have to endure costs related with making a competitive proposal and partaking in subsequent rounds of discussions with contracting organization’s contracting officer.
After the buying organizations become aware of the benefits of 8a method and have a remarkable experience with your 8a company, they’ll most probably choose to extend future contracts to you. The Small Business Administration plays its part in the start of the contracting method by approving and verifying the need for the 8a firm. Once the requirement is in place, the 8a small business and the federal agency directly deal with one another during the negotiation of the contract and at the time of performance of the contract.
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