POP provides business assistance

Mike Skaggs

Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 | 3 a.m.

Small businesses looking to expand may want to consider doing business with the federal government — the world’s largest customer, spending billions of dollars every year with those businesses.

In Nevada, the Procurement Outreach Program helps small businesses navigate the sometimes complicated and overwhelming process of selling products and services to the government.

POP is a cooperative effort between the Defense Logistics Agency and the Nevada Economic Development Commission that assists Nevada businesses to find, bid on and win government contracts.

POP’s mission is to increase the flow of federal, state and local government contract dollars to Nevada businesses to facilitate creating and retaining jobs as well as developing a more diverse economic base for Nevada. POP assists businesses in understanding the requirements of government contracting, how to market their business to government entities and obtain contracts. POP also provides guidance to businesses so they can successfully perform and complete the contracts.

The program cuts through the red tape, connecting businesses with lucrative opportunities through:

• Education of the contracting business through seminars, workshops and one-on-one discussions.

• Marketing your firm, brainstorming for specific targets and teaching mechanics of how the purchases are executed; providing bid information and proactively marketing clients with buying offices and prime contractors.

• Technical assistance to include working with clients on quotes, bids, proposals, pre-award/post-award situations and compliance issues.

• Support documentation to include forms, military standards, inspection and quality control, procurement history, clauses, reports and regulations.

• E-commerce links to support exchange of information through purchasing offices, downloads and announcements.

• Networking assistance to enhance visibility for business prospects, encourage opportunity-teaming arrangements, identify other resources and create alliances to pursue industry specific programs.

For the fiscal year July 1, 2009, through June 30, POP clients obtained 2,186 contracts and subcontracts with government entities or prime contractors. The value of all contracts was more than $600 million. These contracts created or retained 12,033 jobs in Nevada, up 188 percent from the previous fiscal year.

POP’s primary focus is assisting small, woman-owned, minority-owned, service-disabled veteran and veteran-owned businesses. In addition to the government market, POP helps connect Nevada small businesses to the contracting opportunities available through large-business supplier diversity programs, thereby expanding the small-business client base.

Summit Engineering Corp., with the support of POP, landed an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract in July 2009, which was recently extended. This survey contract with the BLM in the state of California has never been used. However, the BLM was kind enough to recommend Summit to a national contractor that needed field surveying support statewide. The BLM now uses Summit’s services in Colorado with future plans to expand the use of services to Montana.

Since late 2009, Summit has also had an IDIQ contract with the U.S. Forest Service that includes four states. The contract has provided a steady stream of work for months, and now Summit is authorized on a very large task order that will carry the company through 2011.

In a letter to POP, Summit Engineering Corp. project manager Benjamin Veach stated, “I can’t thank (POP) enough for your help early on with getting our firm involved in federal contracting. Truly, without your help and some internal pushing, the future of this company would be in jeopardy. As it stands now, these may be our largest contracts in our 30-year history.”

Another POP client, J&L Janitorial Services, has reported several new federal and state government contracts over the past 12 months. In 2009, J&L was awarded two service contracts with the Nevada Transportation Department for periods of two and three years totaling $164,160. In January, J&L started a four-year contract for $104,640 with the Nevada Employment, Training and Rehabilitation Department. Other wins for J&L include a $19,500 contract with the U.S. Forest Service in February as well as a $798,531 contract from the state in March.

Mike Skaggs is Nevada Economic Development Commission executive director