Procurement Matching, Contracting Opportunities

Representing minority-owned businesses nationwide, Alejandra Castillo, is blazing a path through California’s bay area to ensure that MBDA clients will have a fair shot at the many contracting opportunities surrounding the construction of the California high-speed rail system. Ms. Castillo arrived in San Francisco yesterday to begin a series of meetings with the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA). The high speed rail will link Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than 2 hours and 40 minutes, traveling at speeds approaching 220 miles per hour.

The $68 billion project has the potential to create 100,000 jobs for each year that construction is underway and another 450,000 permanent new jobs statewide over the next 25 years. High-speed rail means tens of thousands of good, family-supporting jobs for California — jobs not just to build the trains and the train line, but also jobs to operate and maintain it. And there’s more — hundreds more jobs will be created for suppliers, restaurants and other businesses along the route.

Just last week, California High Speed Rail Authority CEO, Jeff Morales, signed a Small and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Policy, formalizing a 30 percent small business participation goal. “MBDA is very excited about this project and its prospects of putting Americans back to work. We are collaborating with our partners to ensure that 30% of the project will be completed by minority-owned firms,” said Alejandra Castillo, National Deputy Director of the Minority Business Development Agency.

Searching the web for contracts can be extremely frustrating. If you are not familiar with the process a simple search can present a list of contracts that can take days to review. How can you simplify the effort while still keeping it effective?

Tip 1: Make sure you are listed on the Central Contract Registry (CCR) www.ccr.gov.  You cannot bid on solicitations unless you are listed on this website.

Tip 2: Check out government agencies “Wish List”. The “Wish List” is just that, a list of project/contracts that, if the money is available, they would like to purchase. The wish list is also known as a Presolicitation List. The items on the wish list may or may not ever be let for bid, but by watching this list you can maintain an awareness of planed projects or potential contracts.

There are many helpful web sites available. Acquisition Central lets you search forecasts by agency: https://www.acquisition.gov/comp/procurement_forecasts/index.html.

Tip 3: Use www.FedBizOpps.gov. This site lists almost all contracts over $25,000 being solicited by the federal government. There are three or more ways to search on this site. The first method is to search “ALL”. You may do this once just to get a feel, but it can easily cause information overload, too much information to be useful.

With experience you will find the best method is to search FedBizOpps by keyword and enter your product/service or zip code. Using this method you can find all solicitations for “cheese”, or “computers” or “socks” or “food services” or whatever you may wish to sell/provide to the government. You can most easily limit the listing of interested contracts by using the keyword search.

The U.S. Small Business Administration will host the fourth of its free Mentor-Protégé Matchmaking Conference series in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 21.  The program gives small disadvantaged businesses access to guidance on federal contracting, face-to-face meetings and opportunities to team with larger businesses and graduates of the SBA’s 8(a) Business Development program.

The 8(a) Business Development Program is a business assistance program for small disadvantaged businesses. The 8(a) Program offers a broad scope of assistance to firms that are owned and controlled at least 51% by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.

The 8(a) Program is an essential instrument for helping socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs gain access to the economic mainstream of American society. The programs helps thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs to gain a foothold in government contracting.