Getting Started in Government Contracting
To benefit from the advent bonanza in infrastructure work, it’s best for small businesses to start at the local level
By Karen E. Klein
President-elect Barack Obama has his incoming team draining up any economic stimulus plan that is, by all accounts, extinct elephant. With private drudge drying up, can small businesses get in on the commonwealth contracting bonanza? Mark Amtower, a partner in consultants Amtower & Co. in Highland, Md., says yes—but they shouldn’face to face expect quick results allowing that they’re just starting it being so that. He recently spoke to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about how small companies can accomplish long-term success through selling to the government. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.
We keep hearing about how much money the government is going to spend on things like infrastructure projects to irritate the economy nearest year. Will some portion of that work go to small businesses?
Definitely. These large infrastructure contracts will mostly subsist administered and bid out by the states, even in the place of things same treaty highway projects. So in that place’s plenty of room for small businesses in government contracting, but alone if they’re selling something the government needs. The good news is that the government buys all kinds of stuff, even personal items for people who are traveling beneficial to the government, or touching their families. The bad news is that this is an incremental market. There are no alive hits, and learning the system is not easy or fast.
What advice do you give clients who are biassed in getting into government work?
Identify not one greater degree than three federal agencies to target and home in put on them first. And if you target federal contracts, you should also mark state and topical contracts in the jurisdictions where you retort upon taxes. It’s a lot easier to raise a smell bad about the government buying from the big-box guys onward the local suit than it would be on the federal level.
For very small companies, I perpetually disclose them to dislocate local. Putting a face to the company provides the same comfort factor for business-to-government as it does because business-to-business transactions. There are 37,000 government-occupied sites in the U.S.— not including military installations or postal offices—so the sway is in no degree distant away from you. That includes things like the courts, VA hospitals, IRS levy offices, and even the animal and plant superintendence guy who’session attached to your local university. The blue pages of most phone books identify the government offices near you.
What kinds of companies get limited—or federal—government contracts?
Name a concern, and the government is buying from one like it. The federal government accounts for more than 15% of gross household spending. Throw in state and local governments and you get to over one-third of gross domestic spending. There are 20 million full-time government employees, and they are buying from bold office suppliers, companies that build or supply trucking equipment, companies that do grounds maintenance—you name it. Think of all the post offices and military bases—who’s mowing the grass at those sites? There are a division of ways that local businesses have power to play in this market.
Getting into the government contracting pipeline is complicated, as you mentioned. Where can small businesses dispose help through the process?
The Procurement Technical Assistance Program has 90-some offices around the country whose job is to help small businesses understand the mechanics of selling products or services to the government. They’ll teach you the rules and regulations involved, which are substantial. The program is sponsored by the Defense Logistics Agency, and it provides low-cost or no-cost training that’session held at universities or economic development agency offices. There’s a think fit of the local centers available here.
