Government Contracts Monitor

New Year’s Resolutions – Reassess Your Size Status, Update Your DSBS and SAM Listings and Check Your Past Performance Ratings

January 12, 2015

Happy New Year! The start of a new year is a time for New Year’s Resolutions. Here are several we strongly urge you to follow-through on early in 2015.

1. Reassess Your (and Any Subcontractors’) Small Business Size Status: Most companies operate on a calendar year for tax reporting purposes. For such companies the start of a new tax year, and the end of the prior year, means a change and forward adjustment of the three-year period used to calculate a company’s average annual receipts (AAR) for size determination purposes. See our prior blog article on this topic here. Thus, effective January 1, 2015, companies that have been calculating their size based upon 2011-2013 receipts are required, for the first time, to start using 2012-2014 receipts. Obviously, and depending upon the company’s receipts last year (tax year 2014) vs. 2011, this change alone could change a company’s size status eligibility. Moreover, there have been significant changes in size standards over the past year as a result of (i) SBA’s ongoing industry-by-industry review and increases to many size standards, and (ii) SBA’s Interim Final Rule issued last June adjusting all monetary-based size standards for inflation over the prior five years, previously discussed here. A size status review thus is particularly important this year, not only to ensure that future size certifications are correct, but also to consider whether your company might now be eligible for procurements as to which you previously were too large. Please note that this review needs to consider each individual NAICS Code under which your company is listed or considering bidding. While especially important for small businesses, a size status review also is important for large businesses with respect to any current or proposed small business teaming partners or subcontractors.

2. Review and Update Your Dynamic Small Business Search (DSBS) Listing: The start of a new year is also a good time, if you are a small business, to review, and update as necessary, your company’s listing in SBA’s DSBS. This is a primary source for government agencies, and you need to ensure that your listing is accurate, up-to-date and fully reflects any new information that might help you get new work. In addition to ensuring accuracy as to your current address, phone numbers and size and any socioeconomic status representations, be sure to update your listing to include any new performance history and professional and industry certifications, and make sure that your keywords are comprehensive, so as to make it easy for contracting specialists to find you. You might also want to check the listings of some of your key competitors to see how your listing stacks up and whether other changes might enhance your competitive status.

3. Review and Update Your SAM Listing: Once you have completed the size status reassessment, you need to review and update your listings on the Government’s System for Acquisition Management (SAM), at www.SAM.gov. This is necessary both to ensure the current accuracy of the listed information and if you are a small business, to maintain and continue your company’s small business status. Please remember that information on SAM is now deemed to be a representation and certification by you as to the current accuracy of the posted information, as to which both you and the company can be held liable. Moreover, at least annual updating is required or you will lose and be unable to claim small business size status until you update. On a related note, if your business address has changed, be sure to update your Dun & Bradstreet DUNS number listing and follow-up to ensure that the changes are passed through to and show up on SAM and DSBS.

4. Review and Ensure the Accuracy and Currency of Your Past Performance Information: The start of a new year also is a good time to review the accuracy and currency of your past performance information in the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) and elsewhere, so that you can initiate efforts to correct and update this information, if needed, in advance of future procurements where such information might be key to your competitive standing and award eligibility. Once a procurement comes down to the critical evaluation and award stages, it is often too late to get anything done. This is particularly true as to missing past performance evaluations, which take time to be prepared and go through the comment and review process. If you have performed well under one or more contracts over contract performance years that ended during the past year, you should ensure that CPARS evaluations have been performed and entered, documenting your good performance, so that you can claim, and agencies can give you credit, in any new procurement. This also will ensure that you have an opportunity to reply to and explain any negative comments.

While there are certainly many other good resolutions you might consider for the coming year – including remaining current on new developments, reviewing and ensuring the sufficiency of your company’s ethics and compliance programs, and enhancing your teaming and marketing efforts – and we certainly encourage all of them – the four actions listed above will position you well to move forward in 2015.

Hopewell Darneille is the attorney responsible for the content of this article.