• The 21 nonprofessional services contracts migrated from the Consolidated Schedule would have a new Schedule contract with a performance period of one five-year period, and three five-year option periods.”
The morphing of the Consolidated Schedule into the Professional Services Schedule and the subsequent migration of companies on and off each Schedule does bring up some issues that are different for every contractor.
Obviously the biggest benefit for contractors that are migrating to the Professional Services Schedule is that they will only be tasked for the compliance and maintenance of a single contract. Another advantage for these contractors is that their resulting contract starts fresh. This means that each will have a five-year period of performance with three five-year follow on options. For those contractors nearing the end of their original twenty-year period this can be a blessing.
Drawbacks for some companies may involve business size. What happens to companies that are migrating services schedules that carry different business sizes over to the new Professional Services Schedule? The new schedule will carry their size under the NAICS code that corresponds to the preponderance of work currently being done under the individual schedules. This may mean that companies lose either or gain a small business designation depending.
And then there are the companies who currently hold a Consolidated Schedule for services not on the Professional Services Schedule. These companies are forced to migrate backwards into separate contracts causing more administrative burden. The tradeoff here, however, is that each will contract will now allow for a new up to twenty years of performance.
Though no system is perfect, I believe that the push to one Professional Services Schedule is the right move for contractors and the ordering agencies, even if there are still kinks to be worked out. It has long been noted that the way most federal contractors do business and provide services was never a good fit for the singular position imposed by individual services schedules.
The GSA projected end date for the total transition is set to finish by November of 2015.
"The push to one Professional Services Schedule is the right move for contractors and the ordering agencies, even if there are still kinks to be worked out."
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Considering the GSA Schedule?
What you need to know
Course Instructor:
Courtney Fairchild, President, Global Services Group