Region 6 infuses $135.5M into America’s small businesses

October 21, 2019

By Alison Kohler

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — GSA’s Heartland Region finished fiscal year 2019 with impressive numbers, but an even greater source of pride is the impact small businesses have on local economies.

“Everyone wants a small business to succeed,” said Sara Strickland, GSA Heartland Region program analyst.

Region 6 Public Buildings Service’s contribution

Between Oct. 1, 2018, and Sept. 30, 2019, Heartland PBS spent $49,064,571 in contract awards to qualified small businesses including:

• Small disadvantaged businesses.
• Service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.
• Women-owned small businesses.
• Certified HUBZone small businesses.

“It was definitely a successful year for all of our goals,” Strickland said. “We didn’t have to worry at the end of the year if we were going to make it. That’s attributable to the planning at the beginning of the year, and communication throughout the year, to make sure everything got done that we planned.”

The PBS Design and Construction Division, having larger contract values and a greater impact on goal percentages, continually reviews existing and future projects to determine what could be contracted through a small business and how to get good competition and fair prices.

“A lot of the year-to-year planning falls on the Design and Construction Division,” Strickland said.

Besides crushing small business utilization goals, there is a lasting effect GSA’s contract dollars have in local economies.

In addition to issuing contracts out of the regional headquarters in Kansas City, GSA also establishes contracts with small businesses through its property management offices in St. Louis; Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; and Topeka, Kansas.

Although contract awards for work in areas that field offices serve tend to be smaller amounts, Strickland said they add up.

“The work that our field offices do is important,” she said. “It’s just as important and the residual impact is that it’s more likely to be supporting their neighbor.”

Region 6 Federal Acquisition Service’s contribution

In FY19, Regional FAS spending infused $86,512,095 into small businesses nationwide.

The massive growth this year came from a new allowance for GSA to capture the money all federal agencies spend through the Global Supply program as GSA’s small business utilization, according to Katie Boresow, a procurement analyst in the Heartland Acquisition Center.

“Global supply purchases have had a big impact on the total volume, as well as the total small business spend for the year,” Boresow said.

There are many ways the federal government and GSA put small businesses first, apart from the amount of dollars agencies spend with small businesses.

“I grew up as a military dependent. My dad was in the military, so I was taught to buy American and help our country. Now I also recognize that small business is the engine for our economy, helping communities locally, and helping with jobs and growth,” said Sandra Upson, Procurement Analyst, Region 6 FAS Program Evaluation Office.

Regional FAS employees worked hard this year to serve GSA’s Veterans Affairs customer with a maintenance, repair and facility supplies contract pool of service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses — which VA can award future delivery orders to.

“The goal was to bring on a minimum of two service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses, and we ended up getting seven,” Boresow said.

Region 6 FAS manages GSA’s governmentwide building maintenance operations contracting vehicle. Based on customer needs for more small businesses in certain categories, Region 6 qualified 17 new small businesses in socio-economic categories to do BMO work for GSA’s federal agency customers.

“We take great care, with extra steps in the process, to make sure requirements are known in the marketplace. We use requests for information to see how to target small businesses better. We get good feedback from that,” Upson said.

In cases where contracts valued above certain amounts are awarded to a large business, a subcontracting plan provides future opportunities for small businesses in the socio-economic categories.

“There is more emphasis on the vendor meeting the goals set in the subcontracting plan. This compliance oversight is impressed on the contractor and the contracting officers, Office of Small Business Utilization and U.S. Small Business Administration are all involved,” Boresow said.

Even though GSA’s Region 6 Assisted Acquisition Division cannot credit other agencies’ small business spending in the region’s internal spend, their work to administer and award contracts internal to GSA “have a big impact,” Boresow said.

The Heartland Acquisition Center contract and program support both are small businesses, which Region 6 AAS awarded, Boresow said.

Small business utilization is a product of a comprehensive, collective effort.

“Contracting officers ultimately decide the strategy, but everyone is involved. Business development helps recruit small businesses, management oversees acquisitions and our customers are making supply buys that support small businesses,” Boresow said. “It’s definitely a team effort.”

GSA employees who work hard to ensure small business utilization are inspired by more than the regulations, policies and metrics that mandate it.