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GSA Moving to One Professional Services Schedule

In an effort to streamline the purchasing of services from MAS Schedules, GSA has officially announced the movement of all professional services on the various individual GSA Schedules to one single Professional Services Schedule.  The following is an excerpt taken from Brad deMers blog post published on GSA Interact that outlines some of the major changes:

What Schedules are affected, or may be affected, by this initiative?

The Consolidated (00CORP), MOBIS (874), PES (871), FABS (520), AIMS (541), LOGWORLD (874V), Environmental (899) and Language (738II).

Going forward, with the exception of the Consolidated (00CORP) Schedule, the Schedules listed above will be migrated into the new Professional Services Schedule and the solicitations for those schedules cited above would be eliminated.

What is the impact to existing contracts that are migrating to the Professional Services Schedule?

  • There will be no change to the contract number; 
  • There will be no change to SINs for all affected Schedules except Consolidated which would no longer carry the “C” designation for any SINs other than C132-51 and C595-21;
  • The performance period for all professional services contracts, regardless of Schedule, would remain unchanged;
  • The terms and conditions of all professional services contracts, regardless of Schedule would remain unchanged.  

Associated changes made would include; rebranding the Consolidated Schedule Program to Professional Services Schedule; and changing the solicitation number to that which represents the Professional Services Schedule.  These changes would result in the issuance of a mass modification to all existing contract holders.

How would these changes impact the Consolidated Schedules Program and current Consolidated contracts?

  • The Consolidated Schedule will be the contract structure used to create the new Professional Services Schedule.  In short, the Consolidated Schedule would be replaced by the Professional Services Schedule.
  • Contracts currently under the Consolidated Schedule would be unaffected, with the following exceptions:
  • As noted above, excluding IT (70) (SIN C132-51) and HR (738X) (SIN C595-21), nonprofessional service SINS on the Consolidated Schedule with no sales will be cancelled.  
  • Nonprofessional service SINS with sales would be removed from the Consolidated Schedule and migrated to the appropriate Schedule.  For example, once implemented, SIN C03FAC contractors would have contracts on Schedule 03FAC.  FAS Contracting Officers would work with affected contractors to ensure active BPA’s and task orders are not impacted and can be completed.  
  • 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 questions that have not yet been addressed.

For example, what will happen to companies that will be migrating more than one type of services schedule over to the new Professional Services Schedule? Which contract number, contract end date and business size will prevail when the individual schedules conflict?

Additionally, What if a company currently has an IT or HR Schedule with multiple Special Item Numbers (SINs), including 132-51 or 595-21, would it then be forced to split the SINs onto separate contracts; ultimately  causing more of an administrative burden?  Or what if a company currently holds a Consolidated Schedule for services not on the Professional Services Schedule, will they be migrating backwards into separate contracts also causing more administrative burden?

Though no system is perfect, we 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.

Of course, this is all just a first step as GSA moves forward with its “Category Management” initiative which we will outline in our next blog post.

The total transition is set to finish by November of 2015.  As always, if you have questions as the program or how Global Services can help with you any of your GSA modification or migration issues please contact us at 202-234-8933 or global@globalservicesinc.com.