Small Businesses Shine in NASA SEWP IV

NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) IV is a government wide acquisition contract supporting IT investments spanning from 2007 to 2014. SEWP is an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle and is coveted by many contractors as a gateway into large scale contracts and access into a plethora of agencies. SEWP is one of the few contract vehicles which actually manages the contracts and allows agencies to utilize resources from a centralized platform. A Federal Computer Week Report highlights some key features:

• A contract ceiling of $5.6 billion
• 2+ million products and over 3,800 manufactures
• Average order size of $80k+
• SEWP program office adds roughly 25-500 products each day in response to RFQ’s
• 93% customer satisfaction rating

Every IT contractor wants to be a prime or sub-contractor on the SEWP contract. Usually, this would include only large contractors but fairly recently small business concerns have found unprecedented success on large SEWP contracts. About 48% of SEWP IV spending goes through small businesses. Small business utilization has increased across the government as seen in the increase of small business set-asides.

Currently, the SEWP program office is engaging in market research for SEWP V. Specifically, with regard to small businesses SEWP program officials are looking for insight on capabilities and small business reseller and manufacturer roles. Small businesses should feel encouraged and optimistic when going after large-scale IT contracts via the SEWP platform either as a prime or a sub-contractor. In fact, a percent of small businesses utilizing the SEWP contract vehicle have graduated out of the small business classification. All small business set asides should explore SEWP today, the opportunities are endless!