If It Was Easy; Everyone Would Be Doing It
By Mark Bigelow
I’ve heard this or variations of this saying throughout my adult life. Heck, I’ve used it time and time again when dealing with my knuckleheads (soldiers, NCOs, LTs, interns, kids, and others) while discussing various events, programs, and issues. Yes, if you are reading this and that word resonates then you know who you are. Here’s the cold fact, business in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) is tough. The learning curve is high, regulations are plentiful, you must be a student to learn, grow, and win in this community, and you must have grit, tenacity, and mettle to make it. I have to remind myself of this on a daily basis.
We’ve seen a downward spiral in the number of small businesses that are willing to work within the DIB which has created second and third order effects in how we conduct or don’t conduct business. When I first joined the acquisition community in 2006, the DIB was packed full of companies that were supporting the Warfighter community. Work was plentiful and money flowed from multiple sources to keep the Industrial Base alive and well. Oh, how things have changed, companies have moved on, been acquired, or just flat out closed-up shop all together. Is this new? Nope it’s standard operating procedures for business cycles.
The SBA chose to fight this by bringing more companies into the folds of the small business community or better said, bringing them back into the small business community.
How has this happened? Increasing the personnel count and revenue for NAICS Codes and extending the calculation for revenue to qualify as a small business. This is a method to increase the pool of small businesses that compete for the increasing amount of small business requirements and why the SBA scorecards are achieved for small business set-asides throughout Government contracting.
Sidebar: Defense budget in 2006 was $560B @ 4% of GDP and 2020 was $780B and 3.74% of GDP. Increasing small biz revenue limits is a good thing to account for & allow increases in program scope / magnitude over years. Better for small biz to lead bigger programs. But increasing the personnel count is counterproductive as trend is for all companies to be more efficient with staff (get more done with fewer people), therefore increased people count lowers bar for “larger biz” to pollute the small biz pool.
My last lesson learned for this session is how small businesses get lured into spending valuable time and resources to pursue opportunities just to have a side armed knuckle curve tossed at RFP which totally eliminates the small company from even submitting a proposal. No doubt about it. For instance, an opportunity that we have been preparing for over the last 6 months made a last-minute change from the draft to TS FCL upon proposal submission! Is this the first time this has happened? Nope! Will this be the last time? NO WAY. This is beyond frustrating. The team built is no longer able to compete, and the government contracting officers won’t change their minds or help since it’s not their money being flushed down the toilet. Suck it up, Buttercup and drive on!
It’s frustrating, but don’t let that stop you. We are prepared to stay in the fight to support the DIB. The Warfighters need more small businesses to stay in the fight and encourage others to join in the fight, by organically supporting small business growth instead of lowering bar to aid bigger businesses play in the innovative end of the pool. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s worth every opportunity to compete and win to support the Warfighter community. We must have people and companies with grit, tenacity, and mettle in the DIB. Are you willing to do what it takes to compete and win? If so, join forces with the Mettle Ops Team – Katchi Kapshida (We Go Together).
