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Re: Does anyone have any knowledge of the B2G Institute? Apr 21, 2009 3:56 PM
My business partner and I recently attended the Atlanta event at the W Hotel at Perimeter Center. We found the basic information informative and we each took copious notes during the sessions we attended jointly and individually. My partner went to view the product bidding process, while I stayed in the teaming bidding process. In the separate sessions they focused on these two aspects of goverment contracting.
During the event there was a heavy emphasis on the following:
- Many solicitations go unanswered, with the figure quoted at 25%, and that if you can find these opportunities, and you are the only bidder, then you win the contract by default. Two manners of finding these kinds of contracts were described - one of which appears to be erroneous if not misleading.
- First, contact the procurement officer and ask for bids that are outstanding under $100,000 targeting rather obscure agencies that many businesses do not pursue. These seems reasonable, and they did represent that they had a comprehensive database of 6000 procurement officers, and their contact information.
- Secondly use a website such as www.FedBid.com. On this particular site there are buttons to the right of each buy number labeled "NO BID". We were initially under the impression that this designated an opportunity with NO OTHER BIDDERS. What that actually means however, is that YOU do not want to bid.
- During my session the "Assignment of Claims Act of 1940" was highlighted as a federal act that REQUIRES the federal government to PROVIDE funding for large contracts. However, I think that "provides" is not really the way that should be phrased. Facilitates, perhaps, and thus far I've been unable to find anything that supports this claim. I'm not surprised to hear that they have an affiliation with a factoring company that would predicate its willingness to loan (and profit of course) on the fact that they are intimately involved in the structuring of the deal. They did not mention that they had such a company in pocket - only that the federal government is "required" to provide funding.
This said, we're about a week into verifying what they said. We're disappointed to hear of Fred Steinberg's legal misadventures. The fact that the "no bid" label was not what we anticipated it to be or that other information approved to be partial truths is of concern as well.
We are MOST interested in Teaming... but have spent about a week on FedBid.com. What we've discovered thus far is that facts such as "small businesses are evaluated as businesses grossing under $30MM" also has the caveat of "less than 500 employees" - it's not both - it's EITHER of these conditions. So companies we initially targeted that we wanted to team and bid on their behalf with were "grandfathered" in as small businesses.
We also received absolutely ROCK BOTTOM pricing from vendors - only to discover we were bidding against manufacturers that had given significantly discounted prices unavailble to us or their distributors.
It clearly isn't as easy as described - for instance 3-4 bids won a week on FedBids.com would be incredible.
We are looking DILIGENTLY for a site that reveals the bids that have not had any bidders at all, but so far have not found one. I'd be fascinated to know if one actually exists.
Regarding the comments on the database. The nature of that beast is that this information is ever changing... and updates from the field are the only way to maintain it. It's not necessarily a rip off - unless most of the data is so stale that none of it is relevant... and updates are not available on a regular (i.e. daily or weekly) basis.
Personally, I would find day to day handholding to create a multimillion dollar contract worth sharing the pie with a third or fourth party. I have no problem making or sharing money, the more I receive the more I have to give, of course!
