Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 5, 2007. Please go to Corrections & Clarifications to see what has changed.
A newly awarded General Services Administration governmentwide acquisition contract should put more teeth behind a two-year-old directive to boost veteran-owned businesses.
That’s the view of industry executives following the award of the Veterans Technology Services (VETS) GWAC. The vehicle, with a $5 billion ceiling, is reserved for contractors owned by service-disabled veterans. The pact represents one response to President Bush’s Executive Order 13360. Issued in October 2004, the document calls for the establishment of a GWAC for businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. Overall, the order seeks to meet the objective of at least 3 percent participation by service-disabled firms in federal contracts.
Frank Yahner, director of operations at Penobscot Bay Media, a Camden, Maine-based VETS GWAC contractor, said the company has not encountered many set-aside opportunities to date. The company has been a service-disabled veteran-owned firm for more than two years.
The service-disabled veteran preference “hasn’t had the visibility we had hoped it would have,” Yahner said. “Hopefully, this contract vehicle will let us do some more work.”
VETS “certainly serves as a tool that the program and the contracts people can both use,” said John Moliere, founder and president of Standard Communications, a Hume, Va., VETS GWAC contractor. “GSA has made a commitment to provide training such that program people as well as contracts people can understand the use of this vehicle.”
Megan Gamse, manager of federal opportunities products at Input, called VETS a “step in the right direction” toward fulfilling the 3 percent goal. “Creating a goal and not having a mechanism like a GWAC to help agencies fulfill this goal is not productive,” she said. “The creation of [VETS] can do nothing but help at this point.”
Moliere said GSA has made progress in service-disabled veteran contracting beyond the VETS GWAC.
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