Soldiers learn quickly how to work as a team. The "Army of One" notion may make a good recruiting slogan, but in the field, soldiers must cooperate, interact and rely on one another's individual strengths if they are to succeed.

That turns out to be good practice for soldiers who return home to launch their own businesses. A new governmentwide acquisition contract reserved exclusively for small businesses owned by service disabled veterans has been designed so that it is almost impossible for any one business to meet the contract's requirements.

Neal Fox, assistant commissioner of the Office of Commercial Acquisition at the General Services Administration, said GSA designed the Veterans Technology Services (VETS) solicitation that way to encourage teaming and therefore allow more businesses owned by service-disabled veterans to benefit from the contract, even many who will not be official contract holders.

Qualifying veterans must own at least a 51 percent interest in a company for it to be included. Some company officials, however, believe the requirements are too severe, particularly the amount of experience that bidders are expected to show.

The contract covers three monetary tiers and dozens of individual work elements. The language in the request for proposals tells companies that to show complete experience, they should provide three experience examples for each of the three monetary tiers.

The contract is divided into two functional areas, one covering systems operation and maintenance and the other information systems engineering. GSA plans to award two separate contracts, one for each functional area, according to the RFP. Functional Area One has 38 work elements; Functional Area Two has 26.

Some company leaders are concerned about the numbers they get as they interpret the RFP. Betty Neal, director of the proposal department and capture manager at Zolon Tech, said that to show complete experience only in Functional Area One, a company is expected to submit three examples of experience at each revenue tier for each of the 38 elements, a total of 342 separate experiences. If the company is bidding for both functional areas, that number rises to 576.

The document distinguishes experience — the company's own reports of having done relevant work — from past performance, a more demanding standard that includes a performance evaluation of the work. However, the RFP's language demands that all of the experience be recent, either ongoing or completed in the past three years.

"It appears that they're applying extreme requirements," Neal said. She and other business leaders have submitted questions regarding the language to GSA, she said.

But Fox said Neal is overstating the matter and that companies will need to submit about 30 experience reports.He added that GSA does not require all bidders to have that level of experience. "If [a company's experience] didn't cover 100 percent, they still could be a strong contender," he said.