What Federal Contractors Actually Want to Know
You see the letters first. CFCM after a contracting officer’s name in an email signature, CPCM on a capture manager’s LinkedIn profile. Then the question: is this something my company should care about, or is it a club for the government side? The National Contract Management Association (NCMA) is the professional association for contract management, […]
Has FAR 8.405 Changed? What GSA’s New FSS Ordering Rules Mean for Schedule Contractors
The citation in the RFQ looks familiar. The buying process behind it may not be. GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule ordering procedures have been established in GSAR Subpart 538.71 through a class deviation supporting the FAR Overhaul. For Schedule contractors, that means the familiar FAR 8.405 framework is no longer the only place to understand how agencies solicit, evaluate, […]
What Must I Do in the First 30 Days After a GSA Schedule Award?
The award email is the good news. The next 30 days determine whether your contract is actually usable. The first 30 days after a GSA Schedule award should be used to register the contract in the Vendor Support Center, publish accurate electronic contract data to GSA Advantage!, eBuy, and eLibrary, establish sales-reporting access, and assign contract-management ownership. A Schedule award creates eligibility. These actions make that eligibility visible to […]
How Do I Move My GSA Schedule From SIP to the FAS Catalog Platform?
The notice does not give your team time to invent a catalog-management process. It gives you time to complete one. A FAS Catalog Platform transition moves an eligible Multiple Award Schedule contractor from legacy SIP or EDI catalog publishing to GSA’s web-based FAS Catalog Platform, also called FCP. The transition requires the contractor to verify […]
Why Does GSA Reject Pricing on Schedule Offers, and How Do You Pass the First Time?
An offeror with a strong company and clean paperwork watched their GSA offer stall for months. Not over capability. Over pricing. The contracting officer kept asking for support they had not provided, and every round added weeks. Pricing review is where the most prepared-looking offers quietly die, and in 2026 the rules underneath it changed. GSA […]
How Do You Win Federal Work When You Have No Past Performance?
It is the most circular problem in federal contracting. Agencies weigh past performance heavily, so the contract goes to the firm that already has a track record. But you cannot build a track record without winning a contract. New entrants stare at this wall and assume the federal market is closed to them. It is not. There are […]
What Should a GSA Contractor’s Capability Statement Include in 2026?
A founder sent the same glossy company overview to twelve contracting officers and heard nothing back. The document was beautiful. It was also the wrong document. Contracting officers do not read brochures. They scan capability statements, and they decide in seconds whether you are worth a conversation. A capability statement is a one-page federal sales […]
What Is a GSA Schedule Modification, and When Do You Actually Need One?
A contractor sat on a mass modification for two months because they were not sure it applied to them. It did. By the time they realized, their contract was flagged non-compliant and a pending order stalled. Modifications are the routine maintenance of a GSA Schedule, and the contractors who treat them as optional are the ones […]
Is the FAS Catalog Platform Now Mandatory, and How Do You Get Your Catalog Found?
A new MAS awardee in 2026 went looking for the Schedule Input Program everyone told them to use, and it was not the tool anymore. GSA had moved catalog management to a new system, and the old guides they were following described a workflow that no longer applied. If your catalog is how buyers find you, you cannot […]
What Does the FAR Overhaul Moving to Formal Rulemaking Mean for Small Business Contractors?
For most of 2026 the FAR Overhaul has lived in a strange place: real enough to follow, but technically temporary. In June 2026 that changed. The FAR Council began converting the overhaul into permanent rules, and for small business contractors the part that matters most, Part 19, is still under review. The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul […]