What Happens Behind the Scenes When a CO Reviews Your Mod Request
Contract modifications do not fail loudly. They stall. They circle review queues. They trigger internal questions you never see. By the time a Contracting Officer pauses a modification, the exposure already exists. Lost time. Misaligned terms. In some cases, a compliance flag that follows the contract forward. Transparency matters here. Not as marketing. As risk […]
Modeling Your Pricing Floor & Ceiling: The Math Behind What GSA Will Accept
The Math Behind What GSA Will Accept 1. Immediate Stakes Opening Pricing is the most common silent failure point in a GSA contract. Not at submission. Not even at award. The exposure appears later, during negotiations, modifications, or audits, when Contracting Officers test whether your pricing model actually reflects how you sell commercially. Contractors often […]
How Contractors Analyze Competitor GSA Contracts to Win More Federal Awards
What FPDS Data, Pricing Signals, and Relationship Patterns Actually Reveal Federal contractors that win repeatedly on GSA are not guessing. Their strategies are visible—quietly encoded in FPDS records, GSA catalogs, pricing bands, and agency buying behavior. Most vendors look at these elements in isolation. The firms that outperform read them together. At Capitol 50, this […]
GSA Released the OASIS+ Scorecards
The release of OASIS+ scorecards is not a courtesy update. It is a signal that evaluation outcomes are being formalized and that positioning errors are no longer hypothetical. For many offerors, the scorecard confirms what was already suspected internally. Alignment issues. Documentation gaps. Competitive thresholds missed by a narrow margin that still counts as a […]
How to Structure Commercial Discounts Without Triggering GSA Price Reductions
For many federal contractors, the Price Reductions Clause (PRC) is the pressure point they don’t fully understand—until a GSA contracting officer starts asking for backup invoices, discount explanations, or a retroactive modification. When companies come to Capitol 50 with this problem, the root cause is almost always the same: A commercial discount was offered outside the structure […]
How to Start Selling to Federal Agencies That Don’t Know You Yet
Federal agencies don’t wake up one morning and decide to try a new vendor. They buy from patterns—incumbents, known SINs, familiar pricing structures, and vendors who already “fit” their procurement memory. Breaking in requires intent, patience, and a repeatable internal BD system. Not heroics. Not cold emails sprayed across .gov inboxes. A system. Below is […]
Red Flags That Trigger GSA Contract Reviews or Investigations
GSA reviews rarely come out of nowhere. They’re usually triggered—quietly—by patterns that don’t line up with what your contract says should be happening. Contractors often assume investigations start with whistleblowers or dramatic complaints. In reality, most GSA reviews begin with data mismatches, routine oversight, or something that simply doesn’t reconcile. One inconsistency turns into a […]
How to Maintain GSA Compliance If You Sell Through Partners or Resellers
Selling through partners or resellers can widen your federal footprint fast. More reach. More pipeline. More complexity. And under a GSA contract, complexity is where compliance problems quietly form. Many contractors assume that once a reseller touches the transaction, responsibility shifts. It doesn’t. GSA holds the prime contractor accountable—every time. If a partner misprices, misreports, […]
A Simple Guide to Surviving a GSA Contractor Assessment Visit (CAV)
A GSA Contractor Assessment Visit—better known as a CAV—tends to arrive with little drama and a lot of anxiety. It’s not a raid. It’s not an audit in the IRS sense. But it is a structured review of whether your GSA contract is being handled the way the government expects. For contractors new to the process, or […]
Bipartisan Senate Passage of the VA Acquisition Reform and Cost Assessment Act
When Congress reforms acquisition policy, the language usually sounds polite. This bill didn’t bother. In early December 2025, the U.S. Senate passed bipartisan legislation led by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)—with support from Sens. Jim Banks, Angus King, Mark Warner, and Mike Rounds—aimed directly at one agency: the Department of Veterans Affairs. The target wasn’t […]