The General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced its intention to further promote the consolidation of professional services contracts by encouraging agencies to transition from expiring, one-off contracts to multiple-award contracting vehicles. The announcement comes on the heels of GSA's October 1, 2015 announcement that it would be consolidating eight separate schedules into a new Professional Services Schedule (PSS) that will allow federal government agencies to use one contracting vehicle to fulfill a host of professional services requirements.  For more information on the PSS, read our blog post at http://govcon.mofo.com/schedule-contracting/gsa-launches-new-professional-services-schedule/.

With many professional services contracts set to expire in Fiscal Year 2016, GSA is actively encouraging agencies to re-compete the contracts using existing agency indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQ), GSA schedule contracts, such as the PSS, or GSA's OASIS contracting vehicle, an IDIQ contract meant for professional services.

GSA already has persuaded three agencies – the Army, the Air Force, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – to abandon one-off contracting in favor of multiple-award vehicles. Specifically, the GSA has offered each of the three agencies significant discounts in exchange for commitments to use GSA's OASIS vehicle.  Agencies seeking to use OASIS intermittently typically pay a 0.75 percent fee for each dollar transacted through OASIS; the Army and Air Force negotiated a 0.1 percent fee.  DHS, given its smaller contracting commitment, negotiated a 0.25 percent rate.  GSA also pledged support resources to assist each agency with its professional services contracting needs.

GSA's latest emphasis on consolidation is part of a larger initiative by the Obama Administration to leverage the federal government's buying power as the world's largest consumer. For more on this topic, read our blog posts on the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) new policy for the acquisition of laptop and desktop computers ( http://govcon.mofo.com/schedule-contracting/gsa-launches-new-professional-services-schedule/) and the joint GSA-OMB category management initiative ( http://govcon.mofo.com/schedule-contracting/gsa-and-omb/).

Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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