A major portion of government contracting is accomplished via the IDIQ (or ID/IQ) form of contracts – indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity. Sounds loosy-goosy, right? Actually, it’s a sensible approach to products and services that are required continuously throughout the year, or even a multi-year timeframe.
Here’s some examples: light bulbs, office products, appliances, plumbers or electricians, administrative services. Anything that can be readily defined by a written specification that is needed over and over, and may be difficult to package up for delivery of a specific quantity at a specific time.
There are many current contracts that fit this situation, often named with a sexy abbreviation, like SEWP or OASIS or T4NG. All the “GSA Schedule” or “GSA MAS” contracts are IDIQs. The advantage to bidders? They are usually one year term contracts, frequently with one or more additional option years – in fact they may be as long as five or seven years, with as many as three additional five-year options. Negotiate pricing and terms once, update pricing as the market price changes, and respond to incoming orders (“task” orders or purchase orders or RFQs) as they are received. Another advantage: many of these contracts can be used by any federal agency (and in some cases, by state and local governments as well).
Another unique feature is that most of these contracts allow for many companies to be awarded contracts. The fifth iteration of SEWP, for example, has issued almost 200 contracts. Only a few IDIQs have a single award, and those tend to be Corps of Engineers regional contracts for on-call construction services.
How can you participate in this market? Submit a bid offer yourself, or join the team of a winning contractor by subcontracting with the prime.
How can BC2Match help you succeed in this market? 1. Watch for contract open seasons for bids as they are posted in BC2Match. 2. Use BC2Match’s Build My Team function, using the Vehicles tab to identify the IDIQ you want to join.
We will cover this topic in our Tuesday noon webinars. Whether you’re already a subscriber, or new to BC2Match, these webinars are the tool to crank up your government sales efforts. Join us! If you registered in the past, your username and password still work. If not, register at https://tinyurl.com/3k2xp2bw.
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