​The Small Business Blog

On January 19, 2016, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) issued a decision in the Matter of:  Prosouth Construction Svcs, LLC.   This appeal arose out of Prosouth's size protest against Birmingham Industrial Construction, LLC in conjunction with a construction procurement. In its protest, Prosouth, an unsuccessful offeror, alleged generally that Birmingham was not a small business under the applicable $15 million size standard and questioned whether Birmingham had the ability to self-perform at least 25% of the cost of contract performance, in accordance with the applicable limits on subcontracting.

On November 16, 2015, the United States Department of Justice issued a Press Release announcing that a Federal grand jury in Maryland had indicted Anthony "Tony" Nwagbara Daniels (age 59 of Silver Springs, Maryland) on wire fraud charges arising from a scheme to defraud the United States by fraudulently obtaining a government contract through the SBA's 8(a) Business Development Program from 2011 through 2014.

On October 1, 2015, the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a Report titled "Evaluation of Defense Contract Management Agency Actions on Reported DoD Contractor Business System Deficiencies."  

​The IG evaluated DCMA's actions on DoD contractor business system deficiencies reported in 21 Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) audit reports with an eye toward assessing DCMA compliance with the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS).

On October 6, 2015, the Small Business Administration (SBA) issued a Proposed Rule implementing Section 1614 of the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act pertaining to small business subcontracting plans. Under current law, large prime contractors that are required to have small business subcontracting plans only receive small business credit toward their plan's goal performance at the first tier.  The Proposed Rule, as authorized by Section 1614, "would allow an another than small prime contractor that has an individual subcontracting plan for a contract to receive credit towards its small business subcontracting goals for subcontract awards made to small business concerns at any tier."  

On September 24, 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report titled:  "Defense Cybersecurity - Opportunities Exist for DOD to Share Cybersecurity Resources With Small Businesses" which addresses "the extent to which the DOD Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) has integrated cybersecurity into its existing outreach and education efforts for defense small business."  GAO's review and subsequent Report were done as a result of a provision in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the 2015 NDAA which required GAO to perform such an assessment. 

On September 11, 2015 the Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (OFCCP) published its Final Rule on Pay Transparency, which implements the Non-Retaliation for Disclosure of Compensation Information Executive Order which was signed by President Obama on April 8, 2014.  The Final Rule takes effect on January 11, 2016.  

How fitting that on Labor Day, a day celebrating the contributions and achievements of American Workers, the White House should formally announce the President's signing of the Executive Order:  Establishing Paid Sick Leave for Federal Contractors.  This announcement should come as no surprise - in a blog post about a month ago, we advised readers to expect this after the New York Times first broke the story that a draft EO was in the works. 

Although many of you out there should already have received your notification letters from the EEOC and/or the OFCCP, respectively, this is a secondary reminder for those federal contractors that are required to file one or both of these, that your 2015 EEO-1 and VETS-4212 filings are due by September 30, 2015.

Prime contractors should also keep in mind that their subcontractors (with covered subcontracts) may be required to comply with these filings as well and so it might not be a bad idea to send a friendly reminder or to check with them to ensure they are complying.