If you are looking for contract opportunities with the Federal Government, check out www.fbo.gov. The site now contains Recovery and Reinvestment Act actions. You can search more than 31,000 active federal opportunities. The site provides demonstration videos to familiarize you with features and functionality of the FBO site for vendors such as finding Recovery Act funded opportunities, general overview & searching for opportunities and more.

Registering is made simple as the fields populate by pulling the information from your CCR registration when you enter your DUNS number.  When you have completed your registration you will receive an email approximately 4 hours later.  Click on the link at the bottom of the email and you will be ready to sign in as a vendor on the FBO site.

Some of the more advanced functionality of this site are the watch lists and search agents to assist you in your searches.  The watch lists allow you to develop lists of specific solicitations you are interested in so that you can check back at any time without having to perform searches again.   With saved searches, once you set up the parameters of a search you can save it so that you can run it again without having to take the time to set it up again.

Procurement Fair

Federal Resource Solutions attended the 1^st Annual Interior Regions Procurement Fair March 22, 2010 in Fairbanks Alaska sponsored by Procurement Technical Assistance Centers of Alaska.  Federal Resource Solutions, President, Heather Knowlan, headed up the breakout session for Wide Area Work Flow.   Heather presented to a full house regarding the navigation of WAWF for Department of Defense contractors, helping them to recognize some of the ‘gotchas’ that may hold up payment from DFAS.  The feedback from the session was very positive.

Federal Resource Solutions was honored to be invited to the conference and is looking forward to future PTAC events.  Carolyn Pratt, Program Manager, Gary Bushor and Jody King, Procurement Counselors and all the coordinators did a fantastic job making this conference very successful.   PTAC, SBA, Small Business Development Center of Alaska and the Associated General Contractors of Alaska all contributed to a powerful networking event and sharing of invaluable information.  These are events that you can rub elbows with other small businesses in your area and Contracting Officers.  The insight the Contracting Officers provide can be the leg up you need to get that next contract.

While in Fairbanks, the FRS team visited the World Ice Art Championships Ice Art 2010 presented by Ice Alaska.  Ice is harvested from the local O’Grady Pond for the competitors to sculpt in either the single block or multi block classics.  The sculptures are absolutely amazing.  Should you ever have the opportunity to visit Fairbanks, perhaps for the 2^nd Annual Interior Regions Procurement Fair, make sure to make time to visit the Ice Sculptures.

The Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) is a federally funded agency that provides assistance to companies that want to contract with federal, state and local government offices.  I like to think of them as the Small Business Administration (SBA) specific to government contracting.  They can help you assess what programs your business qualifies for and help you navigate the application and certification processes.  They also work with local businesses to provide informative free or reduced rate classes specific to operating a business (i.e.…payroll, Insurance and bonding, WAWF training).

Local PTAC and SBA offices are typically the first points of contact from various agency Contracting Officers looking for qualified contractors.  Building a relationship with your PTAC Procurement Counselors is a great step to having an advocate that knows which projects might be a good fit for your business.  Their assistance can be an invaluable tool. 

There are PTAC offices all across the United States and their national website link is http://www.aptac-us.org.

FRS is excited to post this maiden voyage blog to kick off our daily posts and get the conversations started.  Our team is constantly reading and learning about different federal contracting programs and innovative business management.  We want to provide relevant information that keeps our clients and associates well informed and a forum to have knowledge building conversations.

Why a blog? :  Blogs provide a conversation that is available to you when you want to join in.  It is also a targeted vehicle for specialized information.  You chose which blogs you want to read, that is the beauty of social media versus your email box being inundated with information that is not of interest or informative to your daily work or personal life. 

What will be in FRS’s blog? : Our clients span the various contractor categories from Service Disabled Veteran Owned (SDVOB), Veteran Owned (VOB), Woman Owned (WOB), 8 (a) and small to medium sized Businesses.  We will be providing information and updates to new opportunities.  As well as providing small business insights. 

Join in the conversation.