Sole-Source Authority for Women-Owned Small Businesses

While we don’t normally address business issues in our Blog, we are excited about the new development of sole-source procurement authority for Women-Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs). Rudman Wink Associates, LLC, is a Small Business Administration (SBA) registered WOSB. We are also certified by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). You can download the Rudman Wink Capabilities Statement here.

Working with SBA, all federal Agencies set specific targets and track progress for contracting with Small Businesses including Small Disadvantaged Business (SDA), WOSB, SDVOSB, and HUB Zone Small Businesses. Each year, SBA publishes its Small Business Procurement Scorecard to track the results. You can review your Department’s score at https://www.sba.gov/contracting/finding-government-customers/see-agency-small-business-scorecards.

In order to increase federal contracting with WOSBs, the SBA established sole-source authority for WOSBs, implementing part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2015, effective October 14, 2015. You can read more at https://www.sba.gov/content/sba-new-authority-will-bolster-women-owned-small-businesses.

This WOSB sole-source authority can be used if an Agency’s contracting officer can identify only one WOSB that can perform the requirement at a fair and reasonable price after conducting a market analysis. As far as we know, Rudman Wink Associates, LLC, is the only WOSB Company offering Supervisory Human Resource (HR) training provided by an attorney with experience representing Agencies and employees before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Check out our courses and let us know if we can meet your Agency’s supervisory and employee training needs, as well as OPM’s initial and recurring training requirements for supervisors. At the same time, you can use this new sole-source authority to improve your Agency’s SBA Procurement Scorecard for two small business categories: WOSB and SDVOSB!