CMS and NIH Procurement Updates; New regulation increases past performance consideration for Small Business

Members of the OrangeSlices AI team attended the HHS & CMS Online Happy Hour event held last Thursday evening. If you don’t go to this recurring and increasingly popular event hosted by Shelley McGuire, you are missing out. Great networking and great updates are shared every time. (Track her events here)  

Included below we share a few of the key updates we captured related to current and upcoming opportunities at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as details about a long-awaited Small Business Administration (SBA) regulation release that small business leaders should be paying attention to. 

Opportunity Updates* 

• CMS Human Centered Design (HCD) recompete – This opportunity has been moved to 1st quarter, to be released in October or November.  
• CMS FHIR recompete – This may not take place at all. No details were provided as to why this is the case, and we will not speculate here.  
• As for SNOW – The award announcement is expected in September. 
• Service Center – It looks as if it could possibly go out 8(a) STARS III. 
• Cloud Operations – This has been moved to Q1 of FY 2023. It looks like it will go out 8(a) STARS III as of now, but this could change as some are working to get CMS to move this to MAS.  
• The long-awaited ACME award – As of now they are still stating it will come in FY22. 
• Eligibility support contract – This recompete of the huge SERCO contract is not going to be set aside for small business, but the hope is that the agency will incorporate some bigger opportunities for small business subcontracting.  
• The same goes for the massive NIH Tobacco/Health Survey opportunity – It is a massive opportunity, and a recommendation was made to maximize small business subcontracting. They are taking the recommendations into consideration.  
• MDM – No update at this point. This is not for a lack of trying.  

*Please note that this is the way OS AI heard it. If you are pursuing any of these opportunities, we encourage you to validate this information. We all know how quickly things can change. If anyone heard something different than what we provided above, please message us at support@orangeslices.ai and we will make any changes necessary. You can expect a revised CMS opportunity forecast to be published in the next week or so. The forecast will be published here.  

Lastly, for those who missed it, a final rule was published last week out of SBA entitled “Past Performance Ratings for Small Business Joint Venture Members and Small Business First-Tier Subcontractors”, 2022-15622. This rule “provides new methods for small business government contractors to obtain past performance ratings to be used with offers on prime contracts with the Federal Government. A small business contractor may use a past performance rating for work performed as a member of a joint venture or for work performed as a first-tier subcontractor. This final rule updates the requirements for small business subcontracting plans to add a requirement for prime contractors to provide past performance to a first-tier, small business subcontractor when requested by the small business.” 

With the close to FY 2022 bearing down upon us, small businesses who stand to benefit from this rule will want to work to educate customers. This rule is effective on August 22, 2022. 

A copy of the published SBA rule can be found here.

Resources 

• From HHS and DHS to VA and IRS, check out a list here of all the research requests, mostly related to open solicitations and RFIs, the Orange Slices team has been asked to work on thus far in July.  
• Included here is a list of the new SB Alliances formed for some leading GovCon companies in advance of Q4 FY 2022 
• Federal Agency Forecasts for fiscal year (FY) 2022 

About OrangeSlices AI 

Developed by a team of government and industry contracting subject matter experts, the OrangeSlices AI data driven platform is a publicly available searchable listing of the top information technology and consulting services contractors doing business with the Federal government today. Driven by a robust and comprehensive set of authoritative and trusted data sources, the OS.ai tool is intended to help government and industry leaders find the right partner to help deliver on the important missions of the Federal government. Learn more about how you can engage with OS AI here.  

🔊 Listen to Story