· web viewthen we're going to go back and talk about market research. then we're...

Carla: Good morning and welcome to today's live SBA web conference. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dwight Johnson. Dwight, please go ahead.

Dwight: Hi, everybody. This is Dwight Johnson. Welcome. We're glad you're joining us again today. We're going to be doing a whole lot of stuff in a very short period of time, so bear with us. It may be confusing because it's confusing to us, because we're creatures of habit, but we're actually being bold and opening on slide two, instead of slide one. The reason we're doing that is we're doing a live Dynamic Small Business Search during this one hour this morning.

If you want to, real quickly ... If you feel comfortable, what we do is Alt+Tab. You can Alt+Tab to Google, do a quick search of Dynamic Small Business Search, pull that up, because we're going to do a live search on that. Perhaps you don't feel that's necessary, and if that's not necessary, that's just fine, because we're going to go through it. That's why slide two is up.

Last time, we mentioned customer service with us, meaning our response to your inquiries and if you have a question, please contact us at any time. We like questions. Guess what? If you don't hear back from us, it's possible we missed it, but also, we have lots and lots of emails. We're always on the verge of shutting down. Guess what you do. You resend it. Sometimes people ask for past programs or something. We do respond to that. We don't respond quite as quickly. We want to have good customer service with limited resources.

This morning, we're going to, in our one hour, we're going to spend about 30 minutes going over our program and talking about the women's program, and there are some changes in effect as we speak. Then we're going to go back and talk about market research. Then we're going to Dynamic Small Business Search, and then we're taking questions. Again, we have a whole lot of things cooking this morning.

We're going to just start out here and start at the end. We're being kind of sneaky again, because we're giving you a slide you don't have. If you want this information, this is where you go: www.sba.gov/wosb. This information is contained there, but what I'm going to do is ... Our presenter today is Valerie Coleman, again, and have her discuss this slide quickly with you.

Valerie: Good morning, everyone. One of the things we did want you to know as contracting officers is that we are upgrading the WOSB repository. Beginning on March 23rd, it's going to be down for a couple of weeks, so during this time, what we want you to do is follow the process that we show, either if you can see this slide or going to, as Dwight said, www.sba.gov/wosb.

If you have an award for a WOSB or EDWOSB under the set-aside program, we need you to send an email to the address that's shown on the slide, or on the link when you go to it, with the subject line: Pending Award under 19.505(e) Verification Request. You'll put your solicitation number and the DUNS number, the firm's name, everything

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mailto:[email protected]

else that you will see on that, and you will send it to that web address, which is up at our SBA headquarters. Within two business days, we will perform all the necessary checks that you would normally perform and get back to you on whether the firm meets all the required documents and you can proceed [inaudible 00:04:17] which ones are missing and what you need to do.

We apologize. We think it's going to be down for a couple of weeks. We do want you to know that this whole process has been approved by the general counsel, so it's kind of like a stop-gap emergency measure until we get this system up. We have advised OSTP, and they should be sending out a memo, as well, to all the agencies. Again, we hope it's only going to be for a few weeks, but until that time, please follow this guidance that's on this slide or at sba.gov/WOSB. Dwight ...

Dwight: Furthermore, what we're covering today and we really want you to think this over is the program changed so that we now go to ... We have a whole bunch of new [NAICS 00:05:17] codes, so this happened-it seemed, rather suddenly, and I, at first, thought, "Oh, we just added a few." Actually, perhaps it's like, I was going to say fruit basket upset. It's not quite like that. You really have to watch your NAICS codes to be sure they're right in what you're trying to do.

Here we are on slide three. Valerie is presenting. I'm Dwight, and Jan Kaiser, in Chicago, is with us, as well. We always cover where area directors come in and area offices, and these are what you contacted those folks for. We want to make sure, by the way ... I don't know why I'm repeating this right at this juncture. You get the gist of that. Questions, we do that in the final 10 minutes. We always say this, but the way our system works, and for some of you, it does not work. The Air Force has problems with our system. What you do is you are just on the phone and then you email us, and email us who's participating so we have that in our records, and so you get the post-program email. Also, if you have groups, please whenever you send us anything, send the email addresses of participants in Excel if there is a group involved. We're working very closely with the Procurement Technical Assistance Center, always, so keep those fine folks in mind as we proceed.

What's new that's kind of fun, we're getting very positive feedback from this, is our new library. The Association of Procurement Technical Assistance Center is keeping our past programs at this library so that you can go there and take our training at any time. That's a big plus for all of us, so we thank them for their help with that. They also have a link on how [inaudible 00:07:23], and you should know them, can work with Federal agencies.

Caution, don't promote anybody who is a private company in your solicitations. You should, if you promote anyone, you should be promoting the taxpayer-funded Procurement Technical Assistance Center.

This is our schedule for the year. Next month, we're taking about hub zones, May 4th. One Continuous Learning Plan, I mentioned this earlier. The key email address basically in this is: [email protected]. That's how you reach us. Always, and we do

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have a post-program email, we like to know who's on the phone, but also, please bear with us when we handle the volume of correspondence we receive. This is the certificate, which you complete for one hour of continuous learning credit for your being here today. With that, we can now turn over to our good friend, Ms. Coleman. Val, let me see, we are on slide 12. Val, would you take it away, please

Valerie: All righty. Good morning again, everyone, from beautiful Houston. Just want to say for all of you with DOD that are going to be in Atlanta in May for our DOD-SBA joint conference, please look us up. Look up Jan and myself. I don't believe Dwight's going to be able to go, but we'd love to meet you. I got to meet a lot of people in Phoenix last year, so look us up.

Today, when we're talking about market research ... I keep on getting a note, Carla, that people cannot hear anything. I'm sure you're taking care of it, but we will continue. We're going to be talking about the Dynamic Small Business Search and some of the new WSB and EDWSB NAICS codes. Next slide, Dwight?

What we're going to be covering, we're going to basically go over market research. We're going to be talking about Dynamic Small Business Search and we're going to give you a live demonstration, so I hope you're able to pull that up, and then tell you about the new NAICS codes. Next slide.

Dwight: Thirteen.

Valerie: Okay. First, we always want to mention the regulations that are out there that correspond with what we're talking about. We have in FAR-Part Two, of course, the definition of what market research is, and then on Part Seven, we talk about the acquisition planning and how you do have to perform market research, which the basic part of that is in FAR-Part 10. You all are all familiar with that. If not, please go back to these FAR sections and read those. Next slide please?

Dwight: Slide 14.

Valerie: The first thing you need to do when you're looking at anything is we want you to start thinking small business first. One of the things we always talk about when we do market research is anyone can explain to us why you're going full and open, but when we're looking at this, and to look at maximum practicable opportunity and a PCR signing off on your small business coordination, you don't have to tell us why you're going full and open. That's easy. What we want is to tell us why you can't go small business, which is totally different.

We want you to think small business first and just because a job was full and open last time, doesn't mean it's full and open this time. We also always want you to do the market research on your work. Make it small business-friendly, and as we said, there are so many things that small businesses can do now, it's just been amazing. We hear, I'm at NASA, how many times we've said we don't think small business can do it, and we find small businesses that can. Go in with a 'think small business first' attitude.


Next slide please.

Dwight: Fifteen.

Valerie: We do have the Rule of Two everyone is familiar with. We give you the FAR reference here. We're talking about acquisitions between 3,000 and 150,000. Basically, you set aside anything over ... We want you to set anything over 150 for small business participation when you have the Rule of Two, and it's going to be made at a fair market price.

One of the things I always tell small businesses is don't forget, when we talk about the Rule of Two, we're talking about two responsible small business concerns. I tell them to go to FAR-Part Nine to get the definition of responsible, but basically, you want two small businesses to have the management and the technical, and the labor and equipment and things of that nature to do the work, and you believe that you're going to have an award at a fair market price. Next slide please.

Dwight: Sixteen.

Valerie: We do have some parity in the Federal government. With the exception of the VA, this slide pertains to all of the Federal government. Of course, we know with the VA, they do have service-disabled vet, then vet, and then the other small business socio-economic groups come after that. The Federal government overall, we want you to first consider Hub Zone 8A-Service Disabled Vet or if you have a particular NAICS code that meets the women-owned or economically disadvantaged women-owned, we want to do set-asides. You can't mix and match these things, so if you only have one HuB Zone, one 8A, one service-disabled vet, then of course, we're looking at doing a small business set-aside, but if you have the Rule of Two in each one of these categories, please look at setting those aside first.

Then we'll want to talk about small business and of course, finally full and open after we have determined through our market research that we do not have a Rule of Two [inaudible 00:13:45] small business is not able to perform on this particular solicitation. Next slide please.

Dwight: Seventeen.

Valerie: In determining which one that you're going to use, it really is a contracting officer's decision, but we want you to look at the market research that you did to determine which way you can go. Also, a lot of times, a contracting officer, if they have the Rule of Two in several socio-economic groups, they're going to be looking at where they need to meet their goals the most and that's where they set it aside. If you're doing a small business set-aside, please get your PCR involved, because we can also help you look at to see if it could be a socio-economic set-aside, as opposed to a general set-aside that will also help you reach some of those goals that you may have trouble with. Next slide.


Dwight: Eighteen.

Valerie: We always tell you, all the time, about PCRs, and we're in FAR-Part 19.402, about what a PCR does. We have 47 PCRs across the country. We just recently hired 10 more. We are getting ready to ... They are being trained and everything else, so we hope that you will be able to contact ... If you haven't had a PCR close, you do now, and that you will contact them. We are assigned to different areas and centers. Most of us sit at a Federal location. A lot of times, DOD ... I happen to sit at Johnson Space Center for NASA here in Houston, and I also have, as does Jan and Dwight, we have a resident office, but we also have a lot of liaison and on-call agencies. I cover the VA in four different states and Corps of Engineers office. Jan and Dwight cover numerous civilian and DOD agencies also. We are there to help the contracting activity any way that we can to carry out the SBA policies and programs, and of course, to make sure that small business has the maximum practicable opportunity. Next slide please.

Dwight: Nineteen.

Valerie: Again, here is a website. If you're looking at the PowerPoint or if you just have a hard copy of the slides, where you can go to find a listing of PCRs. We've recently updated that along with our maps. We have access to all obtainable contract information to help your small business office, your contracting personnel, your technical representatives make the correct decision on any particular solicitation. Next slide.

Dwight: Twenty.

Valerie: Here's the new slide that we added about the women-owned set-aside program. Most of you know that the set-aside program was implemented in 2011, and at that time, we had 83 NAICS codes and they were pretty much evenly divided between women-owned and economically disadvantaged women-owned. Did we lose the slide?

Dwight: We did.

Valerie: Want to go full. There we go. On March the 3rd, we actually had the [inaudible 00:17:10] group go out and do another study and they came back and gave us new codes. Those were effective on March the 3rd, so we actually have 113 new codes. When I say 'new,' we have a lot of the same ones. We added 36. There were six or seven that were dropped and some of the EDWSB codes were switched to women-owned codes. You can go to sba.gov/osb to get that new listing, but as you can see here, we now have 92 codes for women and 21 for economically disadvantaged women. We want to make sure that you understand that the original ones will remain effective for all your solicitations published prior to March the 3rd, 2016. If you have a solicitation out there, you go with what the 83 codes were. After March the 3rd, you're looking at the new codes that went into effect. Again, please go to sba.gov/osb.

Make sure, if you're going to do a woman set-aside, that you have the correct code in the correct category. I think that's been the biggest problem is that we see some jobs that have been set-aside for women and that NAICS code was only for economically


disadvantaged women and vice versa. If you're having trouble with that, please contact your PCR. We'll be more than happy to walk you through that to make sure that you have the correct code that you should be using. Next slide please.

Dwight: Twenty-one.

Valerie: Let's talk about the Dynamic Small Business Search. One of the things that I do want to tell you is that Dynamic Small Business Search, and remember, it used to be ... I've been with SBA for 42 years, so we went through [inaudible 00:19:05] to determine automated source system, then we went to ProNet, and then we went to Dynamic Small Business Search. Dynamic Small Business Search is not part of SAM. Dynamic Small Business Search is a separate database that [inaudible 00:19:19] owns. We do have a link in SAM that, if any business registers and based on the information they put in that they are a small business, it allows them to hotlink over to Dynamic Small Business Search.

The Dynamic Small Business Search is one of the best ways that you can do market research. You have your sources sought, but Dynamic Small Business Search is also a very easy-to-follow database where we're going to show you where you can send out information on sources sought and how to do other types of searches on the database. It also gives you a profile of the company. It's a little bit different in that SAM does not require capabilities, keywords, references, things of that nature, where Dynamic Small Business Search does. If you're looking for a small business, one of the best ways to search, if you want to find a particular small business is by their Dun & Bradstreet number, but most contracting officers are going to search by NAICS codes or keywords.

One of the things that we find out in DSBS when we're going through it and when we counsel small businesses is that a lot of them, when they register in SAM, they are so thrilled that they got notification that they're in that they do not scroll down and fill out the rest of the information. One of the things that I do, as a PCR is every time I talk to a small business, the first thing I do is ask them if they are registered in SAM, and if they say yes, I get their Dun and Bradstreet number and I go over their SAM profile and their DSBS profile.

It is very rare that I find a DSBS profile that has everything in it the way it should be. It's not that they don't know how to fill it out, it's just that they forget to hotlink over. This is one of their great marketing tools to use [inaudible 00:21:20] contracting officer is to make sure that those profiles are complete. We're going to show you some of the things that you need to look at and that can help you when you're doing your market research. Next slide please.

Dwight: Twenty-two.

Valerie: This is just a screen shot. You're going to see the live version in a little bit, but this is a screenshot of the Dynamic Small Business Search-what you'll see when it first comes up. Next slide please.


Dwight: Twenty-three.

Valerie: One of the things I mentioned is searching by NAICS codes or keywords. We want to make sure that when you're searching by NAICS codes that you are using the correct NAICS codes. If you are maybe a little concerned that you don't have the correct NAICS code, your PCR can assist you with that or, of course, your small business office there are your facility. Each NAICS code has a [inaudible 00:22:17] standard that is attached to it. On this slide, we've given you the table where you can find the current small business [inaudible 00:22:24] standards.

At the end of February, SBA did [inaudible 00:22:29] increase a lot of the revenue-based size standards and we also updated a lot of the employee-based size standards. If you've not looked at the table in the past two or three months, you're going to find when you go back in there that the size standards are different than what you had before. You may have some, other than small businesses you've dealt with that could be back as a small business now because of the change in the size standards. Please make sure that you understand that.

You do have to put the size standard in your solicitation when you list the NAICS code, and just as a general rule, if they are service-based, construction, retail, we go by the average annual sales the last three years. If it's a manufacturing, research and development, wholesale, it's normally by number of employees. It will never be both. It is either one or the other, so please make sure that you have the right size standard in there, not only for the NAICS code, but based on the date, which as I said, toward the end of February, I believe it was February 26th, they were all updated. The new size table is listed on sba-dot. Next slide please.

Dwight: Twenty-four.

Valerie: Doing the sources sought ... One of the things that you do is you always put it in [inaudible 00:23:58] to go out there, but you can also do a sources sought using the DSBS and this gives you how you do it, but we're going to show you, in real time, the best way to do it, but the main thing is that you're going to go into Dynamic Small Business Search and do your search either by your NAICS codes or your key words. You save the email addresses and you put it in your BCC, your blind carbon copy, and then you can attach your sources sought. We always say that you send a copy to yourself, also, because that gives you a record of who you've sent it to.

When you do that, you're going to probably be getting some that come back saying 'undeliverable,' and things of that nature, but this does show that you went out and did a Dynamic Small Business Search and that you are trying to get this solicitation out to the maximum number of small businesses out there that want to do business with the government. You may use some other databases, because some people are not registered in SAM, of course, but this is a great way ...

Those that want to do business with the Federal government have to be registered in


SAM, so this gives you a really good additional market research other than the sources sought, because we know a lot of businesses won't respond to a sources sought. It's not necessary that they do that. We would hope that they all would, but this gives you another example of, "Hey, I only got two sources sought back, but when I went into Dynamic, there's 50 businesses that have this NAICS code and this technical ability." Sending your sources sought to them, what it does, it just amplifies the market research that you've done. Next slide please.

Dwight: Twenty-five.

Valerie: Again, it's going to show you a screen shot. We'll show you in live time, where you come down and you save the email addresses for everyone that you've done business with. You can see that at the bottom in the block. The little box will check, say email addresses for all. Whether it's 10 or whether it's 1,000, it'll save all of them that are in your search. Next slide please.

Dwight: Twenty-six.

Valerie: You'll see on this one, down here, as you go where it says 'email addresses,' and you go to the bottom, you'll see just before the very bottom, you'll see all the email addresses that are in there. Depending on your computer system, you may be able to send all of those out in one email. If there's a lot ... I did an email blast the other day for [inaudible 00:26:43] and American Express and Women in Public Policies event we had here in Houston on Challenge Her. I had over 1,100 women-owned small businesses emailed. The system that I used would only allow me ... I had to do a fourth at a time to get it through because it wouldn't do all 1,000. Look at what your system allows. If you can do it all in one email, that's great, but you may have to divide them up and maybe do a couple. At least, you're reaching out to all of those small businesses in one or two emails. Next slide.

Dwight: Twenty-seven.

Valerie: For those of you who logged into the webinar and can see it, we're going to walk you through Dynamic Small Business Search. If you're just on the phone, I think that we'll give you enough direction that you can go to the Dynamic Small Business Search link yourself, open it up, and we'll be able to walk you through the process. Next slide please.

Dwight: Twenty-eight. We've covered what we're going to cover with market research. This is a moment of high drama. We're going to Dynamic Small Business Search and you can do the same thing if you want. I'm going to Alt+Tab and go to this and it will pop up. You can do the same thing if you want. Here we are. If you want to do this live with us, you can do what I did and just open this up. If you just want to follow along and watch as we're doing this, that's up to you. We're going to do this for 20 minutes and then we'll open it up to questions.

This is what you see when you open Dynamic Small Business Search. I'm going to click


through and I'm very ... Val's obedient servant. Val [crosstalk 00:28:42]

Valerie: Dwight is my mouse right now.

Dwight: Yeah.

Valerie: There's a couple of things that we wanted you to see first. If you are not familiar with this, right at the very top where we have the blue bubbles, one of the things that you'll see is something called the 'Quick Market Search,' on the second line. This is a great [inaudible 00:29:04] as a contracting officer.

Before we go into this, I want to explain one thing that you need to know about Dynamic Small Business Search. When you do a search in Dynamic, and I have some problems with contracting officers, when I look at their search and they go, "There were no firms." Dynamic Small Business Search is an 'and' program. It is not an 'or' program. If you're checking that you're looking for an engineering firm in Boston and you want to see if there's any women or veterans or service-disabled vets or 8A firms and you check all those boxes, you're only going to get an 8A, service-disabled vet, woman-owned engineering firm in Boston. You would have to do individual searches to find out how many women, how many 8As, how many Hub Zones, etc.

Now, with a Quick Market Search, you only have to do one search. If you'll click on that button, Dwight ... if you'll go down for NAICS codes and let's put in 541330. I'm using that because that is an engineering NAICS code. Let's just pick, because this is going to be easy, let's just pick the first state of Alabama. Let's hit a search using this criteria.

Dwight: We're grinding away.

Valerie: We were hoping, with our fingers crossed, this morning that the system would move quickly.

Dwight: Now, was this code, the 541330, is that a NAICS code for the women's program?

Valerie: That is a women-owned code, not a economically disadvantaged woman code.

Dwight: ED could put in a proposal for this?

Valerie: Yes, because all economically disadvantaged women are women-owned, but not vice versa. [crosstalk 00:31:07] You want to say that again?

Dwight: You always have to think that over, because we so many errors and confusion [crosstalk 00:31:13].

Valerie: All economically disadvantaged women-owned businesses are women-owned. It's kind of like all service-disable vets are vets. All economically disadvantaged women are women-owned businesses, but not all women-owned businesses are economically


disadvantaged women-owned. Make sure that you see that distinction, and when you go on to the WSB website, you will see that the NAICS codes are divided between the two groups, so you know which one, which category you can set aside.

When we did the Quick Market Search and we did 541330 and we hit Alabama, right here, you can see that there are 579 service-disabled vets, 825 women all the way down. If they had multiple categories, they will be in the multiple areas, but all you would have to do ... We won't get in to this, but it's just click on the socio-economic category and your regular DSBS search is going to come up. This is a quick way for you to do your market research to find if you can have small businesses.

One of the things I do want to caution you ... You may have to do this a couple of times ... Let's say that you do the search for janitorial and you come up with zeros in the category you want. Also do a search using the word 'custodial,' because we don't know how small businesses put in the word. Some of them may have put janitorial, some of them may have put custodial. Security ... Some of them might have put the word 'security,' others might have said guard. All, be small business-friendly when you do this search. If you can't find it in one word, use another word that they may have used also in that industry to find it. Dwight, we showed them the Quick Market Search. You want to go back to the regular page for DSBS and we'll show them some other things that they can use.

Dwight: Okay, so we're back.

Valerie: If you scroll down ... Are we back on the main one?

Dwight: Yes. Should I take out the code or leave it in there.

Valerie: Go ahead and take out that NAICS code and just go back to any state.

Dwight: We're in Alabama since that's at the top.

Valerie: Yeah, just go to any state, right.

Dwight: I need to go back, again.

Valerie: Yeah, because we're still in Quick Market Search.

Dwight: Now we're back where we were supposed to be. This was the main one.

Valerie: One of the things that you'll see on here is, as Dwight is scrolling down ... One of the things you'll see is all the states. To do multiple states, all you need to do is highlight a state and keep your Control button down and you can hit another state. If you'll hit Alabama and then ... Yeah, he's got the Control button down, he can go numerous states. If you're looking for that, that's one way to do it. We'll clear that out, Dwight.

Then in the box, you'll see one thing that says 'SBA Servicing Office,' and it says 'Help.'


I want to show you what's in that box, if you've never opened it up. If you'll hit the 'Help' button, Dwight? Thank you. What you're going to see is a whole lot of information on how you can do searches, and if you'll ... As you can see, as he's scrolling through there, it tells you how you can do searches, the criteria type and the whole bit.

As you get a little bit farther down, you will see the search criteria for the different areas and locations. You'll see state congressional districts, things of that nature, but then you'll see highlighted in green, where is says 'SBA Servicing Office.' You guys are all familiar with the maps that Dwight gives you in these presentation of the 10 regional offices. I want you to hit where it says, at the end of the second paragraph, where it says 'Click this hotlink.' We are divided regionally by 10 regions. These are in numerical order, starting with Region One.

Let's say you just wanted to find the small businesses that were around ... I don't know, Dwight, let's stop here and go Pittsburgh. [crosstalk 00:36:05] That's fine. Farther down. Just pick one of the regions.

Dwight: How about Columbus?

Valerie: Columbus District Office in Ohio. He's going to put that code in. That is their office code. He's going to go back and enter that into that box where it says 'SBA Servicing Office.' [crosstalk 00:36:34] He's going to paste it. What's going to happen is if you were to do a search right now, all you're going to come up with is small businesses around the Columbus office and the counties that they cover. In Houston, we cover 32 counties. You're only going to get that part. Columbus, you're just going to get the areas that the Columbus district office covers.

That gives you a way to even more scroll into the local small businesses that may be in your area. I just wanted you to see the 'Help' button and what that means, and how to find the district office code. All right, you can get out of that.

Dwight: One little thing that's handy to keep in mind, too, is that if you are working on 8A acquisitions and 8A firms each have a servicing office, a specific office ... This can be handy for you to locate the firms, for instance, with the Columbus office. Go ahead, Val.

Valerie: Then, of course, you can click the different kinds of certifications you're looking for. Please remember if you click 8A and you click Hub Zone, you are only looking for 8A-certified firms that also have Hub Zone certification. You want to be very careful on how you click.

Let's come on down a little bit more, Dwight, and we see the different kind of things. One of the things we're going to do on this search is we're actually going to search with one of the new NAICS codes for an economically disadvantaged woman-owned set-aside. That code is going to be 335999.


Dwight: Okay, so going down-

Valerie: Going down to the NAICS codes.

Dwight: Right, so what is the number?

Valerie:

[00:39:06]

First off, right above it, we want to click the second one under Women that says economically disadvantaged women, and then we're going to go 335999. Let me just say before he does anything on this ... This is a manufacturing code. Please remember that if you are buying, in this case, this is all other miscellaneous electrical equipment and components. If you are looking for an electrical component, Federal guidance says that Federal agencies and Federal contractors cannot use wholesale and retail codes. Please do not put a 42 or a 43 or 44 in there. You cannot use those. You have to go to the corresponding manufacturing code. We wanted to make sure that you see this one since we may be buying electrical components, but that is the corresponding manufacturing code.

When he clicks that and does a search ... [crosstalk 00:39:35] He is going to come up with only economically disadvantaged women who have that NAICS code. We didn't put a keyword in there, we just wanted you to see how if you're doing a search between women and economically disadvantaged women, just to make sure you had enough EDWSBs, how you could do this search and possibly make it a set-aside. In this case, there were 215 economically disadvantaged women in the country that have this NAICS code.

Dwight, go back out of that. If you wanted to find out how many could actually do the job, what you could do is you could do that, where you cut and paste all the information and send it to them in one email. Very easy way to do a mass sources sought to everyone in Dynamic Small Business Search.

Dwight: Should I do that now, Val, or should we wait a minute?

Valerie: Wait just a second. I want to show you this one other box on here, if you'll go up just a little bit. Where you see the box where it says 'Search Results Display Options,' you can actually put your search results in an Excel spreadsheet, but the one thing we want you to know and we are going to be updating DSBS in the near future is this program does not like the word 'and.' This is automatically a default when you see this what we're going to pull up, but we want to show you, if you want to do an Excel spreadsheet, how you need to do this.

If you can hit the button, Dwight, that says, 'Edit the Columns to be Displayed'? Right off the bat, because it does not like the word 'and,' on Excel spreadsheet, we're going to remove Name and Trade Name of Firm and Address and City and State Zip. We're going to remove those from what we want to look at. If you'll come on down to Identification Data, we're going to put in the address by itself.

Dwight: Okay, so one of these ... I guess that one ...


Valerie: No [inaudible 00:42:02] where it just says 'Add Address.' The second one down. Then we're going to add the city. Keep on going down. We're going to add the name of the firm and we're going to add the state and we're going to add the zip code. Scroll on back up. You will see that you have ... It didn't do it. It done it on address and city and state zip. Let's just get rid of that.

Dwight: Which one?

Valerie: Address and city, state, zip. Just remove that. What you would need to do and we don't want to spend ... We can go back down and you can add those ... If you hit the Save button then, once you hit the save, if you'll scroll down ...

Dwight: Okay, my scroll is [inaudible 00:43:30].

Valerie: Okay. [crosstalk 00:43:34] We're going to hit the HTML instead of the table format. Then, if you hit Search, you're going to get an Excel spreadsheet with that information. One of the things you can do is format it with, for example, capabilities being most important. What that does is everyone that has filled out their DSBS correctly will show at the top. If they've not filled in the rest of their information, they'll all be at the bottom. You can format this any way that you want to do it, but you need to make sure that if you're going to do an Excel spreadsheet for your market research, you go through and do what we did at the very beginning. Take out everything that says 'and,' because it won't work, and make them separate line items.

We just wanted to show you a couple of things that DSBS can do that can help you do your market research and get out a source sought en masse. I know that the agencies I work with, they send me the sources sought and I do this. I go through DSBS and do a mass mailout to all the ones that meet the criteria so that they have an opportunity to see the solicitation, the proposal solicitation, and hopefully we can get this set aside for small business in some way. Dwight, that is all that I needed to ...

Dwight: Okay, so this is what this looks like in Excel. We left off columns. This is what you have for your documentation. We didn't get all the fields in there that we wanted. One of the good things that Val explained out here is a lot of companies don't list their capabilities [inaudible 00:45:28] and we just have ... Sometimes, we just don't look much past them if they don't do that. Also, this gives you a document, too for your documentation [inaudible 00:45:40] conducting market research. Are we ready to go back to PowerPoint?

Valerie: Yes. Just so that you all know, if you don't have it, if you have questions on how to do some of that, you can send it to me. I will be more than happy to answer the more in-depth questions and it's just [email protected]. If you can use that email, I'd be more than happy to answer any of the questions that you might have.

Dwight: Okay, so it's almost 20 after the hour. I'd mentioned before how this works for your credits and emailing us your participation, and that goes to [email protected]. Ask


us any questions at any time at these emails. We like questions. Jan, how are we looking for questions we've had now at 20 after the hour? [inaudible 00:46:38]

Jan: We've had several questions that are pertinent to today's event, and I'm just going through some of the comments that are being made on our presentation and trying to locate some of them.

Dwight: We've had a lot of verbiage coming in but they're a little difficult for us to follow.

Jan: Right, and it's obscuring the questions that are pertinent to our topic today. One of the questions that was ... Can you go over the procedure for course credit again? I think people might be confused that they need to get something from SBA in order to receive course credit.

Dwight: Okay, thank you for asking that because it's not always clear. If you logged on to the system and just went into the webinar and followed the [inaudible 00:47:44] instructions [inaudible 00:47:44], you show up, we have your email and we know that you were a participant. What you can do is we mailed you the PowerPoint, and you will go to slide six or whatever it is, fill in your name, print out the slide, or do whatever you want. That is your certificate. You're done. What we're getting at with when we bring this up is if you can't get on, if you're listening in phone only mode, then we want you to email us at [email protected] so we know you participated. Also, that enables us to add your name or names to the list so you receive the post-program email and you receive this information plus a transcript and all this and that from the program. That's how that works.

Valerie: Jan, I see a note here that says, "Why limit NAICS codes for WSB? Why not afford the women program all the NAICS codes available for other socio-economic programs? That was not SBA's call. That is the way Congress wrote the program, so we are just administering the law that Congress passed. It said we had to do a study and that is the way that we are doing it. Again, we went back and did another study. Congress authorized another study and that's why the codes [inaudible 00:49:22] 83 to 113.

Dwight: We can't emphasize enough, and what happens is we say what Valerie just said, and we keep repeating ourselves because we see so many errors, but this is the only program driven by NAICS codes for small business set-asides. That's what's different. Then we changed the list, so you have to remember the NAICS codes are driven [inaudible 00:49:56], then you need to go to that website and make sure you've got the right code for set-asides and you're doing your market research. Then you remember that the ED is a subset of the WOSB-ED [inaudible 00:50:11] proposal on a WOSB, but a WOSB cannot [inaudible 00:50:16] a proposal on an ED.

I've got another question here, it looks a bit long, so Jan, can you see that?

Jan: Yeah. Are you saying with the new WOSB/EDWOSB NAICS codes that if I have a requirement with one of those applicable WOSB and ED-WOSB NAICS, then per slide six, FAR 19.203(a), concerning set-asides, I have to set-aside that requirement to


WOSBs or ED-WOSBs, as applicable ... i.e., I couldn't choose for my requirement to be a Hub Zone or 8A or Service-Disabled Veteran Small Business- [crosstalk 00:51:02]

Valerie: Oh, no. That is a contracting officer's decision, which way. The only one that has hierarchy is the VA, where they have to go to service-disabled vets and vets first. If you have two women, if you have two Hub Zones, if you have two 8As, that's a contracting officer's decision which way you want to go. Normally, it's goal-driven. This does not say you have to go to the women's program first, no. As on number one, you first consider Hub Zone or 8A or Service-Disabled Vet or Women or Economically Disadvantaged Women, depending on the NAICS codes, first, then you do a small business.

If you've met your [inaudible 00:51:47] goals, if you've met your service-disabled vet goals, if you've met your woman goals, then you may want to then set it aside Hub Zone because you haven't met your Hub Zone goals. There is no priority that women are first on that, we just would like to see socio-economic set-asides before a small business set-aside.

Dwight: Last week, we had a question we were discussing, and that is [inaudible 00:52:14] agency did market research and they came up with a whole bunch of that first tier [inaudible 00:52:23] some people call them small businesses, but they wanted to do a small business set-aside and we were puzzled. We didn't understand why you had all this huge response at the top and you weren't choosing one of them that would help you make your goals before you went to small business. It needs to be some rationale for that.

Jan: There's a question about if my project used to be in the 8A program, can I change that project to WOSB?

Valerie: Normally, if you have a requirement that's in the 8A program and it's a continuing requirement like services or something of that nature, you need to send a letter to the district office where the work is and explain to them why you want it taken out of the 8A program, because normally, once it's in the 8A program, it stays in there. If they agree with you, then it has to go up to [inaudible 00:53:20] headquarters and then they would make the decision whether to pull it out of the 8A program and then if it's pulled out, then you can do whatever you want to do. If you have something in the 8A program and you want it out, you definitely need to go to your district office first and consult with them.

Jan: There's a question about what about construction procurements and WOSB and ED-WOSB NAICS codes? I'm now working in a design and construction acquisition division and I was told that we don't set-aside construction projects to any WOSB. Is that true?

Valerie: If you will look at the new WOSB NAICS codes, there are approximately 15 or 20 or 25 NAICS codes for WOSB set-asides. These were some of the ones that were added. If you look on there, we have everything from 236115 all the way down to 238990 ... Roofing, siding, concrete, masonry, framing, all of that. All of those could be WOSB


set-asides now.

Dwight: We are at the WOSB website, which contains the information we covered. At the bottom, it has the list of codes. The whole thing is ... The answer is, Val just said it, if it's construction, or whatever it is, is on these lists, you may. If it's not, you cannot.

Valerie: That's the main thing, what Dwight just said. If the code is listed under one of the two groups, you can do a set aside. If the code is not listed, then no, you cannot do a woman-owned of any type set-aside but hopefully you can do a Hub Zone or 8A or Service-Disabled Vet. If not, then a small business set-aside.

Jan: There was an earlier question about the representations made in SAM and whether or not SBA verifies those small business representations in SAM.

Valerie: That is self-certifying. The only thing that we do in SAM is if they are 8A-certified or Hub Zone, they cannot check those boxes. We put that information in when they're certified. The rest of the time, they check the boxes what they are.

Jan: I know you're waiting for some questions and I'm trying to find them in all the other stuff.

Dwight: Yeah, we've had a lot of peculiar things coming in, so it's not very clear for us to go through. We want to emphasize again and I just said this a minute ago, looking at this parity business. When you're doing the market research, really give these first-tier firms a chance. This is where it's harder to make our small business goals, and all of us are under pressure to meet the small business goals. If you meet them, we want you to exceed them. [crosstalk 00:56:48]

Jan: One question that I remember seeing and it was when you do a sources sought using the Dynamic Small Business Search feature that you explained today, Val, how can ... They were asking can each vendor see the other vendor's email addresses?

Valerie: No, that's why you put it in the BCC, the blind carbon copy.

Jan: That's up to the emailer, when you're copying and pasting all of those email ... [crosstalk 00:57:20]

Valerie: We highly recommend that you don't put it in the "To," that you put it in the "Blind Carbon Copy" just so that someone doesn't feel like they're spammed and they're getting all the emails. As you will see form that one slide that Dwight had, we highly encourage and recommend that when you do the cut and paste, it goes in the "BCC" line, not in the "To" line. That way no one sees anything on who it went to. [crosstalk 00:57:55]

Jan: ... wanting to clarify about the self-certifying, that in DSBS are those? It wasn't clear to them.


Valerie: I think that I saw that too. When they check the boxes in SAM those boxes that they checked automatically are transferred over to DSBS. The only thing extra in DSBS that they're adding is principles' names, capabilities and references and the key words. Everything else that they checked in SAM, whether they're woman owned or service disabled vet, etc., their NAICS codes, all of that is automatically transferred over to DSBS. Whatever they checked in SAM if it shows up that they're a small business that's what it's going to show on the DSBS.

Jan: Okay. I know we covered this earlier in the parity slide, but this is a follow-up question because I think someone wants to make sure they're clear. If your NAICS code is represented by a woman owned small business, EDWOSB, then you're supposed to go to them right? Then they say, "I.e. WOSB/EDWOSB trumps the other socioeconomic groups?"

Valerie: No, that is incorrect. They do not trump the other groups. They all have parity. They are all equal to each other.

Jan: That's why we're doing this market research presentation so that based on your market research you can determine if there are two 8As in the case of an 8A if it's over the competitive threshold or there are two service disabled vet, or there are two woman owned small businesses and then you can determine if you've got all of those then based on your activities goal achievement you can make that decision which socioeconomic category you want to go to.

Valerie: Right. Again, all of them have parity. The only reason that we talk about the EDWOSB and the WOSB is because it is, again as we've said before, it is NAICS code driven and we just added a lot of new NAICS codes in there. Some of the time when you couldn't have done a set-aside maybe in December you'll be able to do a set-aside now with the additional codes, but they are all equal to each other.

Dwight: We're running out of time here and one thing I did want to add is that with our example, the Dynamic Small Business Search, a challenge for some of us depending on where we live is how to limit the search geographically. Valerie is in Houston. Houston is huge and so her agencies can do a whole lot of research simply in Houston. Whereas, I'm in Nebraska and the research may involve a number of states. I had a firm one time come back with market research and they did it by ZIP code in one very small town. They said there could be no set-asides. That didn't make any sense. Do we have time for one more question and then we'll adjourn? Do we have any more?

Valerie: Let's see.

Dwight: We were having big question problems here today. That's why we're a little slow. I think maybe we should wrap it up. SAM is a self registration and [inaudible 01:01:42] help with that, if you get any questions on it refer people to our wonderful [inaudible 01:01:47] friends.

Jan: Those instructions, that woman owned small business slide that we talked about at


the very beginning, all of that was really lifted from the woman owned small business page on the [inaudible 01:02:04] web site.

Valerie: Exactly.

Jan: You can go there and get detailed instructions on what to do when you are trying to get information verified from the repository.

Dwight: Okay, so anyway, that's where the codes are. The codes have all changed. Be careful with the codes. NAICS codes driven and then right now we're remodeling or rebuilding our repository so you go to www.sba.gov/wrsb and you'll find out where to go to contact us if you need to reach the repository while we're doing this. As we're going to close down today, once again, any questions contact us. For any needs, remember the library slide so you can go back and see what we've done in the past if you missed something. Then, if you were a phone only check out [inaudible 01:03:05] SBA Learning at sba.gov. I think we've had an interesting day with all of our questions going on and I'm sorry we're late. We'll be back next month to talk about hub zones. Thank you Carla, thank you Valerie, thank you Jan. Thank you all friends for joining us. Be in touch any time. Have a great month.

Jan: Happy spring.

Dwight: We'll be back.


· web viewthen we're going to go back and talk about market research. then we're...

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