Hello Polaris Followers,
As I’m sure you’re aware by now, the long wait for Polaris is over. I’ve had some time to digest it and here are a few of my key takeaways.
There are too many ways you can break down the Self Scoring and speculate about what score is needed to get an award. That being said, here is how the vehicle is shaping up with the release of the WOSB and SB tracks.
The Winners
- MP JVs and strongly built All-Small JVs are in a good position
- Companies with Certifications are in a good position — likely the DoD focused companies
- A few large teams who have just the right alignment of strengths, NAICS, and agency spread are in a good position (this means all of the subcontractors have been subs to the prime so 5K points aren’t immediately deducted)
The Tough-to-Get-an-Award Crowd
- Companies that are either newly formed or new to government work (NAICS; Agency Spread; Certs, etc. all pose a challenge)
- Companies focused on the most civilian of the civilian agencies (basically, the GSA’s customers)
In summary, it looks like they’ve set up a WOSB track that is going to be loaded with MP JVs; All-Small JVs; and DoD-centric companies. Is this what GSA was envisioning? I personally doubt it. The offerors in the second group (the very group GSA should be targeting for work within Polaris) are going to struggle to get within 5,000 – 10,000 points of the winning group because of the way the Self Scoring Points are allocated.
What is the GSA looking for?
So if you are a small business going at it alone you’ve got to have a perfect distribution of five contracts worth more than $10M each and these contracts must spread across five NAICS perfectly (one per NAICS) that also spread across four unique agencies…..and….see where I’m going with this?
The GSA must be looking for either A) companies that may not be relevant to their needs or B) an entire HERD of Unicorns. Your guess as to which of these categories GSA wants is as good as mine.
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