MRO FSSI BPA Awardee’s Announced

GSA announced that they awarded 23 Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPA’s) for their Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) Strategic Sourcing initiative on February 28,2014.  As part of their Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI) GSA has awarded, released request for quotes (RFQ’s) and is planning to release additional BPA RFQ’s for frequently purchased commodities such as: office supplies, maintenance/repair equipment, janitorial supplies, etc.

The MRO BPA’s were awarded to 11 companies including 10 small businesses of various socioeconomic classes and 1 large business. The RFQ projected the total dollar value of this BPA to be more than $1.18 billion, around $23.6 million annually. This is great for these 11 companies that were awarded but not so great for other maintenance/repair equipment providers under existing GSA Schedules. The original RFQ for the MRO BPA was released in October.

Agencies are under more and more pressure to purchase via these FSSI BPA’s with claims of an average of 12% savings, however, we feel that the FSSI is continuing to restrict competition and potentially push out small businesses. At the end of last year, our senior consultant JF Bierlein published a blog regarding the GSA’s FSSI and the differing opinions.

The RFQ for the MRO BPA was released at the same time as a BPA for Janitorial and Sanitation Supplies (JanSan) however, as of March 13^th, the JanSan awardees have not yet been announced.

Questions on the MRO can be directed to the GSA’s MRO Program Team at fssi.mro@gsa.gov .  However, feel free to give us a call with any additional questions on MRO or the outstanding JanSan BPA.