GSA Streamlines General Schedules to Allow Ancillary Purchases

In one of its most noteworthy expansions of the General Schedules for routine purchasing, the General Services Administration on Tuesday announced full implementation of a streamlining option for agencies that need to add ancillary purchases to long-standing multiple-award contracts.

The so-called Order-Level Materials initiative, built around a January 2018 General Services Acquisition Regulation rule, is aimed at making it easier for customer agencies and industry partners to adjust existing deals for related products or services.

“The rule means that on select schedules, agencies can now acquire not just the products and services they’ve come to rely on from GSA, but also the associated items required to make use of them, at the order level,” GSA said in a blog post. “Previously, several additional contracting actions may have been needed to acquire those ancillary services.”

Long sought by both agencies and industry, the accelerated option designed by GSA’s regulatory reform task force “allows for the procurement of ‘total solutions’ without the need for separate procurements, makes GSA’s Schedules Program faster, easier, and more efficient than ever before and aligns strongly with GSA Administrator [Emily] Murphy’s priorities to reduce duplication and increase competition,” the agency said.

Such flexibility at the order level “creates consistency between the GSA Schedules Program and other established indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracts,” it added. “This will result in a more consistent application of policies and better value for customer agencies, industry partners, and taxpayers. We believe this will also reduce duplicative and inefficient contracts and remove barriers to entry into the federal marketplace (especially for small businesses).”