DON’T (PROVIDE) LABOR IN VAIN

As GSA winds down the consolidation of its professional service schedules and launches the new consolidated PSS, it’s important to keep in mind another critical service issue:  making sure you use the right labor categories, inside the scope of your contract, for each task order.  The tendency among contractors, and even their customers, is to say, “We’ve got Hank” or “Give us Hank”.  Despite the technical prohibition on providing personal labor services through a government contract, many people do, indeed, ask for and receive Hank.  The real key is making sure that Hank matches the labor category descriptions and contract scope of the contract you use to provide Hank to your customer.  If the labor category requires an advanced degree, does Hank have that degree?  If not, you may want to either have a more flexible labor category description or use another labor category.  Make no mistake.  GSA auditors routinely claim that Schedule contractors overbill the government, or provide services outside the scope of their contract, when providing key personnel to support government work.  Don’t let this happen to you.  Make sure you can justify how you got Hank to the job site.