Teaming Up

Mentor-Protégé program gives small businesses more opportunities in world of government contracts

• By Brent Dirks
• Feb 05, 2007

NAVIGATING the world of federal government contracts can be a head-spinning operation for even the most committed and headstrong business.

But for many, working with the federal government, especially with the constantly growing Department of Homeland Security, is too big a proposition to pass up. With 183,000 employees and a budget of more than $42.7 billion in fiscal year 2007, DHS is the third-largest cabinet department in the federal government and a target for many companies to garner new business.

Protégé firms can receive technical, managerial, financial or any other mutually agreed upon benefits from mentors -- including adding to a bottom line with work from a government or commercial contract through subcontracting or teaming arrangements.

And with help from the department's Mentor-Protégé Program, small companies can team up with larger corporations to help open up the door to expand.

The program is designed to encourage large business contractor firms to team up and provide mutually developmental assistance to smaller businesses and improve the performance of contracts and subcontracts, foster the establishment of long-term relationships between firms and strengthen subcontracting opportunities and accomplishments.

Expanding Business
To be eligible, the mentor firm must be a large business that demonstrates the commitment and capability to assist in the development of small business protégés.

The protégé firm must meet the definition of a small business concern at FAR 19.001 based on its primary NAICS code. Many small businesses, including veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone, disadvantaged and women-owned companies should be eligible.

Designed to help augment the contractor/subcontractor business model, all parties involved in the arrangement, including DHS are able to reap numerous advantages.

The mentor firms are eligible to receive credit in the source selection/evaluation criteria process for participation in the program. A post-award incentive for subcontracting plan credit is also available to the firm.

Protégé firms can receive technical, managerial, financial or any other mutually agreed upon benefits from mentors -- including adding to a bottom line with work from a government or commercial contract through subcontracting or teaming arrangements.

DHS touts the program as a way to improve and expand better business development while assuring that a protégé subcontractor will be better able to perform its job compared to a non-protégé counterpart. The agency also is looking to acquire an expanded base of qualified small businesses, mitigating the effects of contract bundling, while strengthening subcontracting opportunities.

The process also is unique because DHS does not guide the large and small businesses together. Both the mentor and protégé firms chose who to work with under the program. Once the two businesses come together, the firms submit a proposal to DHS.

DHS then reviews and approves the proposal showing the beneficial relationship between the two parties along with what assistance and subcontracting work the protégé firm can expect to receive in the next three years. And the approval process is different than what most think of when imagining government bureaucracy -- the application is less than three pages long and approval routinely happens in less than 30 days.

Powering Protégés
In the homeland security effort, there are currently 145 mentor-protégé agreements, totaling almost 250 different small and large companies involved in the program. One of those, industry giant's Northrop Grumman's Information Technology/Federal Enterprise Solutions division, has taken the mentor tag with Huntsville, Ala.-based Future Research Corp. signing on as protégé.

While Northrop Grumman, the third largest defense contractor in the world, has more than 123,000 employees and brought in $30.7 billion in revenue in 2005, Future Research has 130 employees in six offices across the county.

Future Research President Jesse Nunn said while his company has just recently joined in the partnership with Northrop Grumman, the company is looking for good returns from the relationship.

"The Mentor-Protégé Program has been around for a little while, and a lot of small businesses see it as a good opportunity to get into the government sector," Nunn said. "It gives our companies the opportunity to get into special relationships with big businesses. With the partnership, it allows us to become more established in the market. They've helped to show us how to bid and compete for contracts and become an overall better company."

Nunn said Northrop Grumman was looking to use the company's work in a number of IT sectors, resource management, software development and other related security fields to provide services for DHS.

"We have had a relationship with Northrop Grumman's Information Technology section for a while," Nunn said. "They like to use small business for a number larger contracts with the government. We help them by providing expertise in a number of specific fields."

With the program, Nunn said his company gets a better look at Northrop Grumman's structure while helping to make the relationship more far reaching than just the usual government contractor-subcontractor role.

"The partnership has allowed us to look at Northrop Grumman's entire operation and its total infrastructure picture -- information we can look at to then expand our business. We have a great relationship with them, and it's something that being part of the Mentor-Protégé program can only help deepen, making it stronger than if we were just a subcontractor."

Future Research, who also works with government agencies like the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, the Department of Energy and GSA, provides a number of IT and multimedia services along with programmatics and engineering expertise. The company was nominated in 1999 for the Small Business Administration Southeastern Regional Small Business of the Year Award for IT services provided to the government, and Nunn said the company has looked upon business with the government as a good way to grow.

"My philosophy has always been pretty simple," he said. "Get on the team with larger company. That allows us to better ourselves and grow the company. Teaming up with Northrop-Grumman, one of the largest government contractors in the country, was an easy decision. The Mentor-Protégé program is a great way to do that for any company looking to get into the world of government contracts."

Making Mentors
San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), with more than 44,000 employees and $7.8 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2006, is mentoring protégés 3H Technology and KTC Consulting Inc. under the DHS program.

3H Technology provides software along with IT and management system development and support while KTC Consulting provides technology support for the department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

Peter Engle, division manager at SAIC, said both the company and the protégé firms make careful decisions on who to select for the program.

"We select protégé companies very carefully," Engle said. "We didn't want to spread ourselves too thin. And as far as 3H and KTC Consulting go, they were also very selective about what type of firms they wanted as a mentor."

SAIC has been involved in Mentor-Protégé programs since the early 1990s and has actively mentored over 70 firms in a number of disciplines, including DHS.

When Kevin Boshears, DHS director of the Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization began the department's program in 2003, Carla Undurraga, SAIC Protégé Program manager at SAIC, said joining the program was an easy decision for the company to make.

"When Kevin Boshears championed the Mentor-Protégé program as a way to help small business development, SAIC made the easy choice to support DHS and support the growth of small businesses," she said.

While taking part in the program, Undurraga said SAIC makes sure to introduce the protégés firms to a wide variety of new knowledge and information that can help the small business grow.

"One unique thing about how we conduct the program is that we make sure the protégé firms are working throughout the company," Undurraga said. "We want to give them a number of contacts while introducing them to all facets of the company and help them to discover other fields SAIC is involved with. The protégés also can leverage their relationship with us in their business with other companies."

And SAIC has been very pleased with the program across all spectrums of work with the government, including DHS, Engle said.

"With the program, SAIC gains access to a protégé firm that has knowledge, information and insight that we may not have at our company," Engle said. "We also develop a strong relationship with the protégé companies and give them experience in areas they don't have. It's just simply good business."