Stephanie Shutt, director of the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Program Management Office (PMO) at the General Services Administration (GSA), was featured during GovConWire’s recent 2020 Business Development Forum on Aug. 27th to give a keynote address discussing the GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules Program and recent changes the program has undergone over the past two years.
You can still register here to watch the BD Forum in its entirety through GovConWire’s Event Archive.
Following a brief introduction into GovConWire Events, Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson introduced the 2020 BD Trends Forum’s moderator Ravi Dankanikote. As the senior vice president of Business Development for CACI, Dankanikote’s expertise includes talent management, corporate growth strategy and enduring client relationships.
Dankanikote opened the forum with an introduction for Stepahnie Shutt, who’s been supporting GSA’s MAS program for over 15 years. In her role, she’s responsible for overseeing the agency’s $30 billion MAS program offering almost every commercial product and service available to agencies government-wide.
As PMO Director, Shutt ensures GSA’s Schedule program continually addresses current market forces and provides the federal government with a streamlined, value-based contracting solution that continues to save time and money well into the future.
Following her introduction, Shutt jumped right into her keynote address to discuss the MAS program, its schedule updates and the changes the program has been through since 2018. Shutt began her speech with a reminder that the MAS program has been active for more than 30 years
After a history recap of the program’s history, Shutt shifted the conversation into the dramatic changes that have been made to its products and services, which has evolved into solutions. She then moved the discussion into the changes to MAS consolidation that drove the program to the present day. Shutt described the ongoing changes as a “two and a half year struggle.”
Despite the fact that many of these changes should have happened earlier, the conversation began with the people that were actually using the MAS program. From them, Shutt explained that the laundry list of changes was extensive from the users, but the complaints were centered around two major issues: consistency and duplication.
One of the problems she discussed was the federal market had changed so much. The concept of transitioning to a solutions-based model was too much to bring industry to the market in a commercial way to break up an offering into more than one contract vehicle.
As a result, the program’s process was broken down into three phases. The first phase was to develop the new schedule. The next was to complete mass modifications for all existing contract holders and move onto the last step of consolidating multiple contracts into a single one.
Stephanie Shutt also discussed the benefits and purpose of the MAS consolidation changes, the structure that included 12 categories, the resources available to use for potential contractors and specific questions from the audience that you can only ask if you attend GovConWire’s next event on Oct. 20th.
GovConWire’s Small Business GovCon: Navigating the Federal Marketplace, Upcoming Opportunities, and Winning Contracts Virtual Event will feature Brian Barnes, associate administrator of GSA’s Office of Small & Disadvantaged Business Utilization, as the keynote speaker.
GovConWire’s next event hopes to educate and inform small to midsize GovCon professionals on the current Federal Marketplace, FY21 opportunities to look out for, navigate the GSA schedule, and discuss what industry can do to help.
Click here to register for GovConWire’s Small Business GovCon: Navigating the Federal Marketplace, Upcoming Opportunities, and Winning Contracts Virtual Event on Oct. 20th.
