Name: From MDA SHIELD Primes to Task Orders: Tactical Growth
Uploaded: 2026-04-16T16:16:07.570Z
Duration: 57 min 49 s
Description: From MDA SHIELD Primes to Task Orders: Tactical Growth

Transcript for "From MDA SHIELD Primes to Task Orders: Tactical Growth": Okay. So I think we're gonna get started. We got Natasha here ready to go. Really great talk for you guys this morning. So welcome back if this is, your first time joining a GovDAS session. This is actually session two of the shield awardee series that we're doing here. So just quick context of where we're at in this series. So last month, we had, session one, and that was just really about understanding what the vehicle is. We had Brian Lindholm on. He gave us a really great overview of what they talked about in previous industry days. But now we have Natasha Velez here, and she's gonna get into something, more operational. So we're gonna be talking about how you can actually turn your shield award into real revenue. And this is you know, it's gonna be a very operational talk. You're gonna walk away with some actionable insights here. And, you know, it's a $185,000,000,000 vehicle. All of the winners are not guaranteed any money on it right now. You're gonna have to compete for those task orders. So the question Natasha is gonna be answering today will be entirely about what separates teams that are already building pipeline from the ones that are still celebrating the award. So we're gonna get really into that kind of stuff today. And if you have any questions as we go along, please put them in the chat. We'll get, to all of them at the end here. And, yeah, before we get into it, I just really wanna, you know, give a quick word on gov dash, why we're here today, why gov dash is even hosting an MDA shield series to begin with. And it's directly related to everything we're gonna be talking about today. So Govdash is the AI platform built to run and, win government contracts the entire life cycle. A significant portion of our customer base, are awardees on the she Shield vehicle as of right now. And what we hear consistently from them is that this award was a starting line. It's not a finish line. There's ten years of task orders to win on this. So the real challenge is execution, monitoring, you know, daily task order solicitations once they do come out, towards the end of this year here, managing that no bid, decision, doing your business development and capture, and ultimately writing proposals and responding to RFPs here. That's exactly what gov dash was built for. So when a task order lands, our customers go from solicitation to compliance matrix to structured proposal writing, you know, faster scale than it takes manually. So we're hosting this series. Again, it's three parts here because we want our shield awardees to win. That's really what we get down to. Anyone that has a spot on shield, we want you to be successful. So Natasha is gonna take it away here. We're gonna give you really strategic faith framework today. And if you wanna see how gov dash supports the execution side, reach out to us, and we're more than happy to show you. So, Natasha, I'm gonna let you take it away. We have a really great presentation for you guys. Again, put some questions in the chat. We're gonna get through all of them at the end today. Alright. Hi, everybody. Welcome. Thank you for being here for session two of the Shield awardee webinar series. I am Natasha Velez, as you all know, proposal manager and capture manager. Super excited to kinda teach you and go through the execution steps for Shield. For session one, you walked away understanding what Shield is and, essentially, how it's structured. Today, I wanna go a bit deeper, and I wanna talk about specifically what you do with it. Because now we have 2,440 awardees, and we also have folks that are still interested in possibly the next on ramp. So we wanna talk about, you know, how to be intentional. This is a 2,026, you know, situation where we are looking to build, make revenue, and maximize on this contract vehicle. So first and foremost, 2026 is won or lost right now. We wanna turn your shield award into actual task order revenue, and we'll go from here. Alright. So the stakes on this vehicle. And recently with the updates, it has gone to support the Golden Dome, which is now a $185,000,000,000, which honestly, I feel like sounds like monopoly money when you say it out loud. Ten year ordering period. All option years exercised will be ten years. 2,440 awardees across three trenches and a government minimum obligation of exactly $500. That last number, though, is the one that I want you to kinda sit with for a second because the government owes you $500. That's it. So every dollar above that requires you to win a task order, right, in the competition. This is not criticism of a contract structure. This is actually a feature of it. So you need to start doing your BD now. Right? This vehicle is designed for competition at scale. We all know that this was very easy to win, but how do we stay on? How do we build? How do we keep going? Because if you do not win and you do not submit a compliant proposal, which we'll get into that, you could easily be off ramped. So think of GSA. Right? You spend all this time getting on it. You wanna stay on it. So we're gonna talk about that, what the government likes, what's good for companies, and how to show up and be ready to compete. Your field contract is not a license to compete. It's a it's not a guarantee of revenue. Right? So as we all know, you have a contract doesn't necessarily mean that you'll win money. So how can you win those task orders? How can you make that money? Well, the clock is already running. What most awardees don't know yet. So off ramp rule. If twelve consecutive months pass without you submitting a compliant proposal let that ring. Not a proposal, but a compliant proposal for each task order or quote, the government can initiate an off ramp. They can kinda kick you off, remove you from the vehicle. That's one. Two, the $500 reality of it all. Contract minimum is 500. Everything above that has to be earned through task order wins. One competition at a time, of course, but we'll get into that and what that looks like. The on ramp threat. MDA can reopen competition at any time. Don't think that those 2,440 awardees are the only ones there. New competitors can enter. They're talking about now, like, mid ramps and end of year ramping on. So just keep that in the back of your mind. This window is really to establish your position now. And if you haven't won yet and you're not on the shield contract, keep that in mind for future and watch out for it. Alright. For today's session agenda, what we're gonna cover today is how task orders actually move within Shield, the intelligence layer, so how are you gonna signal winners and track before the RFP drops, your targeting framework, five mistakes that kill your momentum, and I'm gonna give you some actionable homework because I do like it when people have something to do. So what we're gonna do is pipeline identify, RFP in progress, actively competing, and haven't started yet. Still mapping our approach. We're gonna go through all of it. Natasha, I wanted to stop you really quick. The slides are invisible. I'm not sure if you're still showing them. Oh, did they just stop? Hold on. Yeah. Here. Awesome. Thank you. We see them. I think I'm gonna use your slides now. Alright. Cool. How task orders actually move under shield. So the OCO ecosystem, it's not just MDA. Any DODCO can come to you. So one of the things is, you know, usually, if you win a contract with a certain agency, only that agency can provide task orders. This is not the case for Shield. You can literally have the Navy, the Army, any DOD, honestly, agency can put a task order and funding on your Shield contract. So who can issue task orders against your contract? Literally, anybody in the department of defense. That's a OCO with the appropriate contracting authority. Right? So army, navy, air force, OS SDs, all eligible. MTA signs one CO to manage the IDQ contract. Both CEOs across the DOD award individual orders. So your market is every DOD component with a missile defense mission. So if it aligns with any of those 19 subjects, then you can kind of essentially put it on shields. And so we'll talk about what that looks like because just like GSA, when you kinda come to a contracting officer and you say, well, we have a GSA contract. Why don't you put it on there? The same to kinda pretty much align. Every legitimate request must contain a control number. So issued by MDA PMOs, if you receive a request with that one, you may respond, but you have to notify MDA ID acute contracting officer immediately. And let's kinda go into a little further to understand who OCOs actually are. Because I am no fool in understanding that sometimes we don't actually know all the acronyms, and there's a million of them. So first thing to understand is who actually is issuing the task order against your contract. The answer is any duly warranted department of defense contracting officer. Right? OCRs are not a special category of person. They're essentially a warranted contracting officer who's already doing the job before Shield even existed. So this has been their mission from day one. And many of them are already managing requirements that will actually become shield task orders in the future. So they are sitting at the MDA program offices. They're at the army future command. They're at DARPA, at MDA field activities, like, for instance, Huntsville. The requirement that will become your nest task order competition is likely already in somebody's inbox. So I want you to be conscientious. The relationship exists before the FOPR does, and you should have to find the right door. So looking to see who those contracting officers are, who's doing the work right now, USA spending or gov dash can be your tool to find out and map out who these contracting officers are that are already mission aligned to what Shield is bringing in. Because at that point in time, you're building your capture. You're building your BD. You're building relationships that will future provide you future task orders. Alright. Now for the pathways to early OCO engagement. A lot of people ask me, okay. I know who they are. How do I engage with them? How do I reach out? How do I build a relationship? How do I even share that I exist to them? Because there's so many people targeting. I've had recently people come to me. Well, 2,440 attend, that's a lot of contractors. This feels, like, very heavy. Right? So the competition is is very harsh. The best way to do it, as any BD person knows, respond to the source of thoughts. This is huge when it comes to ensuring that they know who you are. Submit two page responses demonstrating your specific mission understanding. The critical paper trail really is about you sharing who you are, that you are mission aligned, you're supporting the warfighter, this is the work that you're already doing, provide proof points. At the very least, it's an introduction to you and your company. I always say this. If the contracting officer and OCOs know who you are from your RFP response, from your task order response, then you're too late. Because there's people that have already been having conversations with them, responding to sources thoughts way before the RFP dropped, way before the task order dropped. Right? Attending targeted industry events. We actually have one coming up soon, in Huntsville, Alabama. So research your program offices, the mission areas beforehand. Who's going to be there? And not just your OCOs. I will also say this is your competitive landscape. You can partner with each other. There is no limit to what you can do on that in that regard. So look at who's attending, who do you wanna partner with, who has skill sets that you have a gap in, that you wanna collect and make a whole team out of. Right? So going to those industry events, they will take off months and months of emails and one dinner or one beer. Let's be honest. So track your MDA partners and your field activity pages. Consistently monitor the m d a dot mil. Events show up, emails, updates, anything that's happening in the shield world. Those announcements for outreach events are gonna show up. So showing up consistently. You're gonna build familiarity. You're gonna build trust. People see your face more and more. You become reputable. No one represents your business better than you. And, essentially, the best way to do that is to be visible and to be around. So going out there, I would say shake the hands, kiss the babies, you know, get your sources of thoughts out there. Make sure they know who you are. And then last but not least, request direct capability briefings. Be proactive. Don't wait. Proactively request thirty minute briefings with program offices, provide a one page summary, come prepared to ask about upcoming requirements, encourage them to signal timeline, scope, like, have those natural conversations. Do not come with your pitch because, respectfully, they care about their pain points and so should you because this is the time to build that capture and get that understanding of what they need and how you can essentially be the solution. Alright. Now how does an order get to you? Well, the task order life cycle is pretty simple on this one. Step one is presolicitation. The OCO may hold industry days, one on one conferences, or pre proposal meetings. These are not formalities. They're essentially kind of a moment for you to discuss where the requirements are essentially coming from, how they get shaped, who's shaping them. This is where you're doing your infiltration. I always call it my stalking moment. Get as much intelligence and data as possible and take it back like a bee to my hive and say, okay. Well, this is the information I found out. How can we use it to our advantage? Right? Because it's gonna come all the way down to the task order of sharing that information into the storytelling of it all. So if you're in the room, you can influence the South, you can influence the language, you can understand the evaluation priorities and what the issues are, and you can identify teaming gaps before anyone has written a proposal. That's why it's so so important. Two, solicitation issued. The FOPR is essentially going to drop with a control number. The scope is gonna be defined, and then a contract type is gonna be defined. So you have I think it's, like, three different three different, contract types. Firm fixed price, cost reimbursable, and then there's gonna be, a hybrid option. So cleanse will be defined at the task order level, and everything will be evaluated at that point in time from there. So, honestly, the clock starts now. Step three, your response. You must respond to all OCO requests with a MDA PMO control number. A no bid is acceptable, but you have to include your rationale. So, essentially, they're gonna say, okay. Why did you not bid? And so that data is gonna be helpful to them to come back and, you know, readjust how they do things. Step four, award, which is your essentially, the OCO awards administers the order. So the MDIQ contracting officer manages the vehicle. These are two different people with two different roles, so don't confuse them. But they are OCO is gonna administer the order. The MDIQCO is going to manage the vehicle level contract. Alright. And then what an order can cover? I feel like a lot of people have come to us with this question, and they're like, well, we haven't heard anything. It's very vague. There's 19 control there's 19 sections. It was very easy to get on. All we needed to do was map our past performance to it. No technical writing, no pricing, which means at the task order level, it's gonna be very, you know, competitive when it comes to bringing out your core tech tech technical capabilities. Right? So let's kinda talk about how this is gonna be covered. No scope restrictions. This is really, really cool. Orders will not be restricted to a single work area. Orders can contain one or multiple or all scope areas. So when you went and you put yourself on this contract, you had to choose which con which, sections that you were gonna bid on. Was it cybersecurity? Was it gonna be, you know, r and d? What was that looking like? Right? Well, not for this. For the task orders, you can choose a multitude of them. And in the ordering and when the task orders drop, there can be a multiple of those core capabilities all mission to one task order. So what does that tell me? We need a partner. We need to start building those relationships now. I have seen companies start, like, right now, putting a roster together of all of the awardees and saying, hey. What's your capability statement? What's your core competencies? What are your differentiators? Can we partner? Because there's a good chance these task orders are gonna drop, and we're all gonna have to be a partner to at some point. I always say, what is it? Competimates. So one minute your enemies, the next your competitors, the next you're, like, working together and teaming, and that's just kind of the way of government contracting. Right? So full scope access. What does this really mean in practice for you guys? In regards to full scope access, a single task order can span, as stated before, r and d, prototyping, systems engineering. They're full scope. Right? No separation of qualifications. You do not need separate qualifications per scope area to pursue it. You just need to show them that you have the technical expertise and the past performance to map to it. So if you can do that, you're good to go. So if you went and said, oh, you know, I bid I put only that I can do science and technology. Well, you're not beholden to that. Now if you can do research and development and I feel like this is fair to say that over time, you gain new capabilities. So let's say now I'm doing research and development, and I have I wanna get into that task order. You can. You're not defined by what you use to get into Shield. You can now explore outside of that. And so look at those other 19 and start figuring out where you can add value to expand your scope. Now the purpose on any area, once awarded the IDQ, you can propose on any scope area in section c regardless of which two you demonstrated at award as stated previously. Alright. I feel like that was the most exciting part for me. I got so hyped off of that one. Alright. Ordering types and pricing. As stated previously, we'll touch on it very briefly. The flexibility is built into the actual task orders and the vehicle. So firm fixed price. We all know that. You own the cost. You own the risk. Price carefully. Right? They really think about your basis, of estimate. Don't just put any sort of indirect rate. Take a look at your indirect rates. Start having conversations with your pricing folks and your contracting team. Again, very competitive. Cost reimbursable. Government shares the risk. So your accounting system matters. Hybrid. So firm fixed price for defined deliverables, and then cost reimbursable for r and d elements. That's also another one. And then level of effort, which is defined labor hours. Right? Variance is allowed without notice. So that's another one that they'll have in there. Your contract type and clean instruction are determined at the order level. So please read every RFP carefully. I know with AI, we're all scanning through things. Please make sure you read it carefully. Do not assume it matches the last task order that you used. Alright. The ordering guide. It's coming. I know you're all waiting. I know some of you are literally waiting for it to move forward. So use it when it arrives. Please don't wait for it. It's coming, but don't wait for it. The government intends to produce a post award ordering guide or ordering procedure manual, for use and reference for you all, by the contracting officer in industry. We're still waiting for it. What winning teams essentially are doing right now? They're building their OCO relationships. Right? That's what you can do right now. Track sam.gov daily and also track mda.mil or track on your gov dash. Attend every MDA event and document internal procedures. CMMC, that's a thing now. Ensure that you are getting yourself self assessed at the very least for level two. Make sure that you are putting your policies and procedures down, that you have everything tight. They have teaming agreements, NDAs, partners built out, your your competitive landscape pulled in and a teaming roster set up. Start putting together your playbook of how you're gonna execute because very commonly, what we're seeing is a quick turnaround time. Some a task order can drop, and a response will be needed in three weeks. I know for larger companies, we don't like that. We like to spend a little more time. Smalls are a little more agile. But at the end of the day, we have to plan for quick execution. Alright. The intelligence layer. Signals that winners essentially are tracking. Now I feel like this all goes without saying, and we've said this a couple times. I will reiterate it one last time. Sam.gov. If you do not have go dash see how I explicitly throw that in there, like, 20 times? Sam. Like, they pee. I was like, sam.com. You guys don't use this enough, but you could put search, and you could set filters to track opportunities so they can send you emails. Please use it. It is a tool. Watch for sources sought watch for draft RFPs, pre solicitations that could be tied to shield and NAICS codes. Let's be proactive. Right? Speed matters, and OCOs often release short response windows. So quick turnaround times, folks. Usaspending.gov because I think FPDS is dead now. Right? So mine historical DOD awards. CAPTURE is so, so needed, and you guys don't use it enough. So get up on it. Fund identify which agencies have funded missile defense adjacent work. Those agencies have the budget history. They have mission alignment, and they have contracting authority to become your OCOs on shield. And I mined. Your MDA event calendar. Start putting your calendar together. What events are your primes going to? What Apex Accelerator events are people going to? Start doing your stalking. Where are your competition going that you wanna partner with? We got some large primes on there. I know smalls, you wanna partner. You wanna be a sub on one and a prime on another. We don't have to prime on everything. So let's start builder our strategic plan and mapping it out now. Natasha, I also wanted to add. I'm seeing some comments in here about the Orbit portal. I think that's so important too. Right? You wanna make sure you're using a tool that has access to these gated portals. You know, Orbit is gonna be huge in your field. So, you know, a thing that gov dash does, that's a lot different from other tools out there right now is we're actually streamlining the process for you to import those task orders when they come through Orbit right through gov dash. So you're using just one tool to get that done. So, yeah, alongside state.gov, Orbit is gonna be huge. That's the main shield portal that, most task orders are gonna be coming through. And if you have any insight on Orbit as well, Natasha, I would love to hear that. I know that's a huge topic, and I'm, you know, hearing from people that they didn't even know what Orbit was. You know? So it's it's a lot of interesting, conversations out there right now of how to track these task orders when they actually do come out. I agree. So when we had and I think one of the things was, like, ShieldSpace developed, like, the orbit portal for everyone to be able to look for opportunities, just like GSA and, you know, Seaport XGen. They all have their own portals where you can kind of view those opportunities as they drop for you. One thing I do find is really hard, and I like that you brought that up in regards to shield and having access to the portal because not a lot of not a lot of systems have access to the actual portals. So you find yourself registering for a million different sites. So if that's something that gov dash can provide, which is lovely to know, another reason to look into gov dash, that will make your life so much easier because everything can essentially be consolidated into one system. You don't have to necessarily have to be on gov dash. Go on to GSA, you know, spending, go on to shield, Mhmm. orbit portal, go on to Seaport NextGen. You can have everything in one system. So using gov dash alone itself would be amazing. But Orbit hasn't dropped anything yet. They are in the They just created that portal. I don't have a lot of information on it because I'm not in it. So I don't have the, the I'm not on shields, but we will cover in from that one more. And I'll bring some information, and what we can do is provide maybe, like, a quick how to guide on how to use, the Orbit portal. Awesome. Thanks for that insight. Alright. Where are you guys? I apologize. You all went down for a second. Alright. So set aside intelligence. I really kinda wanna push this. I know that, like, small businesses are really curious to know how this works. This is particularly, important just really for the small businesses in the room, honestly, but everyone should understand how it works. Right? At the IDIQ level, there are no set aside tracks or pools. So every one of the 2,440 awardees, large, small, competes on the same vehicle. Right? But at the task or letter task order level, each order gets reviewed under the FAR and the FAR requirements, to determine if the set aside is appropriate. That review happens independently for every single order. So a small business prime can absolutely win on shields. The vehicle was explicitly structured to support that. Now what to watch for in your signal monitoring. Right? Market research request that asks specifically for small business capability data, because they're obviously looking for something smaller and agile. That is often kind of a precursor to set aside orders. The source has sought notices that specify small business categories, OCO patterns. Some OCOs at certain agencies, they have a tendency, to really prefer and build strong relationships with small agencies, due to the utilization goals. Right? If you are small businesses, do not default to a subcontractor role. We have a tendency to do that. The vehicle was designed to give you a path to prime. Please use it. Targeting framework, agencies, timing, and internal controls. Let's kinda get into that. Alright. I'd say this enough. You hear this enough, but we'll say it again. Don't chase everything. That's not a strategy. You cannot throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Create a targeting filter that separates consistent winners from my busy losers. Alright. Unlimited agencies, done dozens of scope areas, tons of awardees. Depth beats breath every time. Quality over quantity. I could do this all day. Pick three to five target agencies. Identify two to three scope areas where you did genuine depth. I know I told you, yes. You can bid on all of them. You can, but target two to three that is, like, in your wheelhouse that you can knock it out the park. Build OCO relationships in those lanes. That way, you don't feel like you're doing a million different things, and you're kind of half doing it. You wanna pull everything into one to two to three main pools, maximum three, so that you can build consistency, relationships within those lanes, and target them efficiently. Pursue hard in your zone. No bid everything else, honestly, unless you are a sub. Well, then that's just free money. Right? Pursue everything in your lane. Keep pushing that one off every day of the week. Alright. When we talk about targeting your agencies, how to select your hunting ground? I personally like to see the three sub agencies that buy what I sell. Right? Everyone buys what you sell, but who spends the most money on it? That's how you create your hunting ground. That's how you kinda slow the scope in. Who buys the most of what you sell? Who do you have past performance with and relationships with? All of these should be factored into your bid no bid review. The reasons why you say no to something and the reasons why you say yes to something should be your relationship depth. Right? It should be your clearance alignment. Are you do you have your cleared workforce? Do you have top secret clearance if there's task orders that require it? What the proximity is to the agency, your budget history, the mission alignment. Are you strong within that task order? Start building your bid no bid for shield alone. Have your own target list. I really think it's gonna be really important. No is just as important as a yes. There's gonna be plenty. It's 185,000,000,000. This is all gonna support the golden dome. I don't anticipate it being any less. If anything, it'll probably grow even more. So we wanna be very selective about we go after because I know companies that literally only bid on five opportunities a year, and they have a 100% win rate because they've spent their whole time focusing on those five opportunities versus companies that bid ten, twenty a month, and they win maybe one a year. So really be very strategic about your bid no bid approach. And scope area sweet spots. Start with your IDIQ submission. The two work areas you demonstrate in your section c experience. Right? Those are your proof points. You've already build up to that. You've already showcased your experience in those areas. Those two work areas should be a no brainer. So targeting principle. Lead with the strongest two to three scope areas. Build your past performance there first. You should be doing that now. Really start mapping out those past performance and not just, like, the scope of work and what we did, but proof points, metrics, analytics. You want that information. You wanna be able to showcase that, especially when it comes to proposal time. Because how are you going to show not only did we do this, but we did it well. Okay. Now back it up. Proof is in the pudding. What did you do well? How do you know that you did it well? Well, we saved by 17% in in schedule. We saved by 34% in revenue. Whatever that looks like, you wanna ensure that you're showcasing those proof points when you're writing. And how do you get those proof points? Not when the task order drops, but now. Start mapping it there. Alright. Timing triggers. When task orders are most likely to release. So we just went through a tons of budget pauses as we all know. That was all fun. So quarter four, historically, we all know what quarter three and their quarter four look like. Drives end of year spend. We get all crazy because proposal season. Right? And then quarter one is October to December, which is opens the new year funding. Legacy contract expiration, think about it this way. Teams, MAPS contracts are aging out, recompete pressure. Things could be easily pushed to shield. Right? Essentially, we've talked about this. Teams, Teams Next, maps, contracts, aging out, create predictable recompete pressure. So know those expiration dates. Then The USA spending gaps. If an agency funded work in your scope area for three consecutive years and then stopped, there's not that's not them losing interest. That's usually a budget alignment or a recompete in progress. Watch for that. OCO conference activity. An uptick in industry days or one on ones at specific agencies is a leading indicator that a requirement is taking shape. When you see it, increase your attention there. Really kinda pay attention, to the timing triggers and the things that are happening around you. And then the no bid discipline. The contract holder should respond to all OCO requests submitted that contain a control number issued by MD and PO. A no bid is acceptable with one condition. Include your rationale. Explain why. Right? Most teams treat a no bid as a failure, something you do when you're not ready yet. I want you to think about it as a strategic tool. Right? The contract requires you to respond to every OCO request with a control number. A no bid is literally a compliant response. So the contract specifically asks you to include your rationale because the OCO uses that rationale to understand the competitive landscape. They wanna understand why you don't wanna bid on it, and they will write better future solicitations for it. So here's what your no bid data tells you over time. If you're declining a specific scope area repeatedly, that's either a capability gap or targeting misalignment, and you need to know which. Right? If you keep no bidding a specific agent, do that a signal to either deprioritize them or invest in a relationship there. If a particular evaluation criteria keeps triggering your no bid, that's a gap you can close. Your no bids are feedback loops. They're just like a debrief. They're very important. Have those conversations. Treat them as data, not as losses. And remember, every response, no bid, every reasonable no bid will help you. Alright. Internal roles that win task orders. BD intelligence, capture, own the signal watch, monitor, capture the relationship builder, owns the OCO relationship, attends industry days, requests one on ones, shapes the requirement before the SAU is written. Proposal, that's your clock manager, that's your calendar manager, owns the proposal velocity, wants to pull in all the data from BD and CAPTURE, and they're gonna pull that in and maintain a ready library of past performance capability statements, labor rate matrices so that you are ready for fast responses. These are things that you can be doing now. Program leaders, your past performance bank. You know, I we all lose our stuff in our SharePoints now. Own it. Make sure it's credible. Pull it all out. Put it into a template that the government likes and keep it on hand. Current document and ready to deploy in any proposal. Make sure it's updated. And then your executive sponsor, the accountability owner. Sign off on pursue, no pursue decisions. Make sure you have someone that can say, I know what we should bid on, and I know what we should not bid on, and what the goal is. Sometimes it's not about just your past performance. Sometimes it's about what you wanna do in the future and where your company is going, and people in the executive chair know that better than anyone. Teaming strategy. Build a flexible bench, not a locked roster. So this is one thing that was on, one of the requirements. Exclusive teaming is discouraged under the IDIQ. So you cannot hold a teaming partner to you forever. Right? They have to be able to partner with whoever they want to on Shield. So keep it flexible, build multiple teaming partners, and just know in the back of your mind they're also building relationships with other teaming partners. Again, competimates. Right? You can't lock a partner into an arrangement that prevents them from competing on other field opportunities. So exclusive teaming arrangements are gonna raise antitrust concerns. You don't want that. Don't do that. The winning teaming model. Maintain a qualified partner bench across your scope areas. Bet your partners now, honestly, for complimentary capabilities and clearances. Negotiate teaming agreements now at the task order level, not at the vehicle level. Allow partners flexibility to pursue independently. So, essentially, what the vehicle was designed for, which is open competition. And then the fast the five mistakes that cost teams time and momentum. Treating the IDIQ win as the finish line. I see this a lot. We all wanna celebrate and all of that. But when you get on shield contract, that is not the end all be all. That's when the work actually starts. Yay. Congrats. Now what? We got task orders to win, or we could win nothing, get off ramp. This is the same with most, IDIQs. You get on an IDIQ, you forget to move forward and continue to do BD because you have to compete at the task order. Teens celebrates the award. BD pipeline goes quiet for sixty to ninety days. There's no agency outreach. No, you know, monitoring. No nothing. Keep moving forward to the finish line. Waiting for your ordering guide. Most of you are doing this right now. Please don't. There's so many action items that you were just given that you can move forward with, and you could provide solutions now and start building everything that you need at this moment in time. Spreading them across all 19 scopes. So, again, rinse and repeat. Do not try to bid on everything. We're relevant to everything. We'll pursue it all. Proposals that essentially try to show confidence across 10 scope areas simultaneously. We can do this. We could do that. Remember that government contracting officers are risk adverse. They want to ensure that you have the capabilities and the ability to do everything. And if they feel like you're doing everything and it's a huge risk, they won't wanna bet on you. They would much rather you partner or be very specific and choose your lane. So evaluating technical credibility within your specific mission area really is what's needed. Lead with two to three scope areas where you have verifiable past performance, personnel, and demonstratable approaches. Not just we will, but we have done this. Remember that language. Ignoring OCI exposure. Plea we got lazy when COVID happened. We all just like to sit at home with our nice shirts and our shorts and don't wanna go to industry day events or or market ourselves. Get out there. Go back to the conferences. Go like, those relationships are gonna be invaluable. Like, they will make your company grow so much faster than a capability briefing or an email or a phone call to a contracting officer. Getting into the faith and building those relationship and having those natural conversations are gonna help you now. And going twelve months without a compliance submission. For this one specifically, there may be no circumstances that lead off read to an off ramp of a contracting officer. So twelve consecutive months have elapsed without the offer submitting a proposal or a quote that is compliant with the solicitation instructions or even bidding period will get you kicked out. So silence, being nonresponsive, that will get you kicked out. The consequences is that you start getting off ramps. The fix is that you start responding to the control numbers within your core capabilities. And your ninety day sprint repeatable growth system. What you can do now. For award status, I want you to start working on building the habits, the systems, and the relationships that are gonna generate repeatable task order pipeline. This is not a one time push. It's literally an operating cadence that you're gonna have to build for the next ten years. And, honestly, some folks focus primarily on just IDIQs and are able to build consistently just on that alone and build their businesses just off of IDIQs. So what I wanna see is you build habits, systems, and relationships that will get you there. Set yourself a time frame. Week one to two, map and assign. Week three to four, activate and engage. Month two, get in the room. Month three, submit and review. Nonnegotiables. Please review your pipeline. Own the pursue and the no pursue decision authority without a comp, accountability at the top. Honestly, BD work bills time without generating revenue. So you're all a team, and you all have to partner together to be able to support for these submissions. And very very much so, one and two, map and assign, target your agencies, scope alignment, internal owner assignments, make sure that someone is designated as capture, BD, proposal, who's doing what. Past performance inventory. Start collecting all of it. Activate and engage. Start reaching out and engaging with all of those that you need to to build those relationships. Month two, get in the room. I will send out a, MDA schedule. They have, I believe, two industries that are coming out, that you should attend, and I hope to see you all there because I will be attending. And then month three, submit a review. Always remember that when you submit a proposal, whether you win or lose, get a debrief. Winning means I wanna know what I did right, and I wanna do more of that. Losing means I wanna know what I did wrong, and I wanna do less of that. And how can I fix what I've done so that I never do that again? So remember, everything goes back into a capture loop. Everything's a feedback loop, and everything's information that will keep you going forever. And then your one page targeting worksheet, which we will send out to all of you, that you can start building internally. And I think at this point in time, you have your appendix. These are all more resources for you to take with your PDF. But for the bare bones essentials, I think we're done. That was awesome. There was so much to take away from this talk today. I did wanna remind everyone, if you liked what you saw here, we're having another session next month. Natasha will be here. We're having, you know, another speaker, Justin Nerdham, to go over just even more in-depth into what we just talked about. So I'll put the link to register for that as well. We also have other events coming out, live webinars. You know, one they're almost every week at this point. So if you would love to join us, know. yeah, we would love to have you. And you guys will be walking away. After this, we'll be sending out an email with all of the assets, Natasha covered today, that walkaway plan. And, yeah, you know, I'm seeing some questions in here. Let me get to some of them. when we leave. So I'm seeing a lot of people talk about how hard it is to manage orbit. I think that has to do with a a lot because of, how new it is. It was just created, and, historically, these kind of military tech programs are not always the most reliable. I have so much experience using these platforms. You know? It can be really hard. But I put a note in there. You know, gov dash is coming out with a Chrome extension. I wanna mention that again really quickly. It's, you know, really gonna streamline and change the process of how people import opportunities. So just, you know, you can get away from managing all these different registrations and portals and really just have one place to track every update, every change that comes through. So be on the lookout for that. Yeah. Oh, you know what I was thinking? For the next one, for. situation awareness, let me do some research on the MDA Orbit portal. Let me get with them and try to get you some really fun information to help you manage and kinda go through it. It is a new system, so I think this they alone are also trying to figure it out. So patience. Everything is so quick and so new. But I will get you some resources, and we can discuss it on the next one. Yeah. I think that would be so helpful. Like, I I'm just seeing so many questions about, like, how do you even track multiple things, what's going on with Shield. I saw someone said there's a RFI opportunity in there already, but nothing else. So a lot of different stuff that I'm looking at here. I did wanna get to this one question because I think it's so good, and I think you can go so, like, so much deeper on this to help this person out here. So we got, how, they're just asking, you know, so we have to bid or no bid on every single task order issued. Can you go a little bit more into what, you know, this this person's probably talking about here? I mean, yeah, there's just. so many task orders. I you know, just looking at how you're gonna bid or no bid with the reasoning behind that strategy. So it really is kind of the same how you do now. But, yes, FourShield, they want you to be it's really highly competitive. So they don't want people to come on this, and and I think we saw that when they came and they kinda cleaned out GSA, and now they're cleaning out AA. They don't want you to just jump on a on an IDIQ and not do anything. So how you ensure that you are responsive is even if you no bid. So I don't know if so for some of that you have GSA schedules, there's a there's a little button where you could actually say, like, for opportunities that are within your sense, you can no bid it. Right? Well, they're really pushing that in shield. They want you to bid or no bid. And if you're not bidding on it, tell them why. They need that industry feedback so they know why, and so they can really kinda put you in the right lanes. It's needed for you, not to bid on everything, but it's also needed for them to know what your core capabilities are. And if they're hitting the mark in the solicitations that they're putting out, remember, this is a very new program. So just like you're learning, so are these OCOs. They're learning as well. So, yes, you should know bid. But this is gonna help you remain compliant because you're not not responding. You're not not existing. They know that you're present and that you're looking. So keep that activity going. That was that was great. Yeah. We got another question about the whole no bid situation. So we have Joanne asking, what is the medium for providing a no bid? Is there a form or something for consistency? They're gonna give you, kind of a checkbox. If you say no bid, then it populates, like, a little section to debrief. So just put a little a quick summary. It could be one to two sentences. Not within our wheelhouse. We don't have past performance in it. Whatever that looks like, but it could be very quick and easy. So it doesn't have to be crazy. Cool. And then we have questions about the first webinar. So I linked the recap article and the on demand video here in the chat. You guys are also gonna be getting resources after you walk away from this event. So we're gonna gonna we're gonna include all of, Natasha's slides, her, you know, takeaway, actionable insights, strategy guide, all those things, also a link to the on demand video for this webinar and an invitation to our next, session in this series. So, it looks like I got to all of the questions in here, Natasha. Is there. anything you wanna, you know, kinda just mention about, NVS and what you kinda do and how you can support people as well? Yeah. Yeah. I always, like, market myself last. Yes. No. Oh, You. have to. You have to. I know. MBS strategic solutions is my baby. I do capture, proposal writing, proposal management, GSA schedules. We do CMMC, assessments, and now audits. Like, we, are doing all the things to support small and midsize enterprise companies with getting, you know, winning contracts, task orders, you know, contract vehicles, mapping really. But our thing, I would say, like, our bread and butter is building your strategy. We don't just come in as a proposal writing workshop because I used to see, like, us do that and then your p one would be so low. We'd like to pull in that capture and that BD. And what makes MBS so great is that I'm so humble in regards to, like, if I don't know something, I have an ecosystem of experts, and that's what I love about it. So I love to pull in resources to support you because the end goal is what matters the most. Not that we can do it all, but that we have a team that can support and help you win and kinda get your goals, you know, started. So we really try to come up with customized solutions to help you approach, you know, government contracting, win, and have a repeatable process to keep winning even when we're not there. Because I want you to win forevermore and always be like, yay. I just want us all to win. We know this already. Well, thank you so much, Natasha. Thank you guys for joining us today. Again, I think it's, June 17. We have another webinar coming up, the last session of this series here at MDA Shield. So thank you so much for everyone for joining us today. Look out for those, resources we're gonna be sending out after this event. But, yeah, thank you guys so much for joining us today. Get gonna sign money,.