Enhance Your 2024 SBC With a Pre-Conference Workshop

Pre-Conference Workshop

Building Bridges: Partnering with Indigenous Communities

Tuesday, November 19, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM CST

From the perspectives of Indigenous people working within or affected by the architectural, engineering, and construction industries, join us for a round table panel discussion on Partnering with Indigenous Communities. Partnering with Indigenous communities is incredibly important to small business contractors. Being educated can help ensure that relationship building is a positive experience for everyone. These discussions aim to bridge gaps between small businesses, federal contractors, and Indigenous peoples. 

Topics to be discussed:

• Federal Contracting: Discuss the laws, regulations, and history behind Indigenous people and the federal government, as well as how to repair the damage done.  
• Cultural Awareness: Understanding, acknowledging, and respecting cultural differences and beliefs.
• Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge: Understanding that Indigenous people hold a deep ecological understanding for the world around them, and how those partnerships can create beneficial outcomes.
• Understanding and Respecting Indigenous Values and Beliefs: The significance of Indigenous values, how to be respectful, and the ways that this can enhance your project and general understanding.

Pre-Conference Workshop

Unlocking Government Opportunities: Finding Free Insights into Federal Budgets & Contracts

4 PDH Credits

Tuesday, November 19, 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST

Bring your laptop and follow along as we teach you, step-by-step, how to use free resources and tools to research, track, and position your team for upcoming federal agency projects and recurring services contracts before they are advertised on SAM.gov.

Module 1 – How to Download and Decipher Federal A/E/C Military Construction (MILCON) Budget Data
Military construction budgets for A/E/C are filled with valuable insight on what you will soon find advertised on SAM.gov. Understanding how to find this critical (and free!) knowledge provides visibility on what types of A/E/C projects you see in the next few years, where money is being invested, and can provide historical perspective to help you select new target clients or markets.

This first workshop module will equip participants with knowledge on how to get ahead of A/E/C solicitation advertisements by identifying potential opportunities before they are advertised, how to understand what the potential requirements may be, prepare a team, and how to help shape the solicitation requirements before it is advertised.

Module 2 – Using SAM.gov’s Data Bank to Conduct Federal Agency Prime Contract Market Research
With information on future projects in hand, this second module will teach you how to conduct research on likely competitors as well as contract incumbents, helping you further position your team for a win. The Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) is a free resource of prime contract award details that can be data mined through SAM.gov.

Using prime contract award data tailored to your company’s specific interests, you’ll learn how to create custom reports on Federal agency prime contract awards, then how to analyze this data using pivot tables in Microsoft Excel. We will also show you several tips and tricks on how to manipulate this data into useful formats for identifying and tracking reoccurring and one-off contract opportunities.

Attendees must have an existing SAM.gov logon user ID/password to enable them to access the ad-hoc query capabilities of the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) available via the “Data Bank” link on the SAM.gov website.