LESSONS LEARNED BY A WOMAN ENTREPRENEUR
BAA’s, Certifications, & Common Concerns In her presentation to attendees of the Enterprise Chapter meeting on 8/29/06, Alice Lei, founder and president of Nightingale Technology, shared lessons-learned about Broad Agency Announcements (BAA’s) and Women and Minority Business Enterprise Certifications, and expressed common concerns of women-owned businesses.
Alice appreciates the part luck and serendipity played in the founding and subsequent progress of the company. In 1994, her second interview shortly after leaving Rockwell International was with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had an unfilled requirement for a minority-owned woman’s company. Thus Nightingale Technology, the company she founded that year, received a contract to deal with a problem on the Green Line. The company currently specializes in system architecture for communications, ground and airborne systems.
Alice learned some lessons about BAA’s in dealing with the Navy Clothing and Research Center (NCTRF) in Natick, Massachusetts. Government agencies issue BAA’s in search of contractors qualified to address a particular technical problem or project. The typical BAA announces a topic of interest about a year before contract go-ahead and gives a Point of Contact (POC). You can automatically receive BAA’s by registering on the Internet with Federal Business Opportunities (Fed Biz Opps). BAA information is also available at open houses by Congressmen and at DOD web sites.
In comparison with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, the longer lead time and the more general nature of the BAA topic allow a contractor greater latitude to bring his marketing skills to bear on the customer. An interested contractor submits a white paper and, if the agency likes it, the contractor will receive a reply with an invitation to submit a proposal. If the white paper does not appeal to the agency, the effort and expenses of preparing a full proposal are avoided.
Alice won her first BAA contract with NCTRF in 2005, bidding on the Soldier of the Future. NCTRF treats the soldier/warrior as a system to be protected against fire, chemicals, projectiles, and climatic extremes in either active or resting periods. She strongly suggests delivering the BAA in person, for several reasons. The personal contact helps you to get a sense of how well the customer is funded to support your idea. Secondly, it gives you the opportunity to score points that may not appear in the white paper. Alice is convinced that she won her first contract because of her knowledge of fabrics and clothing gained in sewing lessons from her mother as she was growing up. During the Q and A portion of her briefing to NCTRF it became evident that her expertise in clothing design favorably impressed NCTRF’s textile technologists, engineers and supply specialists. None of this expertise was evident in the white paper!

She briefed her white paper in May of 2005, followed up with a formal proposal and was awarded a contract by September. Winning a BAA doesn’t guarantee a smooth negotiation. There was considerable negotiating between the proposed scope and the final award. The dollar amount of the award was about 40% of the initial proposal. Good performance, however, can lead to sole-source follow-on contracts. During a scheduled program management review (PMR) in January 2006, she briefed an idea and was asked to submit a proposal. She did so in March, and was awarded a sole-source contract in June. In August, just weeks preceding her talk to the Enterprise Chapter, she was asked to propose an extension utilizing results of recent Natick tests. All of these contracts with NCTRF were of the fixed price type.
Alice has also been an adjunct professor at California State University Fullerton and sometimes affords graduate students the opportunity to work on contracts.
The government tries to help women and minority owned businesses, and minority educational institutions. The “alphabet soup” includes WBE (Women’s Business Enterprise), MBE (Minority Business Enterprise, HBU (Historically Black University) and MI (Minority Institution). There are numerous federal state, county, city administrations, councils, and commissions (see her slides in the archives on our web page) that encourage certification of these contractors. The certification process involves considerable paperwork to demonstrate the financial and institutional integrity of the organization. It is Alice’s opinion that certification provides opportunities, even some of the sole-source variety, to establishments that provide labor, construction capabilities, and products. She does not find it helpful, however, in research and development.
She cited concerns shared by women and minority-owned businesses. The SBIR process requires sophisticated proposal writers, and the implementation of buzz words like “technology transfer” is not clear. The HBU/MI efforts alone or in conjunction with the Small Business Administration 8(a) Program suffer from inexperienced leadership and are difficult to market effectively. Federal Laboratories are particularly ineffective. They are not routinely available to small businesses, are inconvenient to deal with, and are not supportive or helpful when problems arise.
In accordance with our usual arrangements with all of our speakers, the slides Alice Lei used in her presentation are found in the Archive of Speaker Presentations at Chapter Meetings on our home page.

Guido Frassinelli