Lisa Sanders, director of science and technology for special operations forces, acquisition, technology and logistics at U.S. Special Operations Command, said adopting a partner intermediary agreement, or PIA, is enabling SOCOM to reduce the time it takes to transition projects into the Small Business Innovation Research program’s Phase 3, Federal News Network reported Friday.
Under the fiscal 2020 defense authorization bill, Congress authorized SOCOM to use PIA in conjunction with other transaction agreements.
“In fiscal 2023, our average time to production decision from the initial topic announcement to the award of a follow on in phase 3 is 18 months, which is compared to SOCOM’s average before using this authority was five years,” Sanders told FNN in an interview.
“We also transition about 50% of the projects that we do under this authority into phase three. Our program is structured in such a way that the program offices who are the transition partner are the ones that identify the topic, the ones that select the vendor, and they are the ones that do the SBIR contract management. There’s a built-in transition pathway, which is part of the reason that we have such a high transition rate,” she added.
Sanders noted that the command used the PIA authority in 2023 for SBIR awards worth about $2.4 million using its own funding and then another $16 million on more traditional approaches for SBIR awards.
She also discussed the impact of the PIA authority on the software acquisition process and how it has enabled SOCOM to attract non-traditional contractors over the last year.