A large portion of our stakeholders are, in fact, small and medium-sized businesses.
You'll hear me talk about overly restrictive criteria. If you have criteria that require a company to be of a certain size in order to participate, obviously that makes it more difficult for small and medium-sized businesses. Also, people don't appreciate how payment terms impact small and medium-sized businesses differently than they do large suppliers.
What we always recommend.... I shouldn't use the word “recommend”. What we always suggest is that they participate in the supply chain differently to start and take the opportunity to be a subcontractor in larger projects to gain that experience on federal contracts, so that for any mistakes that are made they don't bear the financial burden associated with it, yet they're learning lessons and gaining valuable experience, and through that they'll be able to naturally grow. That's typically the advice that we would provide to small and medium-sized businesses that, as yet, haven't entered the federal procurement supply chain.