Building a Small Business Capability Statement for Government Contracting

Building a Small Business capability statement for government contracting for some can be as daunting as creating a small business plan. While both the capability statement and the business plan may have similar information about the business.

The capability statement for contracting is more like a one-page resume of the business. 

Many websites you may already have visited may have outlined the five key elements of a small business capability statement: 

  1. Core Competencies
  2. Past Performance
  3. Differentiators
  4. Corporate Data
  5. Contact Information 

The problem for most small business owners building the capability statement not the five point key titles, it is gathering the key elements needed and adding those elements in an organized fashion for government contracting. So, hopefully we can walk you through the steps to actually building your small business capability statement.

Gathering Current and Past Contract Data

If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur just entering into the world of government contracting it may be hard to gather contract data because you may not have worked more by invoices instead of fully detailed written contracts.

The government procurement office is not requesting the contracts, so the best way to gather this information is to look on your invoices and determine for each invoice:

  • Who owned the project? Who did you do the work for?
  • What services were performed? What was the Scope of Work (SOW)
  • When did the work start and when did it end? How long did it take to complete?
  • What was the total value of the project?
  • How Much was charged for the service?

Organize each Individual Service into Corresponding NAICS Codes or NIGP Codes

Now that you have a list of all of the services you have performed. You can organize each service item with the corresponding NAICS codes for federal government contracting or NIGP codes for state and local government contracting. The government procurement contractors use these industry standardized codes to classify and identify services to write the request for proposals (RFP).

Another great thing about having an organized list of services performed is that the data will build the small business core competencies. Each one of the NAICS codes has a summary of the industry classification which allows for standard recognizable language to build a clear statement of capabilities the government will understand and you can describe clear differentiators between your competitors.

Build One or More Capability Statements

Using your organized performance data to build one or more capability statements. Yes, you may have more than one capability statements. Just as you might have more than one employment resume based on industry the same is true for your Small Business Resume.

To build the one page capability statement take a blank sheet of paper and create blocks representing each of the five key elements to design your layout. Remember, this will be a key piece of marketing collateral, so design will matter. 

Do you still need assistance building your small business capabilities statement for government contracting??