Mitchell Janitorial Group wins a set-aside it never searched for
A woman-owned janitorial company had only ever searched its home state. Captivaq flagged a WOSB set-aside two states over, and it became the company's largest contract.
Karen MitchellPresident, Mitchell Janitorial Group
Key results
A WOSB set-aside surfaced from outside the usual search
Coverage widened from one state to the region
Every requirement listed before the kickoff call
“We found a set-aside we never would have searched for, and we won it.”
Karen MitchellPresident, Mitchell Janitorial GroupMeet Mitchell Janitorial Group
Mitchell Janitorial Group cleans federal and county buildings in Ohio, with forty staff and a woman-owned small business certification the company had rarely used. Karen Mitchell started it twenty years ago with two contracts and a van.
Government work suits the company. The contracts run for years, the buildings are predictable, and the crews know the sites. Finding the next contract was the hard part.
“We searched the way we always had. Our state, our codes, once a week if we were lucky.”
The search only found what it looked for
Karen searched SAM.gov by state and by keyword. Set-asides the company qualified for were posted under codes and places she never typed, and nobody was reading the notices two states over.
The WOSB certification had cost a month of paperwork. It sat in a drawer. Set-asides reserved for companies like hers were posted every week, and the search never found them because the search never looked.
“The certification sat in a drawer. We had it, and it was not finding us any work.”
When a notice did surface, reading the package took an evening. Custodial solicitations run long, and the requirement that decides a bid is often on page forty.
The profile carried the certification
Captivaq pulled the company's SAM entity record from its UEI, so the size, the codes and the WOSB status were right from the first day. Karen added the counties the crews cover and the buildings they had cleaned.
“It read our SAM record. I did not have to type a single code.”
Every new notice was then scored against that profile, set-asides included. A WOSB set-aside two states over scored high on the first week, for custodial services at a regional facility the company had never heard of.
The match came to her
The match arrived with the requirement list, section by section, and the deadlines pulled out of the package. Karen knew the company qualified before she opened the solicitation, and knew what the bid needed before the kickoff call.
“It flagged the set-aside, told us we qualified, and listed every form before we had a call about it.”
The company bid, won, and now cleans a building it never would have searched for. It reads the whole region without adding a single search, and the certification is finally doing its job.
Customer story
“We found a set-aside we never would have searched for, and we won it.”
Karen MitchellPresident, Mitchell Janitorial Group
