Small Business Exclusion from Cost-Based Progress Payments

$1.2M-$3M annual per NASA center: Payment delays averaging 45-60 days (vs. contractual 5-30 days) due to manual document review; lost opportunity cost for small business partners who defect to non-government work; reduced innovation pipeline for Tipping Point programs • $1.5M-5M annually in schedule risk from subcontractor cash flow constraints; rework costs from resource starvation mid-milestone • $100,000-$250,000 annually: (1) 20-30% of qualified small suppliers rejected due to accounting barriers (opportunity cost of lost competition), (2) forced to contract with larger, more expensive primes, (3) 12-18 month delays in sourcing specialized tech from small vendors due to 'accounting setup time', (4) Intelligence Community faces capability gaps while waiting for compliant suppliers

Analyst exports small firm's cost data from QuickBooks manually; cross-references against contract budget baseline in Excel; calculates CPI/SPI; identifies variances via email inquiry • Analyst receives invoice + manual earned value claim from small firm; Analyst cross-references against contract deliverables spreadsheet; manually calculates SPI/CPI in Excel; seeks clarification via email if costs appear misaligned • Analyst receives invoice + manual milestone completion attestations; verifies against contract schedules in Excel; consolidates DHS-specific metrics (e.g., performance indicators) via phone calls and email; reports status manually