SBA Joint Venture Advantages and Disadvantages (Pros and Cons)

Understand how SBA joint venture pros and cons can impact your federal contract. In government contracting, small businesses often execute generic joint venture agreement templates without clearly understanding the applicable rules and the liability attached. 

Although there are many small business joint venture advantages and disadvantages, the real question is what impact (positive or negative) does having a joint venture relationship bring to your business. Simply going after and getting the award is should not be your only concern.

You should also assess whether your approach to performing the contract actually violates the limitation on subcontracting rules. Also, you should be analyzing whether your joint venture violates the SBA affiliation rules. These are all concerns that the SBA Office Of Hearings and Appeals hear every day.

The importance of joint venture regulations can either be a company’s best friend or worst enemy.

To complicate matters, even more, the Small Business Administration (SBA) recently modified the importance of joint venture regulations. The goal is to decrease the possibility of affiliation challenges. However, there are other caveats and disadvantages that companies call fall prey to. Overall, the rules provide for varying small business joint venture advantages and disadvantages

Strategy

Seeing whether you have the right joint venture strategy in place is paramount to avoiding liability and losing an awarded government contract.  There more important aspects of the SBA joint venture relationship than merely signing a templated JV document. How you strategize the entity formation, assign employees or even contemplate using incumbent employees can be very important legal issues. Government contractors should also be aware of the strict limitations on subcontracting small business joint venture rules. See information about avoiding SDVOSB joint venture mistakes.

 Pros and Cons of Joint Venture Relationships

Joint Venture Advantages

An advantage of forming a joint venture is that new SBA rules encourage companies to come together without much fear of affiliation.

• SBA joint venture partners can receive the “exception to affiliation” for mentor-protégé joint ventures.
• Regarding the joint venture structure, companies may or may not form a third business entity.
• Separate joint venture accounting and SBA banking requirements can avoid commingling of regular business revenues.
• Under the new rules, similarly-situated businesses can escape affiliation.
• Joint ventures can now qualify as small for any government procurement so long as each JV partner qualifies individually as a small business applicable size standards.
• Companies can still maintain their separate corporate entities while pursuing government contracts.

Joint Venture Disadvantages

• The SBA has the authority to review the terms of the joint venture partnership agreement for government procurements conducted outside of the 8(a) BD program. See Size Appeal of Drace Anderson Joint Venture, SBA No. SIZ-5531 (2014).)
• Under the new rules, the SBA has changed the JV requirements by allowing similarly situated businesses to become exempt from SBA affiliation. The actual problem becomes whether the companies can meet the “similarly situated” definition.
• Joint ventures for companies not in the 8(a) Program must still comply with 13 CFR 124.513(c)(6) and (7).
• There must be separate joint venture accounting records.
• If your company fails to meet statutory regulations, you can be subject to joint venture liability and lose the contract
• Failure to follow the SBA joint venture regulations can create an affiliation between the two companies and the JV can lose the contract.
• The SBA must approve even the slightest change to the joint venture contract for 8(a) companies.

Challenged joint venture companies have a high failure rate! WHY IS THIS?

When your joint venture relationship is challenged in a bid protest, case decisions show that many companies fail the legal test, and end up losing the contract:

Not understanding the important legal difference between a teaming agreement and joint venture arrangement: FAR 9.6 allows for various relationships but the SBA regulations provide detailed requirements. Confusion on both can lead to disastrous results.

Not understanding SBA affiliation rules: Although the SBA has implemented a new set of small business joint venture rules, companies and those that are non-8(a) certified still find out that they did not have the statutory content of a joint venture agreement or did not follow the limitation in subcontracting rules.

Failure to weigh important joint venture pros and cons: A joint venture arrangement is not suited for all government contracts. Depending on the specific procurement, there could be advantages. However, you have to also look at the possibilities after contract performance. Sometimes, the joint venture disadvantages can outweigh the merits and advantages. Getting the proper professional advance can save your company hundreds of thousands in the end.

Joint Venture Definition

An SBA joint venture (JV) in federal government contracting is a strategic partnership agreement or business relationship between two or more business entities seeking to engage in a specific government project.  

• The governing regulations apply to small business relationships.
• It is very important to understand that a company can be small under one NAICS code but still large for another.

New regulations: Given the new SBA rules, there are some familiar advantages of joint venture relationships. Nevertheless, companies should still be aware of the astonishing disadvantages of forming the JV strategic alliance.

Making sure that your JV models comply with the SBA regulations are essential. Learning how to navigate SBA joint venture advantages and disadvantages can be a tremendous incentive to maximize company revenues.

Heavy SBA scrutiny: In federal contracting, companies that fall under SBA small business programs are subject to great scrutiny and regulations. Exposure usually surfaces when there is a small business size protest. However, when formed correctly, contractors can experience great success and can even increase business revenues.  Companies deciding to engage in a joint venture agreement should consider the pros and cons of joint ventures before moving forward.

New joint venture regulations can be tricky: When deciding to enter a JV relationship, always take a hard look at the new rules. Businesses should determine how the new rules will impact current and future joint venture relationships.  

• Although statutorily allowed, considering the details and legal twists to the rules can play an important part in your business development strategies and how you go about getting government contracts.

Joint Venture affiliation still possible: Although the new SBA joint venture regulations reduce the chances of the SBA finding affiliation in a joint venture structure, failure to follow the expressed statutory requirements can still lead to a finding of affiliation. For example, a mere diversion from the regulations can lead to affiliation. Also, if there is a violation of the limitation on subcontracting rules, the JV can end up losing the contract.

Depending on how the relationship is structured,  rules allow for a small business joint venture with large business partners only when there is an approved mentor protege  agreement. Without such a approval, the two companies would be deemed affiliated and the contract would more than likely be taken away as a result of a size protest.

Is your joint venture partnership agreement compliant?

Given the new SBA joint venture regulations, small businesses must make sure that they avoid the mistake of copying old SBA joint venture templates from online. There are too many joint venture advantages and disadvantages to making this frequent mistake. The best way to assess your contents is to have a legal professional do a line by line comparison of your JV agreement contents.

Get Your FREE Joint Venture Agreement Checklist

For help with joint venture pros and cons and to avoid liability when forming a joint venture partnership, call Watson’s SBA joint venture agreement lawyers. at 1-866-601-5518.