BUILT AMERICA MAGAZINE
For more than 16 years, USFCR has helped businesses enter one of the largest marketplaces in the world. In disaster response, however, the stakes behind that work become considerably more human.
A hurricane does not wait for a contractor to finish a registration.
“At the time of a disaster is not the time to get
It does not wait for a company to understand a procurement portal, secure the right certification or assemble a subcontracting team. By the time debris blocks roads and communities are waiting for roofs, equipment and essential services, the businesses capable of helping need to be ready.
For Eric Knellinger, President of U.S. Federal Contractor Registration, that distinction is fundamental.
registered. They need things now.”
“At the time of a disaster is not the time to get registered,” he says. “They need things now.”
It is a lesson rooted in the problem that created USFCR.
In 2010, Knellinger was working with small and mid-sized businesses when a friend, a federal procurement officer at MacDill Air Force Base, began telling him how often capable local companies could not sell to the government because they were not properly registered. One example involved a boat. A marina down the road had exactly what the officer needed, but the business was not registered correctly. The boat had to be purchased from Louisiana instead, adding roughly $12,000 in costs. “If the marina down the street would have just been registered properly, he could have bought the boat there,” Knellinger recalls. “Got it much faster and saved our taxpayer money all at the same time.”
Eric Knellinger President, USFCR
That frustration became a company.
USFCR began with three people in what Knellinger describes as “a closet of a room.” Today, it has grown to more than 100 employees and says more than 500,000 business registrations have come through its doors.
But registration, he insists, is only the beginning.
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