Competing for Fed Contracts Through Your PC

By Robert Strauss, New York TImes
February 20, 2007

CHUCK and Melissa Fluharty set up their machine shop four years ago in a garage on their 28 1/2-acre property in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Mr. Fluharty, 46, had held numerous jobs in marketing with the pharmaceutical giant Bayer, but had always wanted his own tooling business; he had grown up watching his father work in a machine shop in the family's backyard.

But once the Fluhartys' shop was up and running, with several lathes and a CNC Swiss tooling machine, they faced a problem that many small businesses run into - how to compete with big companies.

One of the best ways, the Fluhartys found, was through government contracts. Twenty-three percent of the contracts are supposed to go to small businesses, said Calvin Jenkins, deputy associate administrator of the Small Business Administration.

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