Rachel Sack, director of the Department of Transportation SBIR program, gives an overview of DOT's Small Business Innovation Research program, its role in addressing research gaps across seven operating administrations, and how it supports transportation-related technology development. She summarizes participation (Phase I/II counts), annual funding levels, program features (Technical and Business Assistance/TABA, Pitch Day, Phase II preparation calls), solicitation timing (one solicitation per year, typically early–mid January), and where to find past topics and apply (DOT website and sam.gov).
Questions this video answers
Typically $9 to $10 million in contracts annually.
About 10 to 15 Phase I awards per year.
About 7 to 10 Phase II awards per year.
Up to $6,500 for Phase I awardees and up to $13,000 for Phase II awardees.
One solicitation per year, typically issued in early or mid January.
Chapters
Hello. Thank you for joining us today to learn more about the Department of Transportation Small Business Innovation Research Program. I'm Rachel Sack. I serve as the director of the DOT's SBIR program and I'm also Chief of the Volpe Center's Innovative Research Division. Thank you for the opportunity for letting me share information with you today about our Program the SBIR program plays an important role in supporting the mission of the Department by addressing high priority research gaps within our Operating Administrations, otherwise known as modes, within the Department of Transportation. Our mission is to ensure a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that both meets the needs of our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people both today and in the future, which is especially important when it comes to the SBIR program and how we can play a role in advancing the future technology to aid in transportation. As you can see on the screen here, this is a snapshot of our phase one participation in DOT's SBIR program listed by operating administration or mode. DOT's SBIR program includes participation from seven of its operating Administrations listed here, and this chart represents the participation in just our Phase one solicitations over the past five years. While there are some years that may not be marked, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are no awards being funded. Each agency does have a different research budget or funding that's available for SBIR and that can play a role in how they choose to participate in any given year. DOT's program requires Phase 1s in order to progress to Phase 2s or Phase IIBs, so many agencies may fund those subsequent Phase 2 or 2B awards in a given year, but not have a Phase 1 in that same year. To get a better sense of some of our topics, this graphic here shows the wide variety of areas that DOT SBIR topics may cover. Although DOT is one of the smaller of the 11 SBIR programs government wide, Our research topics showcase the wide variety of research needs across the Department. And as a contracting agency, our topic descriptions are admittedly very specific, so we encourage you to review past solicitations to learn more about the type of projects that we've funded in the past. Our program typically awards 9 to 10 million dollars in contracts annually, averaging about 10 to 15 phase ones each year and 7 to 10 phase 2s. We also offer phase IIBs, which serve as a continuation of the phase 2 at the discretion of the funding Operating Administration. You can view past solicitation topics and the awards on our website to learn more about some of the projects we funded in the past. We issue one solicitation per year, typically in early or mid January, and we encourage everyone interested in learning more about our program to sign up on our website to receive notifications. Those notifications will alert you once our schedule is publicly available, as well as share other important SBIR announcements throughout the year on this slide. There are a few other details about eligibility for our program and these are also described on our website and in our solicitation. Some other highlights from our program include our participation in the Technical and Business Assistance Program referred to as Taba. Currently, our tab of funding allows for up to $6,500 for phase one awardees and up to $13,000 for phase two. These amounts are in addition to the cost of the contract. We also introduced the Pitch Day concept that other SBIR programs have started to use in recent years. Our fiscal year 20/1 solicitation was actually our first use of this approach and it allowed for Phase one offerors to go through an round of evaluations and then be selected for Pitch Day, which has served like a Shark Tank approach with both an opportunity for a 15 minute pitch and an opportunity for a 15 minute Q&A period with the government. And another feature of our program focuses on Phase one awardees preparing their Phase two proposal. For these, we offer what we call a pre proposal conference call and this is an opportunity to discuss the topic with the DOT Topic Lead and Contracting Officer before the proposal is submitted. When our solicitation opens, it will be posted on both our website and sam.gov, which replaces the former FedBizOpps website. The solicitation includes instructions for how to submit questions and how to submit a proposal. We also recommend that you view some of our past solicitations on our website to see what variety of topics we have sponsored in the past along with the level of detail that we've historically required as part of the submission process. And finally, if you have transportation related ideas that don't align with the solicitation topic in a given year, these are some other funding opportunities that you may be interested in investigating. We encourage you to visit these sites to locate other opportunities that may align with your expertise. Thank you for letting me provide an overview of DOT's SBIR program. If you have other questions about our program, we encour you to visit our website or contact our program office via phone or email. We look forward to working with you in the future. Thanks.
