EZ-IQC: GSA Simplified Acquisition for Janitorial (561720)

EZ-IQC is not a GSA program. That's a mislabel worth clearing up first, because it causes contractors to search GSA eLibrary for something that doesn't exist there. EZ-IQC is Gordian's branded name for its Cooperative Job Order Contracting (JOC) product, a construction, renovation, repair, and maintenance procurement method accessed through state and local cooperative purchasing networks, interlocal agreements, and group purchasing organizations, not through GSA at all. A separate, genuinely GSA-run vehicle exists for facility services: Schedule 03FAC (Facilities Maintenance and Management). The two are easy to conflate but structurally different animals. This guide covers both, because a cleaning company chasing simplified, lower-friction public-sector work should understand which one actually applies to a given opportunity.

How Job Order Contracting (JOC) / EZ-IQC Actually Works

JOC eliminates the need to competitively bid every individual repair or renovation project. A state, county, school district, or other public agency competitively awards a single JOC contract, either its own custom contract or access to a shared "Cooperative JOC" contract that Gordian administers across multiple participating agencies, covering a defined region, and pricing for thousands of individual construction and maintenance tasks is pre-negotiated using a published unit-price book called a Construction Task Catalog (CTC). When the agency needs work done, whether that's a floor replacement, a restroom renovation, or a build-out, it issues a Job Order against the existing contract instead of running a new solicitation, and the contractor prices the work using the pre-set CTC line items.

For a cleaning company, JOC is most relevant when the scope crosses from routine janitorial into facility repair and renovation: stripping and replacing damaged flooring, restroom fixture upgrades, minor build-outs tied to a facility refresh. Pure recurring janitorial service, meaning nightly cleaning, restocking, and trash removal, generally isn't what JOC/EZ-IQC contracts are built for. It's a construction-and-repair delivery method, not a staffing or recurring-service vehicle. A cleaning company with in-house flooring, painting, or light renovation capability is the more natural fit for an EZ-IQC subcontracting relationship than a pure janitorial staffing operation.

Getting Onto an EZ-IQC / Cooperative JOC Contract

Gordian's cooperative JOC contracts are themselves competitively bid. A contractor becomes a JOC contractor by winning the underlying competitive solicitation run by the lead agency, whether that's a state department of administration, a large county, or a cooperative purchasing organization, that holds the master JOC contract for a given region. Once awarded, that contractor is available for job orders from every participating member agency in that region without re-bidding each project. Georgia's Department of Administrative Services, for example, runs a statewide ezIQC contract that Gordian administers, broken into regional awards so multiple contractors can each serve a defined geography.

The practical entry steps for a cleaning/facility-services company with renovation capability:

1. Identify which state or regional cooperative JOC contract covers your service area. Gordian maintains contractor service area listings by state
2. Watch for the lead agency's periodic competitive solicitation to become an approved JOC contractor for that region (these recur on multi-year cycles, commonly three to four years)
3. Prepare pricing familiarity with the Construction Task Catalog format before bidding. Proposals are evaluated partly on the contractor's proposed adjustment factor against the standard unit-price book, not a traditional line-item bid
4. Once awarded, respond to individual Job Order scope meetings as member agencies generate work, rather than bidding each project independently

GSA Schedule 03FAC: The Actual Federal Vehicle

For a cleaning company targeting ongoing federal facility services rather than construction/renovation work, Schedule 03FAC is the relevant GSA Multiple Award Schedule. It covers janitorial services, grounds maintenance, pest control, and a range of facilities-adjacent services, and once awarded, gives access to GSA eBuy, where federal agencies post task order requests against Schedule holders. Getting on 03FAC involves preparing a formal GSA offer package, including commercial sales practice documentation, a pricing proposal, and administrative forms, and negotiating terms directly with a GSA contracting specialist. The process commonly takes several months from initial offer submission to contract award, and a company that underestimates that runway and starts the 03FAC application only after spotting a specific opportunity will typically miss it.

The negotiation phase with the GSA contracting specialist deserves particular attention, since this is where most first-time applicants lose time. GSA reviews commercial sales practices to confirm the government is getting pricing at least as favorable as the company's best commercial customers, and inconsistencies between a company's commercial rate sheet and its proposed GSA pricing are the most common reason an offer package bounces back for revision rather than moving to award.

Simplified Acquisition Procedures: What Actually Changed

Separate from both JOC and 03FAC, the federal government's own simplified acquisition rules changed materially in 2025. The Simplified Acquisition Threshold (SAT) under FAR 2.101 was raised from $250,000 to $350,000, effective October 1, 2025, and the micro-purchase threshold rose from $10,000 to $15,000 at the same time. That matters directly to a cleaning contractor: more janitorial task orders now qualify for simplified acquisition procedures under FAR Part 13 rather than requiring the fuller documentation and competition requirements of FAR Part 15, which generally means a faster, less paperwork-heavy path to award for contracts landing in that expanded $15,000–$350,000 band.

Under the higher threshold, agency contracting officers now have more room to use simplified procedures for mid-size janitorial task orders that previously required full FAR Part 15 treatment. That can mean simplified evaluation criteria, oral presentations instead of written technical volumes, and faster award timelines. A small cleaning company should treat this as a real opportunity. Task orders in the $250,000 to $350,000 range that used to demand a full formal technical proposal may now be handled with a lighter-weight simplified procedure, which lowers the proposal-writing burden for exactly the size of contract many small BSCs are best positioned to perform. It also shortens the government's own award timeline, which matters if a facility has an urgent cleaning need tied to a lease turnover or a failed incumbent contractor.

Which Path Fits Your Company

A pure janitorial staffing company with no renovation or repair capability should focus on GSA Schedule 03FAC or direct agency solicitations under the new $350,000 simplified acquisition threshold, not EZ-IQC. A facility-services company that already does flooring, painting, or minor build-out work alongside cleaning has a real opening in cooperative JOC contracts, where the competition is for a regional contractor slot rather than for each individual project. Confirm which category your actual service offering falls into before spending proposal-writing time on the wrong vehicle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a company hold both an EZ-IQC regional slot and a GSA 03FAC contract at the same time? Yes. They serve different buyer types and different scopes, and a facility-services company with both construction-adjacent and recurring-service capability sometimes maintains both, using 03FAC for federal janitorial task orders and the regional JOC slot for state and local repair work.

Does the higher simplified acquisition threshold change GSA Schedule requirements? No. The SAT increase affects how agencies buy below the schedule structure, mainly through direct simplified-acquisition task orders. It doesn't change the process for getting onto Schedule 03FAC itself or the ongoing reporting requirements once a company holds that contract.