Same Work, Different Words: Why Federal Contractors Misread State and Local | Jonathan Santana
38m | Jul 14, 2026A multimillion-dollar services contract, awarded in two weeks, with every I dotted and every T crossed. It was not federal, and that is exactly the point.
This week on GovCon Unscripted, Chelsea Roberts sits down with Jonathan Santana, founder and lead consultant of Excelsior Consulting Services, LLC, an SBA HUBZone and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned small business supporting federal, state, local, nonprofit, and commercial clients. Jonathan earned his contracting warrant in the Air Force in 2003, bought through hurricane prep at Langley Air Force Base, deployed to Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2005 as a contingency contracting officer, and later worked procurement at Miami-Dade County before founding his own firm.
The conversation covers the translation problem between federal, state, and local buying (acquisition becomes procurement becomes purchasing, while the terms and conditions stay nearly one to one), how NASPO ValuePoint works as a state-level analog to a GWAC or federal supply schedule, what it means to compete with Big Four consultancies that have pivoted to state and local, creative contracting inside the FAR (performance work statements over statements of work, FAR 13.5 procedures), why state and local can award in weeks when the incentive exists, and forensic governance, Jonathan's discipline of getting adversarial with program data before leadership bets on it.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro and Excelsior Consulting Services
00:02 The verbiage gap: federal vs state and local
00:03 NASPO ValuePoint and entering state markets through a multi-contractor alliance
00:07 Competing with the Big Four at the state and local level
00:10 A contracting warrant at Langley: hurricane prep on the clock
00:11 Deployed at Balad Air Base: contingency contracting in Iraq
00:14 SF-44s, purchase cards, and buying under pressure
00:19 Creative contracting inside the FAR: PWS vs SOW, FAR 13.5
00:23 How fast state, local, and nonprofit buying really moves
00:27 What is forensic governance?
00:31 AI, governance, and decision risk
00:35 Where to find Jonathan
Resources:
Other resources:
- Excelsior Consulting Services' Website
- Excelsior Consulting Services' Instagram
- Excelsior Consulting Services' Company LinkedIn Profile
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