The Departments of Defense and Homeland Security both exceeded their small business contracting goals in fiscal year 2018, with DoD scoring an “A” and DHS an “A+,” the Small Business Administration (SBA) said this week.

SBA said that DoD scored nearly 103 percent toward its FY ’18 small business prime and subcontract goals, its fifth consecutive year with an “A.” The Pentagon achieved 24.1 percent of its prime contract spending with small businesses, up from 23.2 percent in FY ’17 and well above the 22 percent goal, SBA said.

Small businesses received 32.9 percent of DoD subcontracting dollars, just shy of the 33 percent goal, and 80 basis points below the FY ’17 level.

DoD spent more than $120 billion in prime and subcontract awards with small businesses and increased the number of Historically Underutilized Business Zones and Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses participating as prime contractors, the department said in comments provided to the SBA.

“The Department developed and continues to refine a Small Business Strategy to ensure a mission focus and grow a robust and capable small business defense industrial base,” DoD said. “Small business concerns continue to form the edge of innovative change and improved performance through the Mentor Protégé Program, the Rapid Innovation Fund, and Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.”

DHS achieved a 122.6 percent overall score for its small business goals, and spent 35.5 percent of its prime contracts with small businesses and 50 percent of its subcontracts on these concerns. The small business prime contract goal for DHS was 33 percent and in FY ’17 it spent 34.8 percent its prime contract monies on small businesses.

The subcontracting goal for DHS was 40 percent and the department achieved 49.7 percent in FY ’17.

DHS said that since the grade letter format began in FY ’09 it has achieved an “A” or “A+” grade 10 straight years, “the largest federal agency to have such a track record.”

In FY ’18, DHS did prime contract work with about 11,700 companies, around 7,800 of them small businesses and, of these, about 1,500 had their first prime contract with the department, it said.

“In virtually every segment of our homeland security community, there are small businesses working to support the DHS mission and playing a critical role in delivering efficient and innovative solutions to our acquisition needs,” the department said in comments to the SBA.

Overall, in FY ’18, the federal government scored an “A” grade on meeting small business contracting goals, achieving 105 percent of its goal. Nearly 25.1 percent of federal prime contracting dollars were spent with small businesses versus a goal of 23 percent and 23.9 percent in FY ’17. In the subcontracting category, 32.1 percent of spending went to small businesses versus a goal of 30.2 percent and 31.4 percent in FY ’17, the SBA said.