GSA proposes rental for federal acquisitions

The General Services Administration (GSA) has published a proposed regulation that establishes a rental method of acquisition for equipment used by agencies in the federal government — including GSA, the Department of Defense, Federal Emergency Management Agency and others.

The proposed rule amends the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and will go into effect after the GSA reviews all comments and publishes a final rule.

“This proposed rule is the culmination of a process that has been ongoing since 2010,” says John McClelland, ARA vice president for government affairs and chief economist. “After many years of working with the GSA and other agencies that use the FAR it became apparent that we were going to have to ask Congress for help getting the agencies to move on the issue of a rental method for acquiring equipment,” he says.

“That help came in the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 2018 which contained language ordering GSA to develop and implement a rental method of acquisition within the FAR,” McClelland says.

After the proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 24, 2020, the American Rental Association (ARA) drafted a comment letter supporting adoption of the new regulation. Learn more and read the draft regulation and ARA’s comment letter.

“We hope the inclusion of a rental method for acquiring equipment will help federal agencies realize that renting equipment can save taxpayer funds and provide federal agencies with the equipment they need to do the job. We only wish the agencies had cooperated with us back in 2010, but in the end, we did what we had to do to get this issue resolved for the equipment and event rental industry,” McClelland says.