Guidehouse

• Type: Management and technology consulting firm; federal contractor.
• Legal entities: Guidehouse LLP (the SBA contract awardee); Guidehouse Inc. (named by the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department).
• Owners: Veritas Capital from May 2018; Bain Capital Private Equity from December 14, 2023.
• CEO: Scott McIntyre, through both ownership changes.
• HQ: McLean, Virginia.
• Pandemic-relief role: SBA's emergency professional-support contractor for PPP and EIDL (2020–2022); intake, due-diligence and credit-administration vendor, with PwC, for the Federal Reserve's Main Street Lending Program; contractor on New York's pandemic rental-assistance application site.

On April 28, 2020, SBA signed Guidehouse LLP to an emergency professional-support contract without competition, citing urgency. The contract started with a $13 million ceiling; in February 2021 SBA raised it by $262 million to $275 million.¹ The five orders placed under it had obligated $270.9 million when SBA closed them out in 2024. They bought PPP loan and forgiveness eligibility work, CARES Act program management, general support for SBA's Office of Capital Access and its loan systems, and staff for the COVID EIDL call center.²³⁴⁵⁶

Who owns it

Guidehouse is the former U.S. public-sector consulting practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Veritas Capital bought it on May 1, 2018 and ran it as a standalone company, renamed Guidehouse.⁷ In October 2019 Guidehouse bought Navigant Consulting for $28.00 a share, which left it with more than 7,000 employees.⁸ Bain Capital Private Equity agreed on November 6, 2023 to buy Guidehouse from Veritas for $5.3 billion and closed on December 14, 2023. Guidehouse then gave its size as more than 17,000 professionals, and its CEO said the company had grown "nearly fivefold" under Veritas.⁹¹⁰ Every SBA order below was placed while Veritas owned the firm.

The SBA contract

The parent contract, 73351020D0002, is titled "Emergency Professional Support Services to Support SBA, OCA, OPSM, and the CAFS IT Systems." The Federal Procurement Data System records it as not competed, justified by urgency, under service code R499 (other professional support), with the national-interest code for COVID-19.¹ Every order under it carries the same codes.

Obligations are the totals after the 2024 close-out modifications, which returned about $4.1 million across four orders.²³⁴⁶ The largest order grew in steps: $64.7 million at award in February 2021, then $46.9 million in May, $43.4 million in July, $0.9 million in December and $14.1 million in June 2022.⁴ The two call-center orders together come to $39.4 million.

At a March 16, 2022 House Small Business subcommittee hearing on PPP, GAO's William Shear described SBA's heavy reliance on contractors for oversight. "Guidehouse is very much front and center in terms of, among other things, automated controls," he said.¹¹ We found no SBA Inspector General or GAO report that audits Guidehouse's SBA work itself.

Main Street

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston hired Guidehouse, working with PwC, on June 14, 2020. According to the Federal Reserve Board's Inspector General, the pair handled asset-purchase intake, due diligence and credit administration for the Main Street Lending Program and built and maintained its technology platform.¹² In its submission to the Congressional Oversight Commission, the Federal Reserve said the credit administrator, "Guidehouse/PwC," completed a test plan for every loan to check it against program terms before Boston Fed staff reviewed it.¹³ The Inspector General's November 2022 review of the program's vendors found that contracts "generally met cybersecurity best practices" and made no recommendations.¹²

New York's rental-assistance portal

The Justice Department's fiscal 2024 False Claims Act summary says Guidehouse Inc. paid $7.6 million, and Nan McKay and Associates agreed to pay $3.7 million, to resolve allegations that they failed to meet cybersecurity requirements in a contract with New York. The contract, funded by a federal grant, covered the website where New Yorkers applied for pandemic rental assistance. According to the summary, the two companies admitted that neither had completed the required testing of the site, which was shut down within twelve hours after some applicants' personal information was compromised.¹⁴

Related profiles

• Jovita Carranza: SBA Administrator when the contract was signed.
• Isabella Casillas Guzman: SBA Administrator when the call-center orders were placed.
• Eric S. Rosengren: president of the Boston Fed, which ran Main Street.
• RER Solutions: SBA's COVID-EIDL processing contractor.

Sources

1. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA contract 73351020D0002 (Guidehouse LLP): award and modifications. Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351020D0002 ↩
2. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351020F0141 (Guidehouse LLP, CARES Act PMO and financial services). Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351020F0141 ↩
3. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351020F0185 (Guidehouse LLP, PPP loan and forgiveness eligibility). Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351020F0185 ↩
4. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351021F0014 (Guidehouse LLP, emergency professional support). Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351021F0014 ↩
5. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351021F0210 (Guidehouse LLP, EIDL contact center support). Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351021F0210 ↩
6. Federal Procurement Data System, SBA order 73351022F0008 (Guidehouse LLP, COVID EIDL call center customer support). Original: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/FEEDS/ATOM?FEEDNAME=PUBLIC&q=PIID%3A73351022F0008 ↩
7. Veritas Capital, "Veritas Capital Completes Acquisition of PwC's US Public Sector Business," May 1, 2018. Original: https://www.veritascapital.com/veritas-capital-completes-acquisition-of-pwcs-us-public-sector-business/ ↩
8. Navigant Consulting, Inc., Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, "Veritas Capital-backed Guidehouse Completes Acquisition of Navigant Consulting, Inc.," Oct. 11, 2019. Original: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1019737/000119312519266334/d807239dex991.htm ↩
9. Bain Capital, "Guidehouse, Leading Global Provider of Consulting Services, to be Acquired by Bain Capital Private Equity," Nov. 6, 2023. Original: https://www.baincapital.com/news/guidehouse-leading-global-provider-consulting-services-be-acquired-bain-capital-private-equity ↩
10. Guidehouse, "Guidehouse Completes Transaction with Bain Capital," PR Newswire, Dec. 14, 2023. Original: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/guidehouse-completes-transaction-with-bain-capital-302015121.html ↩
11. House Small Business Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Regulations, hearing "An Empirical Review of the Paycheck Protection Program," Mar. 16, 2022. ↩
12. Federal Reserve Board OIG, Memorandum Report 2022-IT-B-015, "Observations on Cybersecurity Risk Management Processes for Vendors Supporting the Main Street Lending Program and the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility," Nov. 9, 2022. Original: https://oig.federalreserve.gov/reports/board-cybersecurity-vendors-MSLP-SMCCF-nov2022.pdf ↩
13. Congressional Oversight Commission, The Tenth Report, Feb. 26, 2021. Original: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/congressional-oversight-commission-reports-6372/tenth-report-congressional-oversight-commission-615289 ↩
14. U.S. Department of Justice, "False Claims Act Settlements and Judgments Exceed $2.9B in Fiscal Year 2024," Jan. 15, 2025. Original: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/false-claims-act-settlements-and-judgments-exceed-29b-fiscal-year-2024 ↩