Name: Deltek’s Federal Contracting 101: The Basics
Uploaded: 2026-05-19T20:00:50.507Z
Duration: 1 h 28 min 56 s
Description: Deltek’s Federal Contracting 101: The Basics

Transcript for "Deltek’s Federal Contracting 101: The Basics": Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening, wherever you may be. Thank you for joining us today. For the best webinar experience, we recommend using Chrome or Firefox as your browser. Resources, including today's slide deck, can be found in the docs, tab on the right of your screen, and I recommend downloading them right now so you have them. I plan to take questions along the way so you can enter them in the q and a tab also found on your right. In case you need to leave early or want to relisten to a section, a link to the on demand recording will be emailed within twenty four hours. I appreciate you joining me today for the webinar I refer to as fed one zero one FAQs. I've been in the federal contracting industry for more than thirty years, and especially in my role in the market research side of things, I have answered a lot of questions. And those questions became the foundation of today's presentation. This webinar is aimed at folks with some federal contract basics already. But if you're brand new, stay with me. Afterwards, just grab one of our Fed one zero one intro guides and relisten to this on demand. Here's the plan for today, so let's get to it. While not part of a traditional Fed one zero one overview, we can't not talk about some of the impacts of the current administration on the federal contracting industry. First up, though, a poll question. I think I know how most companies are gonna answer this, but I don't wanna assume. I am the word significant is clearly up for interpretation here. If you're a federal government employee attending today, maybe your agency was one of those under the magnifying glass. And just like most questions that I'm gonna ask you today, some folks may not know the answer. Perhaps you're new to the company or not in the division that focuses on contracting. So looking at the results as they're flying in here, there's only a few people who weren't affected or minimally minimally affected, but we've got, of course, most people were significant or, impacted, but perhaps not significantly. So let's just go dive right into our, our slides here. Over the last year, there have been significant changes by the current administration, which has impacted the federal contracting industry. I've picked up a few to cover today, in this section and then some more later on in the presentation. First up, Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. Doge's mission was government wide cost savings with procurement as a key focus. Areas like DEI, consulting, and climate were among those specifically targeted. The impact on con on the contracting community was significant, and it hit from two directions. First, contract terminations. Thousands of contracts were either fully or partially terminated. And for contractors, that meant lost revenue, layoffs, and in some cases, companies exiting the federal market entirely. Second, the workforce reduction, which included contracting officials. Some were laid off, others took voluntary departure offers, and what's left is offices with vacancies and limited resources trying to keep up with the workload. Doge itself has mostly wound down, but the aftermath is what you're walking into. Thousands of contracts terminated, contracting officer ranks thinned, and procurement cycles slower than they used to be. Well, they were always slow, but even more so. Agencies are leaning harder on existing vehicles, the IDIQs, GWACs, the schedule, because spinning up a new procurement takes resources that they may just not have. And for each of these topics, I've included a link for more information. So next, the revolutionary FAR overhaul. The RFO is moving the FAR from prescriptive, telling contracting officials what to do at every step, to principles based with more contracting official judgment. One important thing to understand is that implementation of this is uneven right now. This is being rolled out through class deviations and agency guidance rather than formal rulemaking. As a result, different agencies may be operating under different rules at the same time. Furthermore, the experience or lack thereof of the contracting official could influence how these revised regulations are applied. I think the newest of our topics is the administration's push towards fixed price contracting. The administration wants fixed price and performance based as the default even for work that was historically, used cost reimbursement such as consulting, IT services, engineering, and r and d. The risk shifts to the contractor with this change. Larger firms may have the advantage, and smaller businesses need to keep a tight handle on costs before bidding. The executive order also requires agencies to review many of their largest non fixed price contracts and look for opportunities to renegotiate or restructure them. One reality check, fixed price works best when the government provides clear, stable requirements, which historically is not necessarily the government's best strength. Moving to where the work is flowing, it's GSA. The GSA consolidation is something that's really been happening for some time now. Standalone contracts have been shifting to task orders under single or multiple award IDIQs for years under the principle of category management. Executive order one four two forty, eliminating waste and saving taxpayer dollars by consolidating procurement, was issued last, March 2025, and that pushed this even further. This is category management on steroids, which is the consolidated purchasing through preferred vehicles. What this means for you is that more contracts, work that may have previously been procured under independent or, like, standalone contracts or through non GSA vehicles has a real risk of shifting to a GSA v, owned vehicle, which hopefully you have. But if not, you might wanna look into that. Your agency awarded contract could have have a follow on through a GSA IDIQ. And, again, if you're not one of the contract holders, you might miss out of work, that you already know how to do. So the last two items on this list, we're gonna talk about on their own slides. OTA stands for other transaction authority. CSO stands for commercial solutions opening. Both are ways the government buys things outside the traditional FAR rules we just talked about. OTAs aren't new. They go back decades, and 11 agencies have the authority today. The idea was to give agencies a blank sheet of paper to negotiate at commercial speed without the usual FAR procedures, pricing rules, or standard intellectual property terms. DOD uses them the most, which is why DOD drives most of the conversation. So why is this a hot topic right now? Again, March 2025, secretary Hegseth issued a memo directing all DOD components to use CSOs and OTAs as the default tools for software development, CSOs to engage vendors, OTAs to award the work. The goal is to field software solutions quickly without the traditional procurement process. Why should you care? A growing, share of federal r and d and innovation dollars flows through these vehicles, especially in software, AI, cyber, medical countermeasures, and space. If your business plays in those sectors, the traditional FAR based RP path won't reach that money. Two things newcomers should know. First, OTAs aren't just faster paperwork. They're a different procurement system. Less protest opportunity if you lose and different IP and data rights and requirements often shipped as proto prototypes evolve. Second, much of this work flows to consortia. These are pre established member networks of vetted vendors. You usually have to, join the consortium, often paying membership dues to see and bid on this work, which means if you're searching sam.gov, you're missing the bulk of OTA opportunities. The slide has more detail on the three pathway types and deployment models for those who wanna dig in further. And for the full picture, check out the linked GovWind OTA resource gateway article. And I just wanna say a quick thanks to Steve Miulisco, our resident OTA expert, for his help on this slide. Unlike the other five topics, which are either directly or indirectly tied to executive orders, CMMC has been restructuring over the last few years to finally relaunch as CMMC two point o. CMMC, which is the, cybersecurity maturity model certification, I always mix that up, has been years in the making, and it affects anyone handling sensitive federal information, not just those in IT. Phase one of CMMC two point o launched in November 2025 and included solicitations with a level one or two self assessment. Level two and level three certifications will be added in subsequent years. By year four, all solicitations and contracts will include the appropriate CNOMC level, requirements as a condition of contract award. The phased approach is used because they still need to train assessors and need companies to understand and implement requirements, which is not a fast or cheap process. DOD may implement higher level requirements in advance of a particular phase. And while CMMC is part of DOD contracting, it may be found in civilian agency opportunities, especially government wide IDIQs where DOD may be among the buyers, like at the task order level. If you're unsure whether your opportunity includes c m MC requirements, search for the term as a keyword search, or related bar clauses, or just ask the contracting office directly. It is much better to confirm than to assume. And this wraps up the administration impact section barring a few items that I'll mention, later regarding, business types. Okay. So we're now shifting, to the procurement cycle into the traditional one zero one content from here on. And don't forget if you can throw in questions at any time in the q and a tab on the right side of your screen in that big old blue box. Okay. And in the words of Julie Chen from Big Brother, but first, a survey. So when you're building your business development pipeline, when do you start working on a particular opportunity? And just pick one of the options that best fits when you typically start. And for those of, again, with no experience, just pick I don't know. And so looks like we've got, some still figuring this out, which is part of, probably part of why you're here is is learning this stuff. And then, we've got most before it's published, which is the correct answer. Although, really, sometimes you can just do what you need to do. Alright. So moving back to our, slides. Kicking off again is our procurement life cycle overview, and we'll look at each stage in more detail on the coming slides, but you get the basic idea here. You're waiting on the solicitation. You're working on your response to the solicitation. The agency is evaluating your proposal, and, hopefully, it results in you getting an award. And then a protest could be filed at any time along this cycle, or the agency could decide to cancel the opportunity at any time. Every solicitation starts with a need. Sometimes it's from an executive order, sometimes a new initiative, sometimes a recurring requirement. All of it traces back to the department's mission. Some capabilities support that mission directly, like cybersecurity. Others support it indirectly, like physical security for a federal building where maybe the mission is being enacted. So the agency figures out what their needs are, some degree of sizing and procurement plans, and this is done by the buyers or the end users. They are the folks that need your goods and services specifically to help fulfill this mission. They pull together the requirements, and they are typically the funding source. You also have the contracting officials. They procure the goods and services. They are sometimes the same people as your, buyers. And the procurement officials ensure that they're not creating duplicate efforts. Perhaps the requirements are already being fulfilled through an existing contract, or maybe there's a mandate to use a specific method to procure these goods and services, like GSA. Executive orders can redirect an agency's mission, which in turn can create new contracts, but also modify or even eliminate existing ones. We all saw that last year with Doge and DEI. Most of this preplanning activity will occur, and we may never know anything about it. Usually, it's because the requirements are still under development, and the agency wants to ensure that there's no influence from the outside. During this phase, agencies are trying to understand who's out there, what capabilities exist, and whether small businesses can provide the support. And one of the best things you can do is start building relationships with agency buyers before there's an active solicitation. To start to start building these relationships with federal buyers, you need to understand that all important agency mission and where your company's capabilities can fit. Look at their buying habits, including what contract vehicles, contract value ranges for your, industry, and set aside. And don't forget to maintain this relationship. This is not a one and done. This is something that develops over time. Keep in touch and be easy to work with. While some vendors have built relationships over years, last year, this got a big shakeup with mass layoffs and departures, and this meant that some buyer vendor relationships built over the years were wiped out. This indirectly helps newer companies, putting them on an even playing field as they didn't have those relationships yet, and those that did needed to start over with someone new. Some people are natural at these kinds of conversations, and some people are not. If you're trying to figure out that part, talk to other companies that have been in the federal contracting world a bit longer than you. You can find them through industry groups and organizations, networking at events, as well as seek help from sources like Apex Accelerators. And Apex is a free program that works directly with businesses on the government contracting basics. And I've got them in the resources section of this, slide deck are links to Apex as well as many other resources. And the tips on this slide can apply to both networking for business development as well as specific opportunity support. In getting those relationships with those points of contact, you can help influence direction of those, opportunities that you may wanna pursue. So back to our timeline. The agency may seek industry input through a public venue. This may take the form of an RFI request for information where the agency has a need and wants to know what industry thinks. Can this be done? Perhaps with suggestions of how it could be done. There are also sources sought notices. This is where the requirements are a bit more set, but the agency wants to know is anyone capable of doing it. Usually, whether small businesses or socioeconomic category can do it. Draft materials may be included with these RFIs. Sometimes it's just a section. Sometimes the entire solicitation in draft form. Most of the time, it's the performance work statement or statement of work. The term sources sought in RFI are often used interchangeably along with market survey, market research, or MRAS. And MRAS is market research as a service. It's GSA's, they're running RFIs on behalf of other agencies or their own agency. And it's very convenient for the agency, but it is very frustrating for vendors. It's limited to release to specific contract holders, typically through, like, GSA owned or, other major vehicles, and there's no POC, just a GSA pass through mailbox. For most RFIs, not responding doesn't mean you're cut out of the solicitation, except when it does. There are some agencies which may issue an RFI in a public venue like sam.gov, but the solicitation itself is issued in a limited manner. It may be sent direct to vendor. It may be limited to contract holders of a specific vehicle. We know that the Department of Justice does this a lot. They issue an RFI on sam.gov, but all subsequent information is direct to vendor or only to contract holders under a specific vehicle. In In particular, the FBI and DEA, we know, does do this a lot. If you can't respond to an RFI for whatever reason but are interested in the opportunity, reach out and express that interest to the contracting officer. Make sure that not responding doesn't exclude you from future activity, and, ask to be added to a bidders list if they maintain one. They don't do that so much anymore. Responding to RFIs can give you an opportunity to shape various aspects of the final RFP, such as the set aside type, contract types, NAICS duration, more. When all of this pre RFP activity is going on, you should be building your and finalizing your capture team. Start with reviewing the previous solicitation documents if it's a recompete. If it's not a recompete or can't get a hold of the documents in sam.gov or another source, look at a similar procurement out of the same office or agency or department. Don't forget to review it against the agency's mission. Find the gaps and start looking for teaming partners or subcontractors to complement your offerings. If you don't have the subject matter experts, find partners that do. After my dad retired from the army, he kept working in federal as a federal contractor and then as a consultant. And on one consulting job, he got into an argument with the proposal team about how to interpret a piece of federal code. They thought that their solution matched the government's intent. And my dad ended the argument by telling them that he wrote that code when he was at the army, and he knew exactly what he meant. And while, yes, this is me indulging a story about my dad, the point is to have actual experts on your team, homegrown or brought in. And you may find that you shouldn't be the prime, but maybe you'd be a great sub for another team, or maybe you should take a pass altogether and invest those BD dollars elsewhere. All of the tips and techniques associated with building relationship with the federal buy buyer also apply to a potential industry partner. Before we move to the next phase of the procurement timeline, a solicitation has to actually be released, which doesn't necessarily happen in a timely manner or sometimes at all. Most delays occur due to shifting priorities, limited resources, and or changing leadership, and often one may cause the other. Significant delays, occur when there is a change from one to the other. Like last year, we had a lot of that. The priorities under the Biden administration were very different than the ones under our current administration. Allocation of resources also change in support of these new priorities. Funding dries up in favor of other projects as well as personnel changes. New leadership needs time to learn the agency's inventory and pending procurements before signing off on it. And, again, we saw this all over the place last year. And lastly, sometimes the solicitation was issued, and we just don't know about it. And the most common causes are that it was issued to select vendors, such as a task runner under an IDIQ that maybe your company doesn't hold. Or maybe it was self sourced. And while we may see a justification and approval notice about it or a notice of intent, that doesn't cover all the projects out there, including ones that you may be interested in. Or perhaps it changed so much that it's just unrecognizable in its current format compared to when you were tracking it. And regardless of, the delays, you hope to have a starting point of when a solicitation might be issued. The best resource, of course, is direct from the government. And sometimes they have those dates, such as in a presolicitation notice or forecast. For larger projects, they might hold a presolicitation industry day and may include their upcoming milestones. But those aren't always available or just, you know, as often, the date has passed and nothing happened. So what do you do when there's no projection? There are several influencing factors can help you come up with your own estimate. And first, you look at the historic activity. What happened during the previous procurement? Were there any delays last time or maybe there were protests, that could delay a start? And so maybe the contracts ends later than you think, or they've applied lessons learned. And so, they wanna protest proof a project before it has the follow on. And you start to think when will it be awarded, and then you work your way backwards from there. What form the solicitation takes also will influence the timeline. Task orders can have a very fast turnaround as well as some product buys. While a few hours is less common, having less than a full day or maybe just two days is reality. Opportunities that use the SF three thirty forms, which are architecture and engineering type opportunities, can have a very long procurement cycle. And, this may also be called a qualification space selection or QBS, where firms submit their information, it's ranked, and then negotiations begin with the top ranked respondent. These can take months or even more than a year from issuance to award. And between value and type of work, value matters more. Higher value usually means more detailed requirements, more comprehensive responses, longer evaluation, and higher chance of protests. Type of work mainly matters when it brings to extra complexities such as certifications or regulatory hurdles. And then one quirk worth knowing, o and m contracts often shorten their base period to align with the fiscal year, while most other requirements start a full base year from the day of award. And if all else fails, just close your eyes and throw a date at the calendar or a dart at the calendar. Sometimes that is just as accurate. I remember I used to do that with the, embassy guard contracts for the state department many years ago, and that was just as accurate. So when the solicitation is finally issued, it is now all on you and your team. Note the key dates and plan your response timeline accordingly. Read the solicitation carefully and ask questions during the q and a window. Resolve ambiguities now as opposed to afterwards, when it's too late. Because if a protest happens later on your side or someone else's, you don't want those unresolved questions hanging over you. And I'm gonna throw in another story about my dad. There was one time he was submitting questions on a draft, and he submitted so many questions and in such detail, citing what he thought was wrong and what he thought they should do instead that they decided to just take his his responses of these q and a's, and they took that and made it into the new statement of work. And so responding and asking questions can influence the shape of the solicitation when it becomes finalized. Alright. I will stop indulging. So delays can occur anytime during this stage. All of these questions can lead to revisions to the solicitation, which may push out the proposal deadline. And any of you that bid on sup six, you know this intimately. For eight a contractors, if you're an active eight a on the original proposal due date, then you can still bid as a prime even if that date gets changed by an amendment and the new deadline is after you exit the program. During the source selection phase, it may be so quiet that you hear crickets. But sometimes, the contracting office may provide you with an update on status, especially if there are delays or this is just a super big project like Soup six. Are you making a request for proposal revisions during this stage? Some requirements have down selects where they narrow the bidders after a round of evaluation. You may be able to request a debrief if that occurs. If you can get a debrief, do so as it will provide lessons learned and maybe grounds for protest. Depending upon the opportunity, the agency may award a single contract, multiple contracts. They may award some now and then some more later. At any stage of the procurement, process, a protest could be filed and or the requirement could be canceled. Some opportunities meet their end before solicitation is even issued, not officially canceled, but considered abandoned, for a variety of reasons. Maybe not enough qualified bidders, no budget, changing mission. Some of those opportunities may resurface down the road, either reissued or retooled so as to be considered different from the original ask. Cancellations can also occur post solicitation, and the agency doesn't take this lightly as it is very expensive for them as well to cancel these opportunities. Again, maybe changing scope, mission, funding, they can all lead to that cancellation. And then sometimes they may reissue the requirement as is or revise depending upon the original reason for cancellation, but this is not a guarantee. And then, of course, it could be canceled due to protest. Protests are more likely to occur during the evaluation stage, and award stage. Usually, an unsuccessful bidder at a down select or final award, and I do have to see a question about what is a down select. That's where there's usually, like, a, it might be a multi phase solicitation process or, you know, proposal process, or it's a it's where they have a one round where they evaluate proposals and they have a cutoff. Or for whatever reason, it might be a certain number that they're looking for or maybe there's certain criteria they're looking for. And everybody who doesn't make the cut, they can't, proceed to the next phase, and so they're out of the running for an award. And so, that's just narrowing the field of potential awardees until they finally make the eventual awards. I think, I I keep using soup six as a, as a, example, and I believe they had, what was it, four evaluation phases or gates. And you can kinda tell when those are happening by when protests are filed, because, again, that's something if somebody was an unsuccessful bidder or they didn't they were cut at a down select point and they didn't agree with that, then they're gonna file a protest. So the most common reasons for protests are filed because they, protester disagreed with the solicitation. Again, they disagreed with the evaluation or of their proposal, or maybe they disagreed with the evaluation of the awardee's proposal, or they disagreed with corrective action as a direct or indirect result of another protest. However, there's some less official reasons that people might protest. And one, they're angry that they didn't win. Two another one is they want revenge against the awardee. The incumbent is trying to extend the current contract performance, or maybe they are not technically an interested party, but the true interested party wouldn't file or they're trying to influence a change in any way possible. Protests can be filed at the agency level with the GAO or with the court of, US Court of Federal Claims, and there's a few other specialized methods. GAO is the one that most people are familiar with. After a redaction review, the GAO usually publishes decision reports for those, protests that were either sustained or denied and, some decisions out of the court of federal claims and then the SBA's office of hearing and appeals are also published. And unless you're the subject of the protest that didn't turn out in your favor, these are fantastic reads for sources of information. And sometimes they're just very, interesting by the creative ways people have protested. So for competitors, if they were involved at a protest, you may get a window into their actual proposal, their management approach, their technical success sections, strengths and weaknesses, and if they protest a lot. And so if they're your competitor, they might protest something that you're also pursuing. Same goes for agencies and specific offices. You'll start to see patterns of how many times they get protested. Protests are also, can shape any follow on. Hopefully, the contracting office takes the lessons learned and runs, more or longer draft rounds. And if one protest if the incumbent previous competition was protested, then you can, think that the follow on will probably be protested too, especially if it's a multiple award project. So I see a question. Are there limits on how many time you can protest? Can it go on for years or how long? Okay. Well, you have to have different grounds if you're filing protests. So you, you can't file the same protest over and over again unless you're asking for, like, a reconsideration. But you might file many protests, especially if there's if they make a a corrective action and then you don't agree with the corrective action. When you file, you there's a certain window of time of which you have to file. I think it's ten days with the GAO, and then they have a hundred days to, the GAO has to make a decision, within a hundred days. And then they're either, like, tip the usual result is maybe the protester withdrew their, protest. Maybe it was, dismissed because the protest didn't have merit or the agency decided, to take correction corrective action before the GAO made this decision or it was denied because the, they found in favor of whatever action the agency did or it was sustained where they thought that the vendor the protester had merit to their decision. As far as, how how long it go like, I'll use the example of, CIO SP four, and that was a recompete of CIO SP three. And there was, I think, over 250 protested protests filed against with the GAO against that solicitation and award and and all that aspects. And many of those protests moved from GAO to the US court of federal claims. That's kind of like the escalation point. And, eventually and this this also tied back to that GSA consolidation we talked about in the first section that they eventually canceled CIUSP. It it was there was probably no way they were gonna get out of that without some major cleanup and, again, more time, because I think proposals were eventually submitted in, 2021 or 2022. I mean, this went on for years, and then they eventually canceled it. I know if they had awarded it, it would have moved over to ownership of GAO, but, there's, it it it was just a mess. So, anyway, I'm I'm going off track here. But, it's really kind of it's a very expensive process. You have to kinda make sure that you have solid grounds to protest. I know that Deltek has had and probably will have again webinars on, protests. Look, Maria Panicelli usually helps present those or or does she's a lawyer ex with expertise in that field, and we partner with her for presentations on that topic. And then I see, somebody has has provided some, some helpful on some previous topics, has added in some additional for back to the FFP shift, firm fixed price. FFP shifts risk to vendors, yet the government incurs mission if risk vendors are unable to perform. Can you speak to okay. So, speaking more on that topic, I'm going to defer to we have an article, and I had it linked to it on that slide. It was slide number six, I think. May show up as slide seven or or five in your deck, that had some links to an article that one of our, our, FMA, federal market analysis analysts wrote. And that might go a little further into that, and then I think we have two webinars that might touch on that, coming up. One is on May 28, and it's, presented with Baker Tilly. And then there's another one on June 2, which is presented by red team. And I think both of them kind of talk about might talk about that a little bit. But I, if I go down that road, I'm probably gonna get further and further away from what I know into what I think I know. So let's see if I can answer any more questions before we move on to the next section. Let's see. Another question about protest. Okay. Let's see. A deeper view. Okay. Alright. Let's see. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna move on to the next section. Otherwise, we'll go down a rabbit hole, which I love to do, but we've got limited time on this topic. Alright. So we're gonna shift over to sam.gov, and you can't do federal contracting without sam.gov. And so while most of your daily activity with sam.gov is gonna be around contract opportunities, this is the hub for all sorts of data associated with federal contracting. If you're new to federal contracting, you'll start with the entity information, which entity being you, the vendor. You must register your firm in SAM and obtain a unique entity identifier or UEI to do business. This is formally the, Dun And Bradstreet Street number. They changed it to only UEI a couple years ago. And your Sam registration will include your business type, industry, and certifications. And some of the information about your company will be visible to the public, whereas other pieces will be limited to just your firm and, federal agents. So, there are a lot of companies that will offer to handle Sam registrations, small business certifications, or GSA listing for you. Whether it is worth paying for depends on you. But before you hire anybody, check with the free guides on sand.gov and through Apex accelerators first because you may find you don't need to hire anybody. You can do this all on your own, but it's something that you need to weigh carefully before you move on from that. Okay. So I have repeated the procurement cycle from earlier to help map out what kinds of information that you're gonna find in sam.gov, and I'm talking specifically sam.gov contracting opportunities and where it falls along the cycle. Most activity will fall in the forecast time frame with the ARF thighs and sources sought. Again, you may never know what happens to these projects. You'll respond, but any resulting solicitation, if there is one, may be issued through limited means, such as direct vendors that responded or through a contract vehicle that you may or may not hold or through another procurement portal. Some opportunities only see their first public posting as the combined synopsis solicitation or the solicitation itself. The combined synopsis solicitations tend to be faster, less complex opportunities, faster turnarounds. And as the name suggests, it combines presolicitation synopsis with the release of the final solicitation. So you hit the ground running with this one. There's very little published during the source selection phase. If the evaluation is taking too long, they might post a notice saying evaluations are ongoing. This is pretty rare, and it's typically for high profile projects like SEWP where there is a lot of proposals submitted. Or you might get an indirect update in the form of a justification of approval notice or a special notice announcing that an incumbent contract was extended or they planned to award a, bridge contract. While contract and task order awards should be announced in sam.gov, I've noticed a decrease in published award notices for the last few years. You may have to comb spending data, press releases by the awardee, or just outright asking the contracting official about it. Our analysts do all three. And then login may be required to access some documents as well as adding your name to, or even viewing the interested vendor list, which is the IVL. And much as the IVL are business to business listings, and you're less likely to see large business primes announcing their interest because if they're looking for team members, they wanna be the one looking. So they're gonna look at the list but not post their own, name. And then this slide represents what you'll find at sam.gov. But while sam.gov is the starting point, it doesn't have everything. Tops among the missing information are solicitations for sole source and task order opportunities. With both, you might find the RFIs and you might find the awards, but not the actual solicitation. The solicitation instead would be issued direct to the IDIQ portal for task orders such as Ebuy. A few task order solicitations might get posted in sam.gov, but usually in the form of a cross post with another portal such as FedConnect or the PIEE. If it's a task order solicitation, you'll need to log in to those sites and be the vehicle holder. Across post as the cross posted solicitations for FedConnect and, PIE, they'll often only post once on sam.gov, but any future modifications or amendments are likely to solely rest within the source procurement. So you'll need to monitor those source sites directly to keep abreast of changes. DIBs is one of those if you know, you know sites. It is a beast, and it looks the same as when I first saw it more than twenty years ago. It's primarily product and supply buys for the DOD. And if that's what you do, go to dibs first as they are not cross posted. And I guess a lot of folks hope to find contract documents in sam.gov. Very rarely will you find that information. And if you do, it may have been an accidental post or the contracting official removes the document once they realize their error. Contracted solicitation documents for vehicles you don't hold require a FOIA most of the time, and that's freedom of information act request. The agency reviews it, charges you a fee, and then what comes back is usually redacted, especially pricing and anything sensitive. You'll find some labor rates in the form of wage determinations or maybe even a collective bargain bargaining agreement for some opportunities that might be issued with this solicitation, but incumbent rates are rarely included and usually must be voided. But, again, they might be redacted. Okay. Let's go on to our next slide, which is subcontracting, which I thought deserved its own slide because we get a lot of questions on this. There are four scenarios for finding subcontracting opportunities that I've listed. The first two are ones you'll find in sam.gov contracting opportunities. The first scenario is typically an RFI for a specific requirement. Almost all of these in SAM are gonna be for the billion dollar energy management and operations or the m and o contracts. These have a wide variety of needs across many different industries, not just high level science. There are a few other large contracts which may publish specific subcontracting opportunities. I know that ASRC's Vance, Air Force Base BOSS contract is one. For these, you'd submit a capability statement, and any further activities such as the solicitation is generally just between you and the prime contract holder and no further postings on sand.gov. The second scenario, is where the opportunity is buried in a sole source announcement. The difference between this and a regular sole source announcement is that they'll provide the awardee's program manager name and contact info for those interested in the clubbing. And the navy is the one that, does this type the most. There is no easy way to find these notices in sam.gov, though if you are a GovWind subscriber. Our analysts manually review the notices and flag those that are subcontract so they're easier to find. The last two scenarios are not found in Sam as specific subcontract notices, but instead, they either start from the prime contractor's website or somebody seeing an award notice and wishing to join the team of the new awardee. And both are essentially limited to communication between the prime and the potential sub. Additionally, contract spending subcontract spending data is available if and when it's reported, that is. Within GovWind, you can find it in our tracked opportunities as well as spending data in company profiles. Subcontract spending data is inconsistently recorded, so some projects that you know have subs and maybe you are that sub, it's just not there. Now that you know what you can and can't find in sam.gov, you're all set to start your searches. Right? Well, just like any other dataset, it pays to understand some of its limitations. I've created this table to serve as a reference guide, so make sure you download those slides. And what you'll see here is on the left, I have some of the known issues we've come across, and the right are some ways to mitigate. And I would say the primary reason you might not be getting results aside from the opportunity not being there in the first place are due to the limitations of the sam.gov system. When the contracting officials are entering these opportunities in sam.gov, they have a form to fill out. Fields are like, the NAICS field and set aside. They only allow one item per field regardless of whether the opportunity has multiple items associated with this. So, for example, if your saved search uses NAICS five four sixteen eleven, but an opportunity has multiple NAICS assigned and the contract official picked a different one as the primary, you won't see it. Same trap for set asides. An SDVOSB opportunity tagged as eight a by the POC won't surface in your SDVOSB search. Sometimes these notices will also have blank NAICS, POCs, and set asides. Usually, with the sources sought when some of those decisions are still under review. But, again, if you're searching with set aside or NAICS field specifically or PSC, it's not gonna show up in your result. And the solution is to create multiple saved searches, some with your tight criteria and some loose ones. You might use some fielded searches like your NAIC search, but also keywords. And by having these separate searches, you're less likely to miss something. Keywords are not the end all be all as some of them, sometimes they only appear in the title. There are some notices that just their description just says see attachment, and the title might be something generic like sources sought. So when you have those that are very generic, it's worth a look just to see if it's something for you. Sam.gov does not do it within the document search. Although, if you're a gov one subscriber, you do have some additional options, including a document search and additional tagging. I know these solutions of multiple searches bring back a lot of noise and duplicate results, and you're gonna have to weigh the risk of missing opportunities versus waiting through the excess. Some of the other issues, like the same number for multiple opportunities, conflicting information such as different dates could be resolved by looking at the information in context and contacting the POC for verification. And they may be unaware that these issues are going on and how they might impact you. Fam is, again, it's where you start, but it is not where you stop. Some portals cross post, like FedConnect for mostly civilian agencies and PIE for defense. Others don't, like DIBs for DOD product buys, and most task order portals like GSA eBuy and NITAAC. Those items cross posted to Sam are generally typically visible on the source site without a login. However, they have opportunities that may not be cross posted or do require a login. And some might just be emailed direct to the contract holder bypassing any portal. If you're striking out, ask the agency's small business office how they actually buy your service. We'll close out this section with another reference slide that I include in almost every one of my webinars. It's where you can find information, opportunity information, what kind of information you'll find, and how much knowledge of the federal contracting industry you'll need to make the most of it. If you're a newbie, you can get information out of Sam and be able to act on it almost day one. You just need to know enough about your own company to run some searches. Honestly, those new to federal contracting can use almost every one of these sources to find information, but the more knowledge you have about the federal contracting industry behaves will help you understand the resource better and be able to act on what you find. For example, communication with contracting officials. Anyone can ask a question. However, the more you understand about the industry, the better questions you can ask as well as refined follow-up communication. I added stars to a few items on this matrix, which are more prone to have AI generated content. They have higher risk of hallucinations. And if you're not familiar with the content, you may not be able to differentiate between fact and fiction. I've seen this happen a few times over the years. For example, with all the changes impacting the eight a program, there were articles claiming the eight a program ceased to exist, and then there were other sources picking that up as fact and then repeating it to their own articles. And it just was and then people were cut it was a whole big mess. So you really have to understand what you're looking at, understand the context. And, again, the more knowledge you have, the easier and, better you'll be able to, use these sources. Okay. I see a question here before we move on. Why is subcontract reporting so spotty due to different contract requirements, or is it related to things like prime size? That's a good question and one we have had ourselves. It's something that I'm sure somebody else at our, one of our our contract managers, or our contract spending specialist might be able to address that better. But I think there might be some regarding requirements, for the specific contract. I know that size really doesn't have anything to do with it because there are some contracts like the energy m and o ones, which are those billion dollar contracts. Sometimes you'll see subcontracts listed, and then sometimes for a an m and o at a different location, there's none listed. And you know that there are a lot of significant size subcontracts under that program. They just they can't run it alone. They have subcontracts. That's part of the job. And so I I really I I'm sorry. How like, I don't know is my answer to that. And when the stuff that they do report, you have to kinda watch the values because sometimes that they would say, that the reported value for the subcontract is actually higher than the value that the original contract has obligated so far. So it's that makes sense. So context is kind of the the phrase that pays for when you're looking at federal contract data. Okay. How would one proceed in a state that operates outside the federal norm? That's I probably would need some more context for that. Are you talking about SLED contracting, or are you talking about some a federal agency that does some things? Or I don't you know, when I think of state, I think of geography like Virginia. So I think I little need a little more context to be able to answer that question. So for now, we are going to move on to our next section, which is contract award data, which is also found in sam.gov. And it's kind of the the the sam.gov contract opportunity news is the pre award and award announcement, and then you get into the contract spending data. But first, another poll question because I love poll questions. So this is just your basic yes or no, or I don't know. And, just a quick definition, a contract spending database is where the federal government reports contract activity. This includes the dollars, the government committed or obligated to a contract. It's different from the total ceiling value and what's actually been paid out. And I tend to use the word spending and obligations interchangeably in this section even though they do have separate definitions. And so let's see. So I see that a lot of people have, the most people have not ever used a contract spending data database, so you'll get a little education today. It's a great resource. It's one I play in a lot, when I'm doing my, trend analysis webinars. So let's just go ahead and get started. And I apologize. My cat just is jumped on my keyboard here, and I now have a mouthful of cat hair. So gotta get rid of that before I can start talking. So, that's a little aside. So as hinted by the poll question, contract spending data is a key component of your business development planning. It can help you make bid, no bid decisions, find potential teaming partners, and identify who is buying what you are selling. The three types of analysis on this slide, incumbent activity, competitive analysis, and trend analysis are how you get those answers. And just like any data source, the more you understand it, the more you can do with it. If you know the incumbent, specifically the contract number for the opportunity you're pursuing, it's very easy to get more information. Looking at our example, we have one of the incumbents of the army MAPS opportunity, which is marketplace for the acquisition of professional services, which is consolidating the RS three and ITES three IDIQs into a $50,000,000,000 new vehicle. The historic spending has increased year over year for our, incumbent, Kaki, here, and there have been task orders issued and reported subcontract information. If this is a single award situation, Kaki might be a tough incumbent to, unseat. Since this particular opportunity is multiple award, then they will likely be among the awardees. If your company also wins an award for MAPS, then Kaki will likely be your competitor at the task order level. If you're not in the position to prime, you know based on this information that KACI has a lot of subcontract activity. I think you can see, the the count in the screen there. You may wanna look into getting on their team. I've used GovWin as a source of the spending data on the slide and several others as it packages the information in an easier to use format for searching and display. Over the next few slides, we'll walk through sam.gov's contract award database. You could start with a keyword search and then click contract awards domain on the filter, option to just get the award data, and you'll need to click it twice to get some of the search filters to appear. This results the results may be overwhelming at first as they combine contract data, subcontract data when available, and task order data. Clicking that contract awards domain twice will also help filter out the subcontract data, which you then you can view in its own domain. And, this in this data is new to sam.gov as of February, and so there are some growing pains of which, we will uncover some of them as like, what we already have. The fact that you have to click that twice to filter to, get those filter results to show up is something that is, one of the quirks. You can't filter out the task order Sam in sam.gov, contract award data, at least that I have found so far. So you need to understand what you're looking at. And the fastest way when you're looking at two different records is look for the referenced IDB field. If it has an entry, you're looking at a task order. If you see NA or it's blank, then it's the main contract. This matters because if you mistake a task order for a contract, you'll misjudge the value and expiration. The contract award page is sprawling, so use the bookmarks, bookmark list on the left to jump around. Otherwise, you are gonna ruin your mouse from scrolling up and down so much. And two key items to note, the modification summary and the related awards. For modifications, when you're looking at this data, you always wanna look at the original modification, modification zero, and the most recent one. And that gives you a picture of when it was awarded, the original value, and expiration, as well as progress or changes since that award. Related awards would include any task orders associated with the contract, so it may not be applicable to all awards. And a quick note, some of the growing pains of moving this data from FPDS and sam.gov are visible here. This particular contract has 18 task orders, but only two are linked. So it's once you're more comfortable navigating this data, try finding the incumbent information without the contract number. The slide breaks this down by what information you have on hand and how you can use that to help you narrow results to the possible incumbent or even find the exact one. When searching for incumbent information, a good place to start is on the presumption that most factors remain the same. So whether you're looking at a, current solicitation or you're looking at previous, the same NAICS code, procurement or funding office, PSC, set aside, the strategy, keywords. Also, many repeating contracts are for five years inclusive of all options. For example, if the follow on starts 10/01/2026, then the incumbent was probably awarded on or around 10/01/2021. If you're looking at task orders, then maybe use the same vehicle for the incumbent as they're planning to use for the follow on. You'll need to try different combinations. While you can try entering all the information you know, you may accidentally eliminate the exact contract you wanna find. PSC codes tend to be the least reliable unless it's a very specific industry like grounds maintenance. There may there are many codes which are similar, and the agency may have picked a different one for the incumbent. And NAICS codes can change. For example, there are some contracts reported under the old research and development code 541710, whereas that code has since retired, and the new one, 541715, is the one that'll be on current solicitations. Even if you can't confine, find or confirm the incumbent, this exercise is still useful because it can help you identify your potential competitors. While the previous slide was geared towards finding an incumbent, it's the foundation of finding your competitors as I've just said. So instead of searching for a specific project, you search instead for yourself. Search on your own company's NAICS, PSC, business side, added keywords. If your company has a wide range of capabilities, focus on the individual opportunity to identify potential competitors for that particular bid. This example is from GovWinds contract history database. And since I'm pretty sure that Kaki is well aware of who their competitors are, I've used janitorial services as the example. Our fictional company is a small business providing janitorial services in the DC Metropolitan Area. Limiting our search by small business competition type, NAICS five six seventeen twenty, and place of performance in Maryland, DC, or Virginia, I also limited awards to the last several years. This brought back 48 contracts in a long list of companies, unique companies. The top five you can see on this, based on spending are shown here. It doesn't mean that these companies are your direct competitors, but there's a strong likelihood that you'll run into a few of them. This also identified which agencies are awarding the contract, and this helps knowing knowing where and knowing more about your industry and your company's capabilities helps. So, again, if you're new, you know some, but the the more knowledge that you build about where you work and what you do, it's easier to narrow to, and and find more applicable competitors during this kind of search. So the next logical step is to look at other contracts that these companies hold. And that when do they expire question is the one that builds your preRP pipeline. And while I've been doing the search in govlin, you can do the same search in sam.gov, but it is trickier. Some of the rough edges of having this data in sam.gov means that there's a higher potential for glitches. And for example, when I did the same search in, sam.gov and I included the place of performance, I got zero results even though we know just looking at the results here, there are at least 48 contracts that should have shown up. As you build your understanding of this industry, you can now start looking at this data in aggregate, who's buying what you're selling and how for the past, present, and predictions for the future. For example, carrying forward our janitorial scenario, I wanted to know whether there were any contract vehicles that our small business company should investigate. So I searched Govinds Federal Spending Analytics using keywords associated with this industry displaying the top contract vehicles. What these results, results tell me is that most contract activity in this industry are not through contract vehicles, but stand alone contracts that I need to investigate GSA schedules. It's already the top vehicle listed, and it's increased spending year over year. I also need to look into base operations contracts for possible subcontracting opportunities. There were several listed on the top list here. And I need to investigate OASIS plus where the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative building maintenance and operations contractor, the FSSI BMO contracts are folding into. And if this is your industry, I hope you're taking notes and look up these contracts. I did this using GovWinds tool. You could do this again in sam.gov, but you're better off using the reporting tool found in Sam and then export the results that you can interpret. And this kind of analysis is limited by what data you have available and then your own understanding of the industry. And let's see. I have some questions here. Are you familiar with the NAICS exceptions that generate? So several NAICS codes, and I'll say, like, five four thirteen thirty, has exceptions where they have a standard size for the code, and we'll get into size standards a little bit later in the presentation. But they also have, like, where's fix five for thirteen thirty is for engineering services, but they have exceptions for, like, a, b, and c. And I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's exceptions for I think there's, like, nuclear submarines or something like that among them. But they have different size standards, and so you could be considered a small business under the main code or maybe you have, higher revenue but still be small under an exception. In contract data reporting, they do not factor those those exceptions. So you can look at contract data spending and actually and and same with contract opportunities in sam.gov. And if they're using an exception, the contracting office has to say so, and, typically, it's either in a document or in the description field. It's not something that they will have in a fielded form. So you're gonna have to look at the individual opportunity, or contract and and and probably contact the contracting office if it's not clear, and especially with the contract data. With the contract data, you probably wanna see if you can find the source solicitation that resulted in that contract, and you might find that answer. So I know that's a little, convoluted in a lot of steps, but, that's federal government contracting for you. Okay. So we've now covered, the three main uses. Let's talk about where the data actually lives. Again, sammy dot gov contract awards and USA spending, and they both have the same data, and they're free. It boils down to user preference and what you wanna accomplish. The search search options in USA spending are more granular, and it rolls up the modifications, and the results are user friendly. And, of course, I use Govwind the most. It's easier to do analysis as it has different options to summarize the data and pulls information from multiple sources. Govwind is a paid, subscription service. Let's see. Self self proclaimed data nerd. Yes. I I, that is a very familiar term for myself as well. If you're a government client, ask that question because I would wanna make sure you get that, directed to our we have some excellent specialists in contract spending data. They they live this. I used to live it. I don't have to live it anymore because we've got experts who do that instead. I just play with it. And so they more they know more about the API and and support connections on that. So, I would just be talking outside my head for for that answer. So, before we close out, I have another reference table for you. Don't forget to download those slides. They're these are issues that you run into with this data, which can disrupt your analysis. Some issues are because there are limitations to what actually gets reported, such as sensitive information like intelligence based requirements. You're not gonna find the CIA requirements in here. The ninety day reporting delay for the defense spending means that contract awarded today won't be reported in the database until mid August. So when you're performing trend analysis, you need to factor that or your results are gonna be skewed. And I you may have heard me. I say defense. I say DOD. Analyst and myself and and our other analysts at GovWind, we base what we're calling that agency, that department, on how it's reported in sam.gov. And until it's changed in sam.gov, we're gonna continue to call it Department of Defense. And, like, Reagan National Airport, I still call National Airport. I grew up with it National. It's always gonna be National Airport. Same thing with the fence. So, when you're looking at individual contracts, look at the information in context. Is what you see what you expect to see, or does something not make sense? This also applies to summary, data for trend analysis. For example, in September, one agency accidentally entered the total contract award value as an obligated amount for each of the awardees, and this made it a $21,600,000,000 error. And while this error may have just been a small blip if you considered overall contract spending, it significantly changed small business numbers, eight a, and HUBZone numbers. And this meant that fiscal twenty five appeared to have a fantastic year when they actually dropped, for eight a specifically. As an experienced contractor, they we spotted that mistake, the spike, and we questioned it. Whereas somebody who's new may just have thought, oh, wow. What a great year, and then wondered what the heck happened. In March, the agency did correct those modifications, so this is now a nonissue. But when we were doing analysis for fiscal twenty five earlier this year, it was like, what the heck? And we had to manually adjust all of our charts to factor this in. Okay. Let's move to the next section. We're gonna move away from awards, and we're gonna turn our focus on the contractors themselves. And, yes, another poll question because I love them. So among the options here, what is your business type? Rather than have a long list of different types, if you are a small business and you are also under a specific socioeconomic type of business, check the first option. There are some businesses that could be considered both large and small depending upon the industry. That's the NAICS code size standards. And then other than small is a term used by the government, and it just means any entity that is not a small business. And it can include large businesses, state and local governments, nonprofits. You get the point. Again, maybe you're new enough and you just don't know, and that's okay. And so it looks like we have a few of those. And, what I thought our audience would be is kind of how it's turned out where we have, mostly those that fit a socioeconomic category. We have a good amount of small business and large business, and then some that are both, and then a few that, they're just not sure. And, if you're already in federal contracting and you're not sure, you can look up your own company name in the sam.gov, data to see if you're listed as large or small. Alright. Let's go on to talk about these small businesses. And I know I have a lot listed on this page. These are all the different types of businesses that I found in federal contracting here. I just took down the list. The solid color boxes are those that are the most common set asides. When eight a here, I know, is not a, technically, a business type. It is a primary set aside type for small disadvantaged businesses. And while not every SDB is an eight a, every eight a is an SDB. The more categories you belong to, the more competition types you're eligible for, though that can bring some confusion on what a company can actually bid on. This matrix covers the most common business types and which set asides they can pursue. Any contractor can bid on full and open opportunities, which, may also be listed as unrestricted. In sam.gov contract opportunities, the set aside field could be listed as NA or just left blank. Partial set aside means that multiple awards are typically planned, and at least one of those awards are gonna be reserved for small business. If your company is both a HUBZone and a service disabled veteran owned, then you can prime VOSB, SDVOSB, HUBZone, small business, partial small business, and full and open opportunities. Whereas if you are a large business, you can only prime partial and full and open. There are some other set asides types that are not listed here, but they are less common. They could be agency specific, or they appear primarily as a sole source award. If you are not sure whether you should apply for one of the socioeconomic categories, then the my SBA, shall I apply form will walk you through it. Most of the questions are yes or no, and this slide has the full list and the link. If you can if you think you can get certified for one of these types, go for it. The most obvious benefit are those set asides, whether competitive and especially those sole source awards. This limits the potential bidders pool. And it's still competitive, but it's not the free for all of a full and open competition, and you need to take any advantage you can. You will have to recertify for these every three years for everything but eight a, which has its own eligibility requirements, which are reviewed annually. A contracting officer may ask also ask for self certification for specific contract at award or, maybe option exercise. You will have to recertify, or for a a, actually, rather. Since it's a limited term development program, there are certain benchmarks required to continue in the program, which include decreased reliance on eight a set aside contracts. And because this is a limited term program and you cannot reenter it once you've exited, you need to be ready as a company in order to maximize the benefits. And if you wanna learn more about these, I recommend the Deltek webinars that I have linked on this page, which, again, download the slides. Slides are found in that, tab on the right. Ashley Sanderson presented the woman owned webinar, and Aaliyah Moyers on her HUBZone, and yours truly for eight a. And Kara Crowe's veteran owned report is also available. The goals I referred to on previous slides were the small business contracting goals. There is a lot of information on this slide, which it could be used as a reference. But for the too long didn't read summary, small business contracting goals have been around for decades. Congress sets the targets, SBA administers them, and the purpose is to track how well the government supports the small business community. The targets are percentage of available contract dollars awarded to small businesses in a given fiscal year. Two things to know about that phrase. Awarded to small businesses does not mean a small business set aside. A small business that wins through pulling up in competition still counts, so does a sole source award. The question is who won and not how it was completed. Available contract dollars is an adjusted figure if you think about it as, like, your gross income versus your adjusted income on your taxes. Some awards are excluded, some get double credit, and this slide has the specifics. So, this chart represents the collective spending on all federal agencies, and awards to small businesses. Fiscal twenty twenty through '24 are official numbers, whereas the fiscal twenty five is a rough cut. Without the adjustments mentioned on the previous slide, even as a rough cut, the final numbers probably won't change too much. Although, the government doesn't pass all of its socioeconomic goals, it exceeds its overall small business goals year after year and is always above the 5% statutory goal for SDB. Under the Biden administration, the SDB goal was increased each year as part of a strong push to support small businesses, in particular, small disadvantaged businesses. If left in place, the goal would have been 15% for fiscal twenty five. However, the current administration brought it back down to its statutory goal of 5%. Each agency has individual goals for small business and the standard five or 3% goal for socioeconomic category. Ideally, the passing of failing of these goals could serve as a discussion point with government buyers. If you fit one of the socioeconomic groups, you could position yourself as either helping the agency meet their goals, or if they pass the goal, then you can help them maintain them. However, while that is still a potential position point, goals, especially for social and gender based categories, are in flux. Why are those categories in flux? Because the SBA is changing the procurement scorecard methodology for fiscal twenty twenty six. So any planning for which agencies pass or fail their goals in fiscal twenty five may be meaningless for fiscal twenty six under new scoring. Should the scoring, change move forward, then SDB as a standalone contracting goal would be eliminated. Instead, a new economic goal created, which would include veteran owned small business, which were not previously represented. Representative Velasquez, who is a ranking member of the House Small Business Committee, sent the SBA a letter asking for clarification, including why the proposed math totals were, a 110%. And the letter is linked to the Federal News Network article I have linked here. And the hits just keep coming from the eight a program. I did not deliberately populate this matrix with items affecting the eight a program. That is just how it turned out. December brought audits, which resulted in mass suspensions with some firms exiting the eight a program. Around the same time, the SBA updated its eligibility guidance, eliminating the race based presumption. Executive order one four three nine eight brought up DEI again, which we saw in executive orders last year. While it affects all contracts regardless of size, it puts pressure on the identity based programs. The most recent item on this list of, changes was, legislation filed in both the house and senate. This builds on previous executive orders and seeks to eliminate minority in gender based program. And I am looking at you, eight a and WOSB. If the bill passes, set asides would be limited to general small business, veteran owned small business, service disabled small, veteran owned small business, and HUBZone. My opinion is that this is unlikely to pass, but it bears watching. Historically, eight a, recompete stayed within the eight a program for any follow on, but now agencies are asked to consider whether sole source contracts could competitively shift a task order under an existing vehicle. Competitive eight day set asides may also shift away. It's all the at the contracting officer's, discretion. Anecdotally, our analysts are seeing both more RFIs on former eight day sole source work and more eight day sole source awards. Though the latter is probably driven by funding pressure making new procurements harder to launch, and DHS is is really kinda where we're seeing that. I've included links here where you can read more, and I have additional links in the resource section of the slide deck. And so I see we have some more questions here. So, will they ever increase the goal for HUBZone women business small disadvantaged women? I'm gonna say no. They've had these goals forever. The old the one they had forever that they finally increased was the, service disabled veteran owned small business goal that used to be at the 3%, same as HUBZone, and it recently moved to 5%. If they started hitting these goals, then they might consider raising them. But, like, they never hit the HUBZone goal, and they, I I think maybe they they they kiss or or air kiss the, woman owned and this and the veteran owned, but it's, the only one that they consistently pass is the overall small business and then the service, the small disadvantaged, which is one of the things where they increase those percentages. But now that they've scaled back, it's not higher. Ultimately, there's no punishment for not hitting these goals. It's just kinda like a we we would like you to do this, but there's I don't even know if there's a hand slap if they don't reach these goals. Some agencies take small business help, or participation more seriously than others, and some, they're the types of opportunities they have. It's just very difficult to help small businesses. Like energy, it's very difficult because most of their contract dollars goes to those billion dollar m and o contracts, and that's where they kind of pull in subcontractors, you know, focus on that. And then, but DHS is one that, historically, at least, has had a very strong, desire to help small businesses. So they've had a lot of small pro business programs and and really work to, to put awards in that direction. Under the the current administration's leadership, I'm not sure if that is still the case, but there you go. Okay. So let's move to the next. I think we're moving to a new section. Yes. We are. And so, this is our last section today on industry codes. We've talked about it a little bit throughout, and that is your NAICS and PSC. These are the two key codes that define industries. Even new entrants to federal contracting usually have heard of at least NAICS codes. This code represents your business. When the government is assigning a NAICS code to requirement, they're signaling the kind of company they expect to provide these goods or services. It's also whether you are considered a large or small business for that industry. Product service codes, on the other hand, are about the requirements themselves. They're typically a four character format, and they start with a number for products or a letter for services. Returning to our janitorial company example from earlier, if you're looking at sam.gov for opportunities, you'd look under NAICS seven, five six seventeen twenty and PSC s two zero one. Combined, your search results will narrow to opportunities that should land closer to your sweet spot. While contract spending data exclusively uses NAICS in its six digit format, sam.gov contract opportunities sometimes use a shortened version. This usually happens with RFIs when the final NAICS code may still be undecided. Usually, it's the three digit version called a subsector. To ensure you don't, miss opportunities of interest, you may wanna create additional saved searches to include that three digit, subsector or maybe even the four digit industry group. NAICS plays that important role for whether you're as large or small. This goes over some of those details. Each NAICS has a size standard associated with it. And depending upon the code used, you could be a large or small business for that opportunity, which coupled with the competition type, which we you are a prime or a sub for or, like, you can't prime if you're a large business for those set asides. The sizes are established by the SBA and reviewed periodically. In August 2025, the SBA proposed increasing the size standards for more than 200 industries. The comment period already closed back in October, and I do not have a date for the final ruling and implementation. Keep your eyes out, though, for the updated size standards, especially if you're on the cusp of the cutoff. These changes may keep you a small business a bit longer. Service based industries tend to use dollar based sizes, whereas manufacturing is on the employee headcount standard. Our janitorial NAICS five six seventeen twenty has a size standard of 22,000,000. But if you also made your own cleaning supplies, the manufacturing NAICS is 325612. Polish and other sanitation goods and manufacturing, which has a size standard of 900 employees. You can do business under many different NAICS codes based on what your business actually provides, though you may need to designate a primary code, especially if you're applying for the eight a program. What this means is that depending upon your headcount or receipts, you could be, again, large or small for some opportunities. The services the government wants, to buy are classified under the POC codes that start with the letter. The parent codes are represented by a single letter as listed here. When searching sam.gov contracting opportunities, this code is labeled as classification code. While these codes can and should be used when conducting searches to build your opportunity pipeline or perform trend analysis, there are more likely to be inconsistent, some codes more than others. Our janitorial example is very clear cut. S two zero one for janitorial services. However, say your work is for o and m in a federal facility, that would fall under the codes that start with m. The problem is that there are more than 80 codes for the buyer to choose from, or they could just pick s two sixteen, which also covers this work. When running searches, if you get too many results, add in the PSC to narrow it down. But if you have too few, remove the PSC from your filter. As you build your federal knowledge, you'll get familiar with which PSC codes are commonly associated with your capabilities. I didn't wanna leave our out of product folks, so here is your list of parent codes for products, which all start with a number. Even if you are a service based company, you should get familiar with the codes that are product side of your business and vice versa because sometimes these codes are selected instead of the alternate one. For example, IT codes start with a seven, or they may start with the letter d. And everyone should keep an eye on code 99. That is kind of the dumping ground if the contracting official didn't know what to pick. A quick recap of what you could do with these codes. Once you determine whether you are small or large for your code, you're ready to find out more about your industry. Using both PSC and NAICS in the same search will pinpoint your prime contracting opportunities since when they're used together, they focus more on specific requirements. This is especially useful when your primary NAICS is broad. That, five four thirteen thirty engineering services, it straddles both professional services and the AEC industries. Adding a PSC from the r family narrows your self to professional services. Adding c or y will narrow you to AEC. Codes can also help you find points of contact. Look for contacts with similar codes to your project. Even if that person doesn't know the specific project you're interested in, they probably know the person who does. You can also find your competitors through these combination of codes. These are the companies you may be bidding against. They could also be your future teammates or competimates, where they are your competitor for one day, but your teammate for the next. And this cycle brings us back to building your pipeline. Once you identify your competitors, what contracts do they hold? Could you pursue those recompetes? And lastly, trend analysis. While PSCs are inconsistently applied at the individual record level, their granular, their granularity makes them very powerful for aggregate trend analysis. So the data scientist in our audience, I'm sure you've had fun with that. So, remember our example of NAICS five four thirteen thirty? That's a very broad industry. If you only look at that code, it may not really tell you what the contract dollars are for. But if you add in those PSCs, then you can know this is what's going on with engineering. This is what's going on with construction type engineering. So it really does help. And lastly, as we close out here is our resources. I have a lot of resources here. Hopefully, they are useful for you. First up is our small business resources for government contractors. This is a gov one page, and some of the items require a GovWind subscription, but not all. And I even though some of these are asterisks, there might be some that have both available and, subscription only. It's a great place to start. And even if you're not a small business, it's a wonderful place to start. I know, when I'm looking for employee policy information at at my company, I'll sometimes go to the new employee, portal because they'll have the information that's easier to find because it's what new employees are looking for, and it's what I'm looking forward too. And then if you are a client, we have a lot of resources available to you, videos, live trainings, and then, of course, our we have such a wonderful customer service team that are they really know their stuff. And if they don't know, they know who does. This page, everything on here is freely available. These are, on demand or upcoming webinars of interest, I thought, to this audience, as well as some articles written by our federal market analysis team. And I I always recommend this, is that when you're looking at upcoming webinars at Deltek and you're in the federal contract industry, look for ones that are presented by these people. You wanna look for Kevin Plexico. You wanna look for Carrie Webster, who is my boss, and you wanna look for Denise Peterson. Those three are experts in their field, and any presentation that they're giving, you're gonna get some wonderful stuff. And, of course, the rest of us too, but those three are ones that those are must watches, I think. And, of course, we have so many others by we bring in partners. We've got Red Team and Baker Tilly, which are both wonderful companies that we work with, and they're adding things all the time. So I again, they're free. And then, we've got not these are resources that I used to build today's presentation, and they, they're these are all government sites, although some might be organization sites. Like, I've got Apex Accelerators on here. That's really if you're for those of that you that picked I don't know and that you're new, that's a wonderful place to go. There's a lot of training. I didn't include on here, but if you're looking for for networking and other industry groups, go to LinkedIn. There's a lot of different groups on there, and there's people who are happy to answer questions. And, you know, it's a really there's a lot of great community groups out there. And then the last that I have here oops. There's more because I had too many to fit one page. Acronyms. This is sometimes I think this is the only reason why people want my slides is the acronym list. These are all the acronyms that I had on all of these slides and all the ones that I thought I was gonna say today. So, covers a lot of ground. There's two different things. So, and if you don't know it, feel free to ask us, and we'll find it for you. And looking at some of the questions that we've received while we've got, five minutes left. Let's see if I can see if we can answer. I have been having great difficulty in getting in contacting the SBA. What is their current status? They seem to have curtailed operations significantly. I'm sure they are suffering from the same thing that all the agencies are suffering is reduction in force and fewer people to handle more work. It's the same that goes on in private industry. So it really kinda depends upon what your need is. If you, I I would probably go to Apex Accelerators and see whether they can help you. If it's something where you're trying to find the status of of joining a program, Again, I actually I kinda would go you might still wanna go to Apex Accelerators and and ask their advice, because I'll I'll say, like, as I said, I did the eight a webinar, and, that program was growing until last year. The last new program entrants were from August 2025. And for a program that used to have hundreds of new program entrants every year, they were under a 100 last year, and there's been zero so far, and it's already May. So I I think they're kinda focused on different things. And, again, there's a resource level, but it just kinda really depends upon what you're try what answers you're trying to get from them as to whether, where you should go for that. And just kind of as a that's really kinda overall, like, our experience as analysts, and I've been doing this for, market research specifically since 2020 and or not 2020, 2000. Like, I've got people younger than me on my team. And, I've been in federal contracting since the, early nineties. Government officials, some some are wonderful communicators, and some, it is just, your question goes in and no answers ever come out. And it doesn't mean that they, you know, like, it just they might be overwhelmed with what's going on. They maybe have a policy in place that they can't answer. And then, you know, just like in every place you go, there are nice people and there are people who are not nice. But, honestly, have patience because, you know, they've got a lot of plate on their plate. They're human too. But I I would kinda go to the Apex Accelerator. So going back to the original question, let's see. What else have we got here that I might have? This let's see. I know one one of the presubmitted questions, there was something about, what is, links I've got it. I'm gonna get the the name messed up. It's a new kind of it's the defense port or department or portal for, the defense industrial supply base or or whatever. And somebody was wondering how it compares to sam.gov, and it really doesn't. I would say that this links, like like the big cat, l y n x, I think that to me compares more it's like kind of the the the Dibs version of Apex accelerators. It's really kind of there to help small businesses and help businesses, become part of the, the defense industrial base or supply base. Let's see. And I think we addressed some of the other questions that were presubmitted. And with that, we are at, we are really right at time. And thank you so much for for joining us today, joining me today, participating in all my poll questions, asking questions of your own. Don't forget you'll receive an on demand recording of today's webinar via email within twenty four hours, and we'd appreciate if you fill out the short survey that you'll see at the end of the webinar. We've got make sure you go to deltek.com for, for more on demand and and, upcoming webinars. Suggest webinars that you'd like to see in the future. And, thank you, and have a wonderful day.