Where to Find the 95% of Contract Opps Not in SAM
Justin Siken08/01/2024
Strategy
HigherGov
Most Solicitations Aren't Posted in SAM
Federal agencies are required by law and federal regulations to publicize contract solicitations on the System for Award Management (SAM). However, in practice, there are many exceptions to what must be posted to SAM, and the vast majority of awarded contracts are either never solicited or come from solicitations never publicly posted to SAM. Accordingly, contractors that limit their federal opportunity search to SAM significantly limit the number of opportunities they can win.
The report below briefly summarizes where to find the rest of these opportunities in HigherGov and elsewhere.
Contract Vehicle Task Orders
What They Are
Approximately 55% of federal award dollars in 2023 were awarded through contract vehicle task orders. Contract vehicles are a broad term for streamlined methods the government uses to buy goods and services. They include indefinite delivery contracts, blanket purchase agreements, multiple award construction contracts, and many more structures. Task orders are a generic term for the contracts that are issued through these vehicles. Contract vehicles can be held by thousands of contractors (in the case of the Multiple Award Schedule), a few contractors, or even just one.
Why They're Not in SAM
Solicitations issued through contract vehicles are not required to be posted in SAM, and typically, are either distributed via separate portals only available to vehicle holders such as eBuy or Symphony or are emailed directly to the vehicle holders.
How to Find Them
Win a Prime Spot on a Vehicle
Except for the Multiple Award Schedule and some contracting vehicles with occasional on-ramps, most contract vehicles last between 3 to 10 years, and it is not possible to get direct access to these vehicles during that time. When contract vehicles themselves are solicited, they are typically posted to SAM. Therefore, it is critical to monitor for new and upcoming vehicles to ensure you do not miss when they are solicited.
HigherGov has several tools for finding upcoming vehicles, including:
- Future Vehicle Filter: Identifies active contract opportunities and forecasted opportunities that will likely result in a vehicle award
- Recompete Filter: Identifies contracts and vehicles that are likely to recompete in the next 12 months
Form Teaming Relationships with Vehicle Holders
For ongoing vehicles or vehicles that a company may not qualify for, the other way to get access to vehicle solicitations is by forming a teaming relationship with a company that does hold the vehicle where you can act as a subcontractor. We recommend a three-step approach to identifying the best vehicles to subcontract on:
- Find the most relevant vehicles: By inputting your NAICS, target Agencies, etc. into the Vehicles Rankings tool (example) you can create a ranked list of the contract vehicles used most in your market
- Analyze market share: Look at the contractor Vehicle Award Share on the vehicle and look to partner with the vehicle holders with the most wins (example)
- Target vehicles with active subcontracts: Focus on vehicles with a meaningful amount of subcontract dollars being awarded - these are the vehicles where the holders are most likely to be looking for partners. The Federal Award Analysis section of the relevant vehicle page will highlight the relative level of subcontracts (example)
Task Order Integration
HigherGov subscribers can also integrate their task order solicitations directly into HigherGov. Instructions for doing so are available here.
Sole Source Contracts
What They Are
Approximately 30% of federal awards in 2023 were awarded sole source to contractors, meaning they did not go through a competitive bidding process. There are a wide number of situations where the government can award contracts directly to contractors without a solicitation, but the three most common are: 1) the government believes only one source is capable of performing the contract, 2) through a socioeconomic program such as the 8(a) program, 3) in emergencies.
Why They're Not in SAM
Most sole source contracts are not required to be posted on SAM. However, in some cases, the government is required to issue a notice that it intends to issue a sole source award to allow other contractors a short period to let the government know they are also capable of doing the work.
How to Find Them
Only One Source
Government agencies often erroneously believe that only one contractor can perform the work on a given contract. Winning contracts that are otherwise sole-sourced to other contractors often requires educating federal contracting officers your company can also provide similar services or products. To identify sole source contracts in your market, you can look at non-competed contracts in the HigherGov contract award search (example). From here, you can identify contracts, agencies, and contracting officers for marketing efforts.
Socioeconomic Programs
The government can award contracts directly to companies with socioeconomic certifications such as 8(a), SDVOSB, or WOSB. There are multiple approaches to finding these sole source opportunities:
- Marketing: Marketing to contracting officers with a history of awarding sole source contracts. In HigherGov this can be done using the Government Buyers tool with the Set Aside filter (example).
- Vulnerable Incumbents: Finding contracts where the current contract holder has lost or will lose their certification before the contract recompetes. In HigherGov, these can be identified using the "vulnerable incumbent" filters, such as the Vulnerable 8(a) or Vulnerable SDVOSB filter.
Emergency
The government can also award sole source contracts in emergency or disaster situations when there is insufficient time to complete a standard solicitation process. To access these contracts, we recommend ensuring you have elected to be included in the Disaster Response Registry when completing your SAM registration and registered in the FEMA Vendor Database.
DIBBS Solicitations
What They Are
The DLA Internet Bid Board System (DIBBS) is the primary site through which the Defense Logistics Agency purchases sustainment products for the Department of Defense. On average 2,000-5,000 solicitations are posted to DIBBS daily, making it the most active solicitation site in terms of the number of federal solicitations, although many are quite small.
Why They're Not in SAM
DIBBS solicitations smaller than $25,000 (the vast majority of them) are not required to be posted in SAM.
How to Find Them
Submitting bids through DIBBS requires a separate registration that can take several weeks to complete. All DIBBS solicitations are also available on HigherGov here, along with pricing and supplier intelligence.
Micropurchases
What They Are
Micropurchases represent the smallest awards that the federal government makes. The micropurchase threshold varies by type of contract but is $10,000 for most supplies and services. Awards below the micropurchase threshold have greatly reduced requirements for acquisition and the preferred acquisition method is via Government Purchase Card or P-Card.
Why They're Not in SAM
Micropurchase acquisitions are smaller than $25,000 and thus do not need to be posted to SAM.
How to Find Them
The tactics for finding micropurchase opportunities are typically very similar to finding sole source opportunities. However, an additional difficulty is that the government is not required to disclose the award of contracts under $10,000 (though many agencies do), making it more challenging to discover existing contracts.
Solicitations with an expected value of less than $10,000 can be found in HigherGov using the Value Range filter. As most micropurchases will not be solicited, those that may recompeted soon without a solicitation can be filtered using the Potential Value filter in the contract award search. Often the best approach for pursuing these non-solicited micropurchases is to market your services to the relevant contracting officers listed on the contract award page.
Niche Acquisition Sites
What They Are
Besides SAM and DIBBS, there are several other sites federal agencies will post solicitations to that will not appear in SAM. Some of these sites include Unison, FedConnect, JCCS, and SBIR.GOV.
Why They're Not in SAM
Many solicitations posted to these sites will also be cross-posted to SAM, but those expected to be smaller than $25,000 or have other exceptions to SAM posting, will not be. While most solicitations posted to these sites are small, they often see minimal competition and can be gateways to supporting new agencies or capabilities.
How to Find Them
Links to some of these sites are listed above. HigherGov also tracks these sites within our Federal Contract Opportunity Search.
Intelligence Community
What They Are
Many agencies in the intelligence community will post solicitations to SAM, but solicitations for sensitive programs will not be released to the general public. These competitive procurements are instead typically posted to the Acquisition Research Center (ARC).
Why They're Not in SAM
Agencies are not required to release solicitations on SAM when their disclosure would compromise national security.
How to Find Them
Access to these solicitations not posted to SAM is only available by registering in ARC.
A Few More...
Federal Subcontracts
In addition to the prime contracts covered so far, federal contractors award over $100 billion in subcontracts annually. There are many strategies for finding and pursuing subcontracts as discussed here.
Federal Grants
While the vast majority of the $1.2 trillion in grants awarded annually go to government agencies, universities, or other non-profits, approximately $30 billion each year is awarded to for-profit contractors. Grants available to for-profit companies can be found by filtering for grant opportunities where small and large businesses are eligible recipients here.
SLED Contracts
The state, local, and educational (SLED) market represents hundreds of billions in annual spending. SLED opportunities are posted by agencies across tens of thousands of different sites, though some states such as Virginia have statewide portals that cover many opportunities across those states. Opportunities from more than 40,000 SLED agencies can be searched here.
