Recent Posts In: Federal Government Contracting

Let’s Celebrate National Small Business Month

 

Top Small Business Federal Contractors - 2020

May is National Small Business Month and we at Fedmine want to honor the close to 30 million small businesses and those individuals who run them. After all, we are a small business ourselves. 🙂

What better way to kick off the month than to look into the data and trends for those small businesses that work with the federal government. We have a reporting suite within Fedmine that shows the Top Small Business Federal Contractors as well as the Top Small Business Federal Contracting Agencies who award government contracts. For FY20, the top small business prime contractor is Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc. based in Florida with close to $500M in awards. The second company on this list, Modernatx, Inc. based in Massachusetts has $430.30M in awards so far. Interestingly, they did not perform nearly as well in previous years. Taking a deeper look, I realized that they were awarded a contract for development of a COVID-19 vaccine by HHS. This accounts for the entire $430.30M. Here is the award as well as the associated solicitation for the vaccine. Let’s hope they develop one that works and FAST!

The other 4 small businesses that round out the top 5 for this FY are T-Rex Consulting Corporation, Atlantic Diving Supply and RER Solutions, Inc. Both Atlantic Diving Supply and T-Rex Solutions, LLC were in the top five for FY19 as well.

Top Small Business Federal Contractors - 2020

Looking again at the top 5 for this year, RER Solutions, LLC is another small business that is winning COVID-19 related awards. They won a $360M award from SBA for data analysis and loan recommendation services for COVID-19. Wow! Fedmine’s federal spending and opportunity data comes direct from the source, FPDS-NG and beta.SAM.

Moving onto the next report which highlights the Top Small Business Federal Contracting Agencies. Since FY17, Defense agencies account for over half of the awards made to small business prime contractors, with Army consistently leading the pack. The top civilian agency is Department of Veterans Affairs, followed closely by HHS and DHS.

 

 

Federal Agencies by Category

 

In regards to total awards made to small businesses, this FY* so far, there have been approximately 1.2M total actions totaling $42.62B awarded to around 60k companies. Check out the list of the top 200 HERE. It’s interesting to see that only $8.12B of this was set-aside, which is around 20%. Comparing this to last year’s numbers of close to 3M total actions totaling $140B awarded to over 90k companies. Do you think small businesses will finish this FY with more awards? We all know COVID-19 is greatly impacting all businesses, but especially small, so it will be interesting to see how the rest of the year pans out.

*note that there is a 90 day lag in Defense reporting which affects the FY20 numbers

Written by, Lindsay Carry, Fedmine.us

 

FedBizOpps Will Be Retired After Veterans Day Weekend 2019

As of November 12, 2019, Federal Business Opportunities, the website for publishing all public government procurements, will be officially decommissioned. After Veterans Day, the authoritative source for federal solicitations will be under a page on beta.SAM.gov. According to the current timeline from the General Services Administration (GSA), the current FBO.gov site will enter a “data freeze” beginning on November 8. During that freeze, no new procurement data will be uploaded to the site as it is fully decommissioned over the holiday weekend. Beginning on November 12, all federal procurements will be posted on beta.SAM.gov under the “Contract Opportunities” tab.

Users will have to use an existing account through Login.gov or create a new one, in order to get full use of the new opportunities site. The Contract Opportunities site will have most of the same capabilities as FBO.gov, with some additional bells and whistles. For example, the new site will allow users to choose between more filter options, including by solicitation type and four-digit product services codes.

The new site will also users to download search results and individual notices directly and will have access to new APIs that will replace the ftp.FBO.gov capability.

Non-government users—vendors—also will have to do some initial legwork to ensure their current watch lists and other settings migrate to the new site:

  • Confirm FBO account details such as what notices are being watched, what’s in the Search Agent, what attachments the account can access and which vendor lists include the account.
  • Create your SAM.gov account through Login.gov with a business or federal email.
  • No need for roles. The system will automatically give non-government users permission matching the legacy “vendor” role.
  • Check out the new workspace, including the account’s profile, opportunities being followed and saved searches.

Users who forget about the transition will still be able to use the FBO.gov link, which will redirect to a landing page with additional information about the new Contract Opportunities section. GSA is also offering a host of resources to ease the transition, including an official fact sheet, transition guides for federal users and administrators, FAQs on system accounts and federal hierarchy, video tutorials and quick-start guides for users, administrators and contractors, among others.

The SAM.gov site itself is still in beta as more functionality is shifted from the old awards management site. GSA says the site is expected to come out of beta in fiscal 2020 as the final capabilities from the legacy SAM.gov site are migrated over.

Sources (Open):

https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/10/fedbizopps-will-be-retired-after-veterans-day-weekend/160748/

https://beta.sam.gov

https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/FBO_Is_Transitioning_to_Beta_Factsheet_%281%29.pdf