Every guide says talk to the contracting office. Here is the list.
The people who write the notices are named on them, with a title, a mailbox and a phone number, published so that suppliers can ask questions before a deadline. Until now you could see one on one notice. Now you can search all of them.
printed on every notice, never searchable until now
Who buys this, at this office, right now
One row per person per office: their title, how to reach them, how many notices they have put out, how many of those are open today, the codes they buy under, and when they were last seen.
Open a person to see everything they have published, what is open now, the codes they work in, and the others at their office. Search by name, title, mailbox domain, office, agency, or the NAICS codes they put out. Filter to people with something open today.
- Search by name, title, email domain, office or code
- See who at an office actually runs the buying, by volume
- Their open notices, with deadlines, in one place
- Only what a notice published, nothing enriched
How one person stays one person
A government mailbox is stable and unique, so where a notice carries one it is the identity. Case differences resolve to the same person. Where there is no mailbox, the identity is name plus office, which means two people who share a surname at two different commands never merge into one record.
Where someone changes title or moves office, the newest notice wins. Two notices on the same day are a tie, and a tie keeps the more specific title rather than letting whichever was read last overwrite it.
Boundaries
This is business contact information the government publishes on solicitations so that suppliers can ask questions. It is not enriched and it is not matched against anything else, and it never touches vendor or member details. Contracting staff rotate, so a person drops out of the index once they have had no notice for three years: a stale contact is worse than no contact.
The small business specialist for the office that buys what you sell
Every guide tells a new supplier to talk to the small business specialist. None of them tells you who that is for the office that actually buys your work, and the department-wide small business office is one mailbox covering two hundred buying offices.
The answer is on the notices. A contact block often names somebody whose title says exactly what they do: small business specialist, small business professional, procurement center representative. Filter the directory to that role, or open a buying office and they are at the top of the page, because they are the one thing on it you can act on today rather than a record of what the office has already done.
Where no notice from an office has named one, the page says that, rather than showing an empty list. An office that has not published a name and an office with nobody are two different things, and only the first one is what the record can show.
Before you email
Read the notice and every amendment first. Ask one specific question rather than requesting a general conversation. Attach a capability statement only where it fits what they buy. Questions are usually due well before the response deadline, and the answer is posted to everyone, so ask early.
See sources sought and RFIs for the step where this matters most.
Where it is in the app
Contacts, under Capture in the menu. Capture is the part of LastAwarded that decides what to pursue and wins it, one of the eight parts.
Related
- Buyer profilesThe office itself: what it buys and from whom.
- The capability statementWhat to send, and what to leave out.
- ForecastWhat they are likely to buy next.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Open it with a plan.