The government writes down why you did not get a shot
When an agency buys without competing it, the law makes them publish a justification. It names the company. It cites the authority used to skip competition. It states the value, how long the sole source runs, and what they will do to make the next one competitive. It is the most candid document the federal government publishes about a market, and every platform in this category treats it as one more notice in a feed.
openness 61 of 99: a door exists here
A lock with an expiry printed on it
Sorted by the date it was posted, a justification is news, and news about a door that already closed. Sorted by the date the lock comes off, the same records become a calendar, and the top of the list is the set of requirements somebody can still do something about.
That is the entire difference, and it is the difference between a record you read and a record you act on. A justification posted last Tuesday for a sole source running to September 2029 is not something that happened. It is a deadline three years out, published today, by the buyer.
The list holds the justifications posted in the last three years, and each new one as it is posted.
- Who is locked in, at which office, under which authority
- For how much, and until when
- What the agency said it would do to open it up next time
- And whether the same company has been justified there before
next buy expected Dec 14, window Nov 28 to Jan 9
The authorities, and how much daylight each one leaves
| Authority | What it says | The honest read |
|---|---|---|
| FAR 6.302-1 Only one responsible source | One company can meet the requirement and nothing else will do. | The most common and the most contestable. It usually rests on data rights, tooling, or a qualification nobody else was offered the chance to earn. The question to ask is what it would take to qualify, and to ask it before the next justification is written. |
| FAR 6.302-2 Unusual and compelling urgency | Competing it would seriously injure the government, so they are going direct. | Time-limited by design. These are supposed to cover only the period needed to compete properly, so a follow-on competition is the expected ending rather than a possibility. |
| FAR 6.302-3 Industrial mobilization or expert services | Keeping a capability or a facility alive. | Rarely open to a newcomer on the same requirement. The useful read is which capability the agency is paying to keep in existence. |
| FAR 6.302-4 International agreement | A treaty or a foreign government directs the award. | Not contestable on the merits. The buyer did not choose and cannot choose differently. |
| FAR 6.302-5 Authorized or required by statute | A law directs it, for example an 8(a) sole source or AbilityOne. | The route in is the programme rather than the requirement. An office using 8(a) direct awards is telling you how it prefers to buy. |
| FAR 6.302-6 National security | Disclosing the requirement itself would compromise national security. | Expect little detail. The value of the record is that the office and the money are still visible. |
| FAR 6.302-7 Public interest | The head of the agency determined that competition is not in the public interest. | Very rare, and it requires notice to Congress. Worth reading when you see one. |
| FAR 8.405-6 and 16.505(b)(2) Order-level justifications | One order on a schedule or a multiple-award contract placed without a fair shot for the others. | Narrower than a full justification: it limits one order, not the market. The lesson is usually about the vehicle rather than the requirement. |
| FAR 13.106-1(b) Single source under simplified acquisition | A small buy solicited from one source because only one is reasonably available. | Low value and routine. Useful in bulk as a map of which offices buy direct. |
The citation decides, never the wording
Justifications are written in boilerplate, and the boilerplate lies by accident. The phrase "only one responsible source" turns up in documents that go on to cite a completely different subsection, so a reader built on prose returns the wrong list with total confidence.
So the authority here is taken from an explicit citation and nothing else. A statutory citation is translated rather than stored as itself, because 10 U.S.C. 3204(a)(1), the older 2304(c)(1) and the civilian 41 U.S.C. 3304(a)(1) all mean FAR 6.302-1, and somebody filtering on one should see all of them. That translation is a fixed table in law, not a guess.
a score with no reasons is a horoscope
A field the document did not state is left empty
The failure modes here are not symmetric. A justification with no incumbent shown is a row you skim past. A justification showing the wrong incumbent sends you to the wrong company to ask about teaming, and you find out in the meeting. So the incumbent comes from the notice's own award block first and from text only when it names the company in that role, the value is taken from a figure the document calls a value rather than the largest number on the page, and anything not stated is shown blank rather than estimated.
One is an event. Three is a relationship.
A single justification says a requirement went uncompeted once. Several to the same company from the same office says something else entirely: the barrier is structural rather than circumstantial, and turning up at the next solicitation will not be enough on its own.
Every justification here shows the others naming the same company, so the pattern is visible on the page rather than something you would have to assemble by hand across years of notices.
The move is almost never a protest
A justification is not a loss. It is a dated statement that one company holds a requirement, with a published account of why nobody else can do it yet, and a paragraph the FAR obliges the agency to write about what it will do to change that.
The useful move is to read the barrier, fix it, and be qualified before the next justification is written. That happens a year before the lock ends rather than at the end of it, which is exactly why a calendar beats a feed.
- Read the barrier in the words the agency used
- Find the contracting officer on the same notice
- Watch the company, so the next justification arrives as an alert
- Put the expiry in the pipeline, not in your memory
the filter nobody else offers is the last one
This is not legal advice
Protest deadlines are measured in days and the rules are unforgiving. Nothing on this site is legal advice, and if a protest is where you are headed, that conversation belongs with counsel rather than with a database.
Where it is in the app
Sole source, under Intelligence in the menu, in Companies and records. Intelligence is the part of LastAwarded that finds the market, one of the eight parts.
Related
- Incumbent profilesEverything else the company holding it has been paid.
- Recompete radarThe other kind of expiry worth a calendar entry.
- The way inWhether the office behind it ever lets anybody new in.
- Contracting peopleWho to ask what it would take to qualify.
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.