The contracts you have to be on before you are allowed to bid
Most federal money never passes through a competition anybody can watch. It leaves as an order written against an IDIQ, a GWAC, a schedule or a blanket agreement that somebody won years ago, and an order does not appear on SAM.gov at all. If you are not on the vehicle, you were never in the competition, and nothing you can search will tell you that.
the only date a company on the outside can plan around
A vehicle is a thing you can search
A vehicle is not a field on an award. It is a contract with a life of its own, and the questions worth asking about it are not questions about any one order: who is getting the orders, which offices are writing them, and whether your line of work is on it.
So every vehicle on record here has a page of its own. The list finds a vehicle by any code it has carried, not only by the one it was solicited under.
- IDIQs, GWACs, schedules, blanket purchase agreements and basic ordering agreements
- Found by any code the vehicle has carried
- Every company that has received orders under it, with its share
- Which of your codes it carries
closer = ends sooner, bigger = larger last award
Who gets the orders, from which offices, in which years
A vehicle page shows every company that has received orders under it, each with its share. It shows the orders by buying office and by fiscal year, and the first orders by year. It shows which of your codes the vehicle carries.
One company is counted as one company. The federal record spells the same firm five ways, so every company is resolved by UEI, then CAGE, then a normalized name before anything is counted.
- Every company with orders under it, and its share
- Orders by buying office
- Orders by fiscal year, and first orders by year
- Which of your codes it carries
UEI, CAGE, then normalized name
What is on file for a vehicle, and what is not
A vehicle whose own record is on file also shows its ceiling, what is left of it and when it ends.
A vehicle known only from its orders says so. Its page shows what the orders show.
A vehicle with four years left can have been dead for three
The end date does not tell you whether a vehicle is being used. Plenty of them run for years after the last order was written, and chasing a place on one of those is a wasted quarter. Every vehicle is marked by whether an order has actually been written against it recently, not by what its dates say.
The orders themselves are listed too, with what they were for and which codes they were written in. A large vehicle usually carries one broad code it was solicited under while the work under it splits across a dozen, and that list is what tells you whether your line of work is on it at all.
- Marked quiet when no order has been written in two years, whatever the end date says
- Every order under the vehicle, with its date, its code and its amount
- The codes the orders were really written in, not just the one it was solicited under
- Where the vehicle has its own record on file, how much of the ceiling has been ordered
Why this is the answer to "why do I keep losing work I never saw"
A supplier watching SAM.gov sees the solicitations. They do not see the orders, because orders go to the companies already on the vehicle and are never posted. So an office can look like it barely buys anything in your code while spending tens of millions a year in it. The capture recommendation now says this outright: where most of an office's money in a code leaves as an order rather than a competition, the pursuit worth planning is a place on the vehicle, and the date to plan around is the vehicle's.
What actually happened to the contract
Every action against a contract is on record: the base award, each modification, what it did and what it obligated. Option exercises are counted separately, because an option exercised is the clearest signal there is that the buyer is satisfied and the recompete is further away than the end date suggests.
The award page shows the full action history with dates, modification numbers and amounts, so the number you see is the number that was actually paid rather than the one the contract started at.
- Every modification with its date, number and obligation
- Option exercises counted, because they move the real end date
- Total obligated across every action, not just the base
- The last action date, so you can see a contract going quiet
Why this changes a recompete date
A contract with unexercised options left is not recompeting when its current period ends, it is very likely being extended. A contract whose options have all been exercised is. Reading the period of performance without reading the modification history is how a capture plan ends up six months out of date.
Where it is in the app
Vehicles, under Intelligence in the menu. Intelligence is the part of LastAwarded that finds the market, one of the eight parts.
Related
- Recompete radarWhat is ending, scored.
- Award historyThe awards themselves.
- What it goes forWhat these orders actually cost.
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.