561210: Facilities Support Services

What this code covers

561210 is for providing an integrated combination of support services to operate a client’s facility: custodial, maintenance, grounds, security, food and administrative work delivered together under one contract. The combination is the point. A firm doing only janitorial work belongs in 561720, and one doing only guard work in 561612.

In federal work this is the base operations support code, and it covers some of the largest recurring service contracts the government awards. One contract can carry a dozen distinct service lines across a whole installation, which is why these are usually multi-year awards with options and are rarely competed more than once every five years.

What federal buyers typically ask for

The Service Contract Act applies to almost all of it. A wage determination attached to the solicitation sets minimum wages and fringe benefits by labor category and locality, and on a base operations contract that determination is most of the price. Reading it before pricing is not optional, and a change to it during performance is a price adjustment you are entitled to ask for.

Expect a phase-in plan, a quality control plan and a performance work statement measured against a quality assurance surveillance plan with deductions attached. Past performance on a contract of comparable size and scope is usually the decisive evaluation factor, which is the barrier for a firm that has done the work but not at that scale.

Because the awards are large and long, the recompete is the whole opportunity. A base operations contract coming up in eighteen months is the single most valuable thing a firm in this code can know, and teaming to build the past performance on the current one is the usual route in.