Monitor FedBizOpps

One way to find bid leads is through FedBizOpps, the official web site listing of all federal government contracting opportunities and awards over $25,000. Federal agencies are required by law to post their contracting opportunities over $25,000 here.

Through this single point of entry, government buyers can post bids soliciting the products and services they need directly to FedBizOpps via the Internet, while commercial vendors seeking to sell their products and services to the government can search, monitor, and retrieve these bids.

Work Smart The FedBizOpps system includes an e-mail notification service that lets companies looking for government business fill out a subscription form in order to receive e-mail notification of new bids that match the criteria they have selected. Companies can specify the agency, buying office, location, supply or service codes, etc. that they are interested in.

While the General Services Administration (GSA) is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the system, the content of the notices is the sole responsibility of the agency that has issued the notice.

All federal procurement offices are required to announce in FedBizOpps virtually all proposed procurement actions over $25,000. Government agencies are also required to publish information on subcontracting opportunities, including the names and addresses of firms awarded contracts over $25,000 that are likely to result in subcontracts.

There are exceptions to the notice requirements. For example, FedBizOpps usually does not list procurement notices when the supplies or services are classified or are required immediately due to an emergency.

Many procurement announcements are reserved for, or "set aside," for small businesses, minority-owned businesses, women-owned firms, and veteran-owned businesses and they are listed as such.

FedBizOpps postings cover both services and supplies that the federal government wants to purchase, plus the information you need to make an informed offer, including:

• the specific service or product wanted
• the buying agency
• the due date for offers
• the phone number of the agency contact
• the addresses for obtaining complete specifications
• links to related sites

Think of FedBizOpps as a classified ad section for the government. Since FedBizOpps is updated every business day with new notices, it is to your advantage to look for new "ads" everyday, just like you would in a newspaper. You don't want to miss a new opportunity.

Warning One of the common misconceptions that some small business owners have about FedBizOpps is that it posts every buying opportunity that the government has. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Remember that the only bids listed on FedBizOpps are those for $25,000 or more, and those account for only a small fraction of the total amount of bids that the government puts out. To find bids in all ranges, consider registering with a PTAC or a commercial bid service.

Get to Know FedBizOpps

While the government continues to enhance the capabilities of FedBizOpps and to make it easier and faster to use, finding your way around the site can be tricky and sometimes confusing.

The official manual explaining and illustrating the system can be found at the FedBizOpps Vendors Guide index page. You can view the manual onscreen or download it from that site. Make sure you go over the entire manual carefully and check each web page, as you go, so that you know where you are and what you are looking at.

It may take some time and effort to get to really know the FedBizOpps system, but it is worth it in the long run. The site contains lots of useful information, including synopses of government solicitations for products or services, actual solicitations, Requests for Proposals and Quotations, sources being sought, market surveys for government planning purposes, amendments/modifications, and award notices.

The search system has many useful options, allowing you to refine your searches, with just a click of your mouse, to a particular date range, classification code, place of performance, agency, etc. Once again, the time you spend trying out and learning about the search features will be time well spent.

Remember that finding what you need on any search system is always easier if you feed it "good" keywords -- in the case of FedBizOpps, words that describe the products/services that you provide (or are capable of providing) and the correct product/service codes. If you find that your searches and/or the e-mail notification service are not retrieving bids that relate to the types of products and/or services your company provides, don't just give up. Go in and change your search criteria, trying different keywords and product/service codes.

If you are looking for subcontracting work, try searching FedBizOpps for awards. Use criteria similar to what you would use when searching for prime contracting opportunities. You can find out the award winner, dollar amount and point of contact. You then can search CCR for more details about the company receiving the award. This is a great marketing tool.

Warning The look and functionality of the FedBizOpps site can change without notice, so it's in your best interest to keep up with any enhancements or changes in how the site works, what information you have to provide, etc. The "Find Business Opportunities" page on FedBizOpps allows searching by many different categories, including award number, date, zip code, set-aside code, procurement classification, NAICS, and federal agency. Online bidding through FedBizOpps is becoming more commonplace. Soon it will be considered "regular business" to use FedBizOpps to complete your bid information, fill in your prices, and send in your offer to the buying location by simply clicking on the "Submit" button. (This feature first began to appear on some Requests for Quotes.) Bids are usually reviewed in the order in which they are received. If you are the successful bidder, you will be notified.

Classification Codes

Notices of contract opportunities that appear in FedBizOpps are arranged by Federal Supply Groups (FSG). These classification codes are divided into two groups:

• service and product codes (alpha or alpha/numeric)
• supplies, equipment, and material codes (numeric)

When you look at the Federal Supply Classification (FSC) code, it is derived from the Federal Supply Groups (FSG). The FSG is the first two digits of any of the FSC codes.

These are broken down into:

PRODUCT SERVICE CODE (PSC): The (PSC) Group by the lettering system provides the product and service codes that will be used in the Federal Procurement Data System.

The following material provides an example of how this classification system works. We suggest that you look it over closely because using FedBizOpps to find opportunities requires a working knowledge of the system in order to narrow down your search.

The Letter "C" is the service code for Architect and Engineering Services - Construction. Under "C" are the following subcategories:

ARCHITECT AND ENGINEERING SERVICES (C) ARCHITECT AND ENGINEERING SERVICES - CONSTRUCTION (C1) BUILDING AND FACILITY STRUCTURES (C11)

C111 Administrative and Service Buildings
C112 Airfield, Communication and Missile Facilities
C113 Educational Buildings
C114 Hospital Buildings
C115 Industrial Buildings
C116 Residential Buildings
C117 Warehouse Buildings
C118 Research and Development Facilities
C119 Other Buildings
NON-BUILDING STRUCTURES (C12)
C121 Conservation and Development
C122 Highways, Roads, Streets, Bridges, and Railways
C123 Electric Power Generation (EPG)
C124 Utilities
C129 Other Non-Building Structures
ARCHITECT AND ENGINEERING SERVICES - GENERAL (C2)
C211 Architect - Engineer Services (including landscaping, interior layout, and designing)
C212 Engineering Drafting Services
C213 A&E Inspection Services (non-construction)
C214 A&E Management Engineering Services
C215 A&E Production Engineering Services (including Design and Control, and Building Programming)
C216 Marine Architect and Engineering Services
C219 Other Architect and Engineering Services

So if you are an architect and you only work on inspecting services you will fall under C213. This will help you define your search profiles and give you a better hit rate. FEDERAL SUPPLY CLASSIFICATION (FSC):

The (FSC) Group by the numeric system presents the classification structure of the Supplies and Equipment Codes, showing all groups and classes listed. The FSC is divided into 78 groups, which are subdivided into 685 classes. Each class covers a relatively homogeneous area of commodities, in respect to their physical or performance characteristics, or in the respect that the items included therein are such as are usually requisitioned or issued together, or constitute a related grouping for supply management purpose.

For example:

25 Vehicular Equipment Components
26 Tires and Tubes
27 Unassigned
28 Engines, Turbines, and Components
29 Engine Accessories

Now let's look at #29, Engine Accessories. The subcategories are:

ENGINE ACCESSORIES (29)
2910 Engine Fuel System Components, Nonaircraft
2915 Engine Fuel System Components, Aircraft and Missile Prime Movers
2920 Engine Electrical System Components, Nonaircraft
2925 Engine Electrical System Components, Aircraft Prime Moving 2930 Engine Cooling System Components, Nonaircraft
2935 Engine Cooling System Components, Aircraft Prime Moving 2940 Engine Air and Oil Filters, Strainers, and Cleaners, Nonaircraft 2945 Engine Air and Oil Filters, Cleaners, Aircraft Prime Moving
2950 Turbosuperchargers and components
2990 Miscellaneous Engine Accessories, Nonaircraft
2995 Miscellaneous Engine Accessories, Aircraft

You may wonder why we provide so much detail on these codes. Well, if you're going to do a search of the FBO site or you're going to get on a automated bid service of any kind, it's worth your while to get at least the first four codes down to narrow your search. Remember the first four numbers are the beginning of the National Stock Number, which specifies an "exact" product for the government.

When you are looking for active solicitations it's much easier to find what you need by "restricting" the search profile, after all the government wrote over 10,000,000 contracts last year, do you want to go through all of them?

While the General Services Administration (GSA) is responsible for the operation and maintenance of FedBizOpps, it is the contracting officer, not GSA, who determines the appropriate classification code for a particular notice. Therefore, the contracting officer is the one held responsible if a notice of a contract is misclassified and, as a result, fails to effectively notify the firms most likely to respond.

To search for opportunities using classification codes, go to the FedBizOpps website and click the "go" button next to "Find Business Opportunity" on the home page. Scroll down to "Search by Procurement Classification Code" where you will find a list of codes. Scroll through the list and highlight the code of interest to you. Scroll to the bottom of page and click the "Start Search" button. This will bring up a listing of leads.

There are two manuals available that can give you information to better identify your areas of interest. These are the Federal Supply Classification Cataloging Handbook and Handbook H2, from the Defense Logistics Information Service.

Numbered Notes

When you read a posted notice in FedBizOpps, you will often see references to numbered notes within the text. (For example, you may see such phrases as "Notes 12 and 26 apply" or "See Note(s) 22 and 23.")

The purpose of these numbered notes, which are similar to footnotes, is to avoid the unnecessary repetition of information in various announcements. Whenever a numbered note is included in a notice, the note referred to must be read as part of the item or section in which it appears.

Among the Business Tools is a listing of the Numbered Notes used by the federal government to abbreviate contract postings. The file is in rich text format (RTF) that is suitable for use with most word processing programs used in the Windows environment.

Potential Sources Sought

You can use FedBizOpps to find special advance notices of procurement opportunities by searching for "potential sources sought" in the system. At the FedBizOpps home page, click "go," scroll down to "Full Text Search" and enter the search term: potential sources sought. Scroll down and click the Start Search button to get the list.

These synopses provide you with an opportunity to submit information that will permit your capabilities to be evaluated while allowing the government to gauge interest in possible contracts. Responding is very important if a particular community (e.g., small businesses, minority-owned small businesses, women-owned small businesses, or historically black colleges and universities/minority institutions, etc.) desires a set-aside. The decision to set a project aside is often made on the basis of responses received to these Potential Sources Sought synopses.

If you want to be on the ground floor of a buy, this is the place to start. More and more government buyers are using "sources sought" to find qualified pre-bidders or to pre-qualify bidders for a project. It saves them lots of time.

Some contractors view this effort as a waste of time, preferring to concentrate on actual live leads. But you would be surprised at the amount of contracting that is secured this early in the process.

Business News

You can also use FedBizOpps to find out about important upcoming meetings and conferences dealing with federal procurement activities, including pre-proposal and bidders' conferences. These meetings are great places to market your capabilities, identify the competition, and structure potential teaming arrangements.

At the FedBizOpps home page, click "go," scroll down to "Full Text Search," and enter the search term: special notice. Scroll down and click the Start Search button at the bottom of the page. Check the "Title" area to locate the notices of interest.

Work Smart Remember as you look through synopses in FedBizOpps that each one identifies a buying office and a personal contact. What a great marketing tool! If the item or service isn't exactly what you sell, you still have a contact to call to learn more about the buyer's needs.