Looking for expiring contracts

Overview of USAspending.gov

• https://www.usaspending.gov/search
• Types of contracts: Every contract and payment that the government has made for the last 20 years.
• Our two cents:
  • This is one of the top 3 government website
  • It is missing a few key search features that would have made it #1
  • The data in here can be overwhelming, so see the data guide

Finding contracts a competitor has that are expiring on USAspending.gov

1. Award Type: If you are a new company you probably want to restrict your search to
   1. “Contracts” and sub-selection:
      1. Purchase Orders
      2. Definitive Contracts
   2. If you are a more experience company you probably want to include Contract IDVs
2. Recipient: Put in the name of the company you want to research

Topic search for expiring contracts on USAspending.gov

1. Keyword: Enter a relevant keyword
2. Year: We recommend selecting the last six fiscal years
3. Award Type: If you are a new company you probably want to restrict your search to
   1. “Contracts” and sub-selection:
      1. Purchase Orders
      2. Definitive Contracts
   2. If you are a more experience company you probably want to include Contract IDVs
4. Location: If you only want to see contracts in your area enter a value here under place of performance
5. Award amount: Think about the biggest contract you could handle. Its fun to dream about winning a $10M contract, but if you are a new vendor winning a contract that size would literally bankrupt you, so:
   1. If you want to prime put an upper bound of maybe $2M
   2. If you are ok subbing put an upper bound of about $10M
6. Product or service code: We encourage you to select the product or service code that aligns with the type of work you do. At the very least we recommend choosing product or service depending on what you sell
7. Contract pricing: If you are a new vendor then we encourage you to select Firm Fixed Price. Any other option is difficult for new vendors to manage

Understanding the data

1. When you run a search you can look at the results individually. However, this is an extremely tedious so we encourage you to download the data and identify promising opportunities in excel
2. Download the data
   1. Awards or transactions: Transaction level information is likely more detailed than you need so we recommend selecting awards
   2. Everything: You have to choose to get all the information about the awards you are researching
3. Looking at the excel: In excel you are looking for a few key fields
   1. Potential End Date: This is the day that the contract is likely to end. Assuming it is a reasonably large contract the RFP is likely to come out a year prior. As such we encourage you to identify contracts that end in 12 to 24 months
   2. Recipient: This is the current winner and they are the most likely to win a follow on contract. So if you are open to being a subcontractor this is the company you want to subcontract to
   3. Description: A short description of each contract