Document content

Why you care

Not all sections are created equal: You don’t have time to read the entire solicitation right off the bat, in fact you don’t want to, there is a lot of content in there that is bureaucratic and a distraction early on
Targeted reading: The good news is that early on you just need to read about 1/10th of the total doc

In theory every solicitation should contain the following sections neatly marked with clear headers:

Part I-The Schedule
1. A Solicitation/contract form:
2. B Supplies or services and prices/costs
3. C Description/specifications/statement of work
4. D Packaging and marking
5. E Inspection and acceptance
6. F Deliveries or performance
7. G Contract administration data
8. H Special contract requirements
Part II-Contract Clauses
1. I Contract clauses
Part III-List of Documents, Exhibits, and Other Attachments
1. J List of attachments
Part IV-Representations and Instructions
1. K Representations, certifications, and other statements of offerors or respondents
2. L Instructions, conditions, and notices to offerors or respondents
3. M Evaluation factors for award

In theory: In theory every solicitation should contain the following sections neatly marked with clear headers:

Searching based on award number: Option two is to get the award number out of USAspending, and then look for that award number in SAM.
1. You have to do the same hyphen-adding guessing game
2. If you find a matching award record you will need to open that award record and look for a notice ID, and then search based on that

If there is no solicitation or award number match: A frustratingly large number of records in USAspending are missing their solicitation number and there is no match on the award number. If this happens you need to collect a basic of data-points to triangulate in on the right records in SAM:
1. Get the NAICS code
2. Get the PSC code
  1. A note on PSC codes, USAspending uses a four character PSC code (e.g. PSC: ####), SAM historically used a 1-2 character PSC code (e.g. PSC ##). So you may need to try both in SAM
3. Get the Agency name
4. Get the Sub-agency name
5. Get the award date & the solicitation date:
  1. A note on dates: you will want to put a range into SAM for the award date & the Solicitation date
6. Get the set-aside
7. Get the winner’s cage code
Finding a match in SAM: Once you have this information put it into sam.gov and select award records and read the titles. Hopefully one of them is a good match, and looks like the record you are looking for

If you are on on Growth Plan or higher FedScout automatically identifies the most likely Current Contract/ incumbent and any other highly similar contacts