Research Federal Contracts In 3 Easy Steps

Performing market intelligence is essential when pursuing government contracts because you don’t want to walk into the federal marketplace blindly.  You need to be able to know what agencies buy what you sell and how often.  There are several reasons why you perform your market research but in this article I am just going to focus on the what and how often. 

You have the option of using different sites to properly get the job done, but I normally like to use the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) because it is the most currently up to date in contract sales and it doesn’t require you to register in order to create a contract action report.  FPDS is free to register and free to use, whether you decide to register in the system or use the EZ search engine. 

FPDS is a central system used to maintain up to date information for contract actions made by all federal agencies.  You are able to create and view reports listed by a wide range of categories such as contract type, agency code, agency name, or NAICs code. To locate FPDS visit  www.fpds.gov. The system is not difficult to use you can create reports in three easy steps, take a look:

  1. Visit www.fpds.gov
  2.  Look towards the middle of the page in the EZ search engine and type in your product, service, or NAICS code.
  3. Press enter and all contract actions made in that category appear.

To sort by date look to the right of the page under, “Sort by” and select, “date signed”    On the left side of the page you will find the top 10 agencies that have awarded contract actions within that supply or service, the top 10 vendors that have received those awards, and the top 10 treasury account symbols (TAS).  The TAS numbers are provided to identify the types of appropriations used on contracts and give public insight on the use of taxpayer dollars.

If you need a report that can be produced via pdf or excel by using the buttons provided at the top or bottom of the screen.

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“Ilene Giles is an expert with GSA contracts and its processes and she has helped contractors worldwide in winning more federal business with a GSA contract. Get her FREE CD “Top 3 Things You Should Know When Applying for a GSA Contract” at www.GSAProposalMaven.com