Mayday! Beware the Coming Storm! | Growth in Government Opportunities

In the next 90 days, between today and May 1st (May Day), the Federal Government will bring in $61B worth of proposals. Are you ready?

Whitespace Innovations is a business growth mentoring firm that specializes in helping large and small businesses to strategically locate and penetrate winnable Federal government opportunities across a broad spectrum of development and technical service procurements. We built our business by responding to the dynamic environment of Federal procurements and changing budgets. Today, we all live in a tumultuous time for Federal contracting, and the average company is not ready for what is happening in the Federal business space. Are you ready?

According to Deltek’s GovWin service, which tracks much (but not all) of the emerging procurements and awards, there are about 16,000 business opportunities worth over $1.2 trillion. This does not account for most IDIQ task order opportunities, Government-Wide Area Contract (GWAC) task orders, Other Transaction Authority (OTA) opportunities, or any state and local business opportunities. In other words, there’s a lot of work coming in Federal, state, and local governments that GovWin knows nothing about. But since GovWin is the most common business forecasting tool for Federal opportunities, let’s use that as our guide to gain a general idea of what’s transpiring in the Federal contracting space.

Of the 16,000 opportunities tracked by GovWin, almost half—7,684—will come “due” in the next 90 days. That includes forecast Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and solicitations that are currently in work, which have turn-in dates by or before 1 May, or which will award by 1 May. Nearly half of all procurements tracked by GovWin will be due or will be awarded in the next 90 days. Of that number, 2,311 opportunities are yet to be released as an RFP and will hit your inbox before the 1st of May. Are you ready?

This confluence of Federal spending is created by at least two forces, perhaps three. First, the Government shutdown that was resolved in early 2019 led to a massive number of procurements being held back during the winter of 2018-2019, and subsequently, the Federal government could not get all of those procurement actions resolved within the 2019 fiscal year. Billions of dollars of spending were reallocated to account for the inability of acquisition teams to get the monies on contract. Second, the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in December 2019 meant that—for the first time in many years—we have a real defense budget and no Continuing Resolution (CR). That is great news for the defense acquisition corps across the six services, and they are rushing procurements to get monies on contract as soon as possible. Those two forces notwithstanding, the booming economy also has reinvigorated a broad assortment of military and agency business opportunities, and it’s an excellent time to be a Federal contractor. Are you ready?

Whitespace Innovations has written 165 proposals in the past five years with a 58%-win rate. Throughout that time, we have never encountered a 90-day period as chock-full of opportunity as we face in the next 90 days. As an example of how this new burst of business has impacted us at Whitespace, we have eight prime bids and four subcontracting proposals in work today that are all due before May 1st. Proposal teams are stretched to the limit, our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are contributing from all across the nation, email inboxes are overflowing with calls for help from clients in need of assistance—and we were ready!

Our solution? Lots of advance planning—and our secret weapon, the OneTeam software platform for Federal contractors. Our advance planning began months ago as we anticipated Federal funding for dozens of delayed programs. We used OneTeam as a convenient and affordable tool to capture customer requirements, document call plans and win themes, and to create a factored pipeline of new business opportunities. That pipeline, highlighted in our OneTeam dashboard, forecasted the coming storm. Like a weather radar informing a ship of approaching inclement weather, we could see what was developing as we linked our OneTeam to GovWin downloads, searched the System for Award Management (SAM) and Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) using the OneTeam links, and built a plan of attack for teaming with key business partners.

Now we are in the throes of a dozen bids, every one of them due in the next 90 days. In the past, we dealt with overflowing email inboxes where teaming partners fed us their data calls, submitted capability matrices, transmitted multiple versions of writing assignments, and participated in proposal reviews. But not today. OneTeam streamlines our entire process, with web-based invitations to contribute to online submissions of capability matrices, and online writing assignments that are uploaded and integrated into MS Word documents. We compose the proposals inside OneTeam, we edit and integrate them inside OneTeam, and we collaboratively review them in the OneTeam environment. We leave our email inboxes free for Chinese and Russian phishing emails and spam from Nigerian vendors—while our critical proposal information resides safely in the Microsoft cloud under strict cyber controls.

The storm is no longer on the horizon… the onslaught of potential Federal business is here today. The next three months will be your busiest in years, if you are prepared to wade into the maelstrom and chase a huge amount of potential Federal work. We caution all of our customers to be wise in this opportune but difficult time. Work smarter, not harder. Check out OneTeam and build your Federal business inside an easy-to-use and affordable structure that optimizes precious time. That’s how we do it. And it works.

Are you ready? The old excuse of “we have nothing to bid” won’t work today. The storm is upon us. Charge into that storm with confidence. Plan ahead, prioritize your bids around what is essential and what is best aligned with your business. Say “no” to any efforts that distract you and pour yourself into your work. And get OneTeam. Weather this storm and win.

Are you ready? We are.