How we calculate the numbers

Short version: we take the official federal award records, keep the construction and facilities contracts, and show the middle price, the number of bids and the winners. Below is exactly how.

Where the data comes from

Every number comes from USAspending.gov, the official public record of federal spending (public domain). We download the contract award records for six industry codes (NAICS):

238220: Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors (HVAC & Plumbing)
238210: Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors (Electrical)
236220: Commercial and Institutional Building Construction (Building Construction)
237990: Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction (Heavy & Civil Construction)
561210: Facilities Support Services (Facilities Support)
561720: Janitorial Services (Janitorial & Custodial)

We include contracts, purchase orders, task and delivery orders, and BPA calls. We refresh the data every month. FedComps is not affiliated with the U.S. government.

One row per contract

Each award is counted once, with the date it was first signed. Its federal fiscal year (October to September) never changes when it is modified later. Charts show every year since FY2016; the headline numbers use the last 5 complete fiscal years.

The price: value at award

We compare contracts by their value at award: the base value plus options exercised when the contract was signed. Later changes (extra work, more options) are not mixed in, so a price reflects what the agency agreed to at the start. When the signing record has no base value we use its first obligation, then the current contract value. When we have no signing record at all, the only value reported is the contract's value after later changes: such awards are listed with the badge "Value after changes" and left out of price and bid statistics.

What is left out of the prices

Cancelled or $0 awards and net de-obligations: listed with a badge, left out of every statistic.
Equipment purchases (product codes that start with a digit): not labor, so left out of prices.
Work overseas: left out of location pages and flagged on office and agency pages.

What remains are the priced awards used for medians, ranges and shares.

Medians and minimum sizes

We show the median (the middle award) only with at least 5 priced awards.
Ranges ("half were between …") and percentages need at least 10 awards.
Below that we say "Not enough data" rather than show a shaky number.
We never trim outliers and never lead with totals. An award is marked "Unusually large" when it is above the national 99th percentile and over $10M.

How many bid

The bid count is the number of offers the agency reported. Zero and 999 or more are treated as "not reported"; more than 100 is flagged and left out of the median. Bid numbers use contracts that were open to bids plus task orders under multiple-award contracts. Orders under single-award contracts are left out, because nobody else could bid on them. When an order does not report offers, we may show the offers of its umbrella contract, marked "from the IDIQ". We always say how many awards reported a number ("reported for 41 of 52").

Competition and set-asides

Competed: A standalone contract that was open to bids.
Not competed: Sole-source: only one company was asked.
Order (multiple-award IDIQ): A task order placed under an IDIQ held by several companies, who competed for it.
Order (single-award IDIQ): A task order under an IDIQ held by one company. No new competition, so it is left out of bid statistics.
Not reported: The agency did not report how the contract was competed.

Small business: Only small businesses could bid.
8(a): Reserved for firms in SBA's 8(a) program for disadvantaged small businesses.
Veteran-owned: Reserved for service-disabled veteran-owned (SDVOSB) or veteran-owned (VOSB) small businesses.
HUBZone: Reserved for small businesses in a Historically Underutilized Business Zone.
Woman-owned: Reserved for woman-owned small businesses (WOSB/EDWOSB).
Indian / tribal: Reserved for Indian-owned or tribal enterprises (Buy Indian Act, ISBEE).
Open to all: No set-aside: any size of business could bid.
Not reported: The agency did not report a set-aside.

A blank set-aside is shown as "Not reported", never as "Open to all".

Matching awards to bases and VA centers

Location always means where the work is done (place of performance), not where the company is. An award counts for a base when its ZIP code lies inside the base boundary or on a reviewed list of base ZIP codes. Defense awards can only match military sites, VA awards only VA medical centers, and Coast Guard awards only Coast Guard bases. Some matches are approximate and get the badge "Approx. location": a match by city name alone, by a ZIP code that also covers the surrounding town or is shared with another site, or by a base list we have not reviewed yet. If we cannot place an award at a base, it still counts for its metro area and state. Renamed bases are listed under their current name, with the former name shown.

Awards near me

The awards near me tool measures straight-line distance from the center of your ZIP code (Census ZIP code areas) to where each award's work is done: the base or VA center it was matched to, otherwise the center of the work's ZIP code. A few ZIP codes, such as PO-box-only ones, have no area of their own; for those we measure from the center of the 3-digit ZIP area and label the result "Approximate (ZIP area)". Each award also says where the work was: the base or VA center it was matched to (by its usual short name, such as MCAS Cherry Point), otherwise the city and state the award lists as its place of performance.

HVAC versus plumbing

Both trades share one industry code (238220). We split them by the product/service code first, then by words in the description. Awards that could be either stay on the combined "HVAC & Plumbing" pages only.

How fresh the data is

Agencies report awards with a delay. The Department of Defense publishes its contract data with a 90-day delay, so we treat the last 100 days of defense data, and the last 30 days of other agencies' data, as provisional. Provisional years are hatched in charts and left out of year-over-year comparisons. See data status for the current dates.

Recompetes

We list recurring work (facility support, janitorial, maintenance and repair services) whose current contract ends within the next 18 months, plus multiple-award umbrella contracts whose ordering period ends then. One-time construction projects are never listed as recompetes.

Contractors

Companies get a page when they won at least 3 awards in the last 10 years. We do not make pages for sole proprietors, and we never show phone numbers or officer names. To ask for a removal, use "Report an error" below.

Badges in the awards tables

Cancelled / $0: Nothing was obligated, so it is left out of all statistics.
Negative value: Net de-obligation; left out of all statistics.
Overseas: Work performed outside the U.S.; left out of location pages.
Equipment purchase: A product code (equipment, not labor); left out of price statistics.
Provisional: Recent award: agencies, especially DoD, may still report or correct it.
Unusually large: Above the national 99th percentile and over $10M.
Check offers: More than 100 offers reported; left out of the bid median.
Offers from IDIQ: Offer count comes from the parent IDIQ, not this order.
Date issue: The reported end date is before the start date.
Approx. location: Approximate: matched by city name, by a ZIP code that also covers the surrounding town, or by a base list not yet reviewed.
Value after changes: Value after later changes – the original award value was not reported. Left out of price statistics.

Words we use

Median: The middle award: half were smaller, half were larger.
Offers (bids): How many bids the agency received.
Set-aside: A contract reserved for a group of businesses, such as small or veteran-owned firms.
IDIQ: An umbrella contract with no fixed quantity. The agency places task orders under it as work comes up.
Task order: A job placed under an IDIQ. Only the IDIQ holders can bid on it.
Value at award: The contract value when it was signed (base plus exercised options), before later changes.
Recompete: Recurring work whose current contract ends soon, so the agency will likely buy it again.
Provisional: Recent data that agencies may still add to or correct (DoD reports with a 90-day delay).
NAICS: The industry code the agency assigned to the contract.
PSC: The product or service code that describes what was bought.
UEI: The 12-character Unique Entity ID every federal contractor has in SAM.gov.

Found a mistake?

Use "Report an error" at the bottom of any page. We fix the rule behind the mistake, not just the one row.