To bid on a government contract, you register your business in SAM.gov, find solicitations that match what you sell, and submit a proposal that follows the solicitation’s instructions to the letter before the deadline. Federal agencies must publicly post most contract opportunities worth more than $25,000, so the pipeline is open to any qualified company willing to work through the process.1Acquisition.GOV. Part 5 – Publicizing Contract Actions Registration alone takes about two weeks, and your first bid package will be the hardest one you ever assemble. Everything after that gets faster.
Step 1: Register in SAM.gov
Every company that wants federal work must have an active registration in the System for Award Management. SAM.gov is free, and it is the single gateway for federal contracts, grants, and loan programs.2SAM.gov. About This Site No registration, no bids. Plan on at least ten business days after you submit your information before the registration is active, so don’t wait until a solicitation catches your eye to start.
During registration, SAM.gov assigns you a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), which replaced the old DUNS number as your company’s federal tracking number.3SAM.gov. Home You’ll also get a Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) code if you don’t already have one.4SAM.gov. Entity Registration Checklist Defense Department contracts require CAGE codes, and prime contractors often insist their subcontractors have both identifiers before joining a team.
You also pick the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes that describe what your business does. These codes categorize your company by industry and set the size standards that determine your small business eligibility.5U.S. General Services Administration. NAICS Codes by Domain The contracting officer assigns the NAICS code for each specific solicitation, so picking the wrong codes on your profile won’t disqualify you from individual bids. But your SAM profile is how agencies find you during market research. If your codes don’t reflect what you actually sell, you won’t show up when buyers go looking.
Your SAM registration expires every 365 days.6SAM.gov. Get Started with Registration and the Unique Entity ID If it lapses, you can’t submit new bids or receive payment on existing ones. Set a calendar reminder at least a month before expiration.
Step 2: Find Solicitations You Can Actually Win
Contract opportunities above $25,000 get posted on SAM.gov, and you can filter by NAICS code, agency, location, set-aside type, and dollar range.7SAM.gov. Contract Opportunities State and local governments run their own procurement portals with similar filters.
Not everything posted is a live solicitation. Sources Sought notices and Requests for Information are market research: the agency is checking whether capable companies exist before committing to a full procurement. You won’t win a contract by responding to these, but your response can shape the final solicitation. If enough qualified small businesses answer a Sources Sought notice, the contracting officer may set the eventual contract aside for small business competition. Ignoring these notices is a missed chance to influence how the work gets packaged.
If you sell commercial products or services, a GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract is a separate path. Schedule holders have pre-negotiated pricing with the government and receive orders through the GSA eBuy portal, where agencies post Requests for Quotes specifically to Schedule contractors.8GSA. eBuy Contractor User Guide Getting on a Schedule takes at least two years in business, a solid financial track record, and a lengthy application. Once you’re on, though, the sales cycle for individual orders is much shorter than competing on open solicitations.
Small Business Set-Asides
The federal government sets aside a significant share of contracts for small businesses, and several Small Business Administration certification programs create narrower competitive pools: service-disabled veteran-owned firms, women-owned businesses, economically disadvantaged firms under the 8(a) program, and companies in historically underutilized business zones. Eligibility depends on your annual revenue or headcount falling below the size standard for your specific NAICS code, and thresholds vary widely by industry.
Self-certify honestly. Misrepresenting your size or ownership status to win a set-aside contract is a federal crime with fines up to $500,000 and prison sentences up to ten years.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 645 – Offenses and Penalties
Step 3: Read the Solicitation Type Before You Write Anything
The type of solicitation dictates how the agency will evaluate your response and what your bid needs to include.
- A Request for Proposals (RFP) is used for complex requirements. The agency scores your technical approach, staffing, and past performance alongside price, and award goes to the “best value” offer rather than the cheapest one.
- A Request for Quotes (RFQ) is used for simpler, well-defined commercial products or services where price dominates. Common on GSA Schedule purchases.
- An Invitation for Bids (IFB) is a sealed-bid process where the contract goes to the lowest-priced bidder that meets all the technical requirements. No negotiation follows.
Every solicitation includes a Statement of Work or Performance Work Statement describing exactly what the agency needs, plus evaluation criteria that tell you how proposals will be scored. Read the evaluation criteria before you write a word. If technical approach is worth 60% and price is worth 40%, a rock-bottom price won’t rescue a weak technical proposal. Companies that skip this analysis waste real money preparing bids they have no chance of winning.
Step 4: Build the Bid Package
A federal bid typically has three parts: a technical volume, a price volume, and administrative documentation. The solicitation spells out exactly what goes in each. Deviating from those instructions is one of the fastest ways to get eliminated.
The Technical Volume
Your technical volume shows how you’ll do the work. It addresses every requirement in the Statement of Work: your methods, staff qualifications, management approach, and timeline. Evaluators score this against the criteria published in the solicitation, so structure your response to mirror those criteria section by section. Don’t make evaluators hunt for your answers.
Past performance is scored separately and carries real weight. The government looks at your track record within the last three years, or six years for construction and architect-engineer contracts, through the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS).10Acquisition.GOV. Subpart 42.15 – Contractor Performance Information If you’ve held federal contracts before, your CPARS record follows you. New companies without federal experience can usually submit relevant commercial project references instead; the solicitation will explain what qualifies.
The Price Volume
The price volume breaks down your costs in whatever format the solicitation requires. On a firm-fixed-price contract, you’re committing to a single number that covers all costs and profit. Underestimate and the loss is yours. On a cost-reimbursement contract, you’ll need detailed labor rates, material estimates, and indirect cost rates for overhead, general and administrative expenses, and fringe benefits. Proposed indirect rates may be subject to audit, and final rates must be submitted within six months after your fiscal year ends.11Acquisition.GOV. Subpart 42.7 – Indirect Cost Rates
Agencies often conduct a price realism analysis to check whether your number makes sense given the scope. Bidding unrealistically low risks financial loss and signals to evaluators that you may not understand what the work requires.
Forms and Certifications
Federal solicitations specify which standard forms to use. Standard Form 1449 covers commercial product and service acquisitions; Standard Form 33 is used for sealed bids and negotiated contracts.12Acquisition.GOV. Part 53 – Forms These forms require your UEI, business address, and an authorized signature certifying that everything you’ve submitted is accurate. A form filled out incorrectly or missing a required signature gets your bid thrown out during initial screening, before anyone reads your technical approach.
Your package also includes representations and certifications covering labor law compliance, environmental regulations, tax status, and organizational conflicts of interest. These aren’t boilerplate. False certifications carry real consequences.
If your company is not a small business and the contract is expected to exceed $900,000, or $2 million for construction, you must also submit a small business subcontracting plan setting goals for how much work you’ll flow down to small, minority-owned, veteran-owned, and woman-owned firms.13Acquisition.GOV. 19.702 Statutory Requirements Small businesses are exempt.
Step 5: Meet the Compliance Rules That Only Apply to Federal Work
Federal contracts come with regulations that don’t apply to purely commercial work. Two areas trip up first-time bidders more than any other.
Prevailing Wages
Federal construction solicitations include a Department of Labor wage determination setting minimum pay rates for every labor category on the project. Under the Davis-Bacon Act, you must pay workers at least the prevailing wage for their classification and post the wage determination where every worker on the job site can see it.14Acquisition.GOV. Construction Wage Rate Requirements Federal service contracts have a parallel requirement under the Service Contract Act, which sets both minimum wages and health-and-welfare fringe benefit rates.15eCFR. Part 4 – Labor Standards for Federal Service Contracts Price your bid using the wage determination attached to the solicitation, not your normal commercial pay rates. This is where many first bids go wrong.
Cybersecurity for Defense Contracts
Defense Department contracts increasingly require compliance with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, which rolled out its first phase in late 2025. Any contractor or subcontractor handling Federal Contract Information or Controlled Unclassified Information must meet a specific CMMC level as a condition of award.16Department of Defense Chief Information Officer. About CMMC Level 1 requires an annual self-assessment against 15 basic security requirements. Level 2 covers 110 requirements from NIST SP 800-171 and may require an independent third-party assessment. Level 3 adds advanced protections and a government-led assessment. Level 2 certification in particular takes months of preparation, so start well before bid time.
Step 6: Submit Through the Right Portal, Before the Deadline
Most federal bids are submitted electronically through the specific portal named in the solicitation. GSA Schedule orders go through eBuy. Other procurements may use an agency-specific system or accept uploads through SAM.gov. Some local government contracts still require physical delivery. Whichever method applies, the deadline is absolute.
Under FAR 15.208, a proposal received after the deadline is late and will not be considered, subject to narrow exceptions: for example, when a proposal transmitted electronically reached the government’s initial entry point by 5:00 p.m. one working day before the deadline, or when there is evidence the government had physical control of it before the cutoff.17Acquisition.GOV. 15.208 Submission, Modification, Revision, and Withdrawal of Proposals These exceptions are hard to prove in practice. Plan to submit at least a full day early. System crashes on deadline day are common, and contracting officers have no discretion to extend the clock for technical problems on your end.
Electronic signatures are acceptable on federal bids when the agency’s systems support appropriate authentication and confidentiality.18eCFR. 48 CFR 4.502 – Policy Most solicitations specify accepted signature methods. Follow those instructions exactly rather than assuming a typed name or generic e-signature will work.
What Happens After You Submit
Once the submission window closes, the contracting officer’s team evaluates every proposal that passes an initial responsiveness check. They score technical approaches, verify past performance, analyze prices, and assess each bidder’s responsibility, meaning whether the company has the financial stability, resources, and clean ethical record to actually do the work.
After the agency picks a winner and issues the notice of award, unsuccessful bidders on negotiated procurements can request a debriefing. For defense contracts, the request must be submitted in writing within three days of receiving the award notification.19Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 3304 – Post-Award Debriefings The debriefing must include the significant weaknesses in your proposal, the overall evaluated ratings of your offer and the winner’s, and the rationale for the selection. Take every debriefing seriously. The feedback is specific and directly useful for your next bid.
If you believe the agency made an evaluation error or violated procurement rules, you can protest the award. An agency-level protest challenging something in the solicitation itself must be filed before the bid deadline; for other grounds, you have ten days from when you knew or should have known the basis for protest.20Acquisition.GOV. 33.103 Protests to the Agency You can also file with the Government Accountability Office within ten days of learning the basis for protest, and a timely GAO protest generally requires the agency to withhold award or suspend performance while it’s pending.21Government Accountability Office. Bid Protests at GAO – A Descriptive Guide Pursuing an agency-level protest first does not extend your GAO deadline, so don’t let the clock run while waiting on an agency response if you plan to escalate.