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Federal Market Intelligence for Small Business |
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News analysis:Small biz awards to hit heights at end of FY2015Boost seen in final week, dayFor the last five years in a row, the final week--and the final day--of the government’s fiscal year have brought in surges of small business contracting awards, according to an exclusive analysis by Set-Aside Alert. Assuming those trends continue, small contractors are likely to experience peaks in awards in the final days of fiscal 2015, which ends on Sept. 30. Several research studies have shown that the fourth quarter of the fiscal year generally is the busiest quarter for federal contractiors. Federal agencies rush to obligate their allocated funds before the funding expires. There also have been studies suggesting that federal contracting activity generally peaks in the final days before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30th. Set-Aside Alert investigated whether that trend applies to small business awards in particular. Set-Aside Alert tracked small business awards on the Federal Business Opportunities website for each week in the fourth quarter of the last five fiscal years. We also looked at the final day of each fiscal year. In each fiscal year, the number of such awards hit their highest level in the final week from Sept. 23 to Sept. 30, after rising fairly steadily throughout July, August and the early weeks of September. For example, in the last seven days of fiscal 2014, small business awards jumped to 2,311, which was seven times the number of such awards in an average week. The final week of fiscal 2014 accounted for 13.5% of all small business awards reported on the website for the entire fiscal year. That was the highest number and highest percentage of such awards in a single week within the fourth quarter for the last five years. Here are the number of small business awards reported in the last seven days of the fiscal years 2010 to 2014, and the percentages of the fiscal year totals rounded off to the nearest percent:
The last-week surge also has become stronger in the last five years relative to the average week, Set-Aside Alert discovered. In fiscal 2010, the final week small business awards were five times more in number than in the average week that year. By fiscal 2014, the number of last-week awards had risen to seven times the number in the average week. Set-Aside Alert also looked at the increases in awards in the final day of each fiscal year. For the final day of fiscal 2014--which was Sept. 30, 2014--there were 470 small business awards reported. That was 10 times more than in the average day that year. While that was very high, it ranked behind the last-minute surge two years before. There were 518 small business awards announced on Sept. 30, 2012. That was 12 times the daily average and the peak of the five-year period. With the end of fiscal 2015 looming in the next few weeks, Set-Aside Alert examined how small business awards to date compared with previous years. For the period of Oct. 1, 2014 to Aug. 24, 2015, there were 14,242 small business awards published on FBO.gov. That was the highest number of such awards for that period of the last five years. That compares with 14,139 for the same period in fiscal 2014; 13,749 for the same period in fiscal 2013; 13,712 for the same period in fiscal 2012; 12,627 for thes ame period in fiscal 2011; and 13,499 for the same period in fiscal 2010. Those numbers suggest that fiscal 2015 small business awards are likely to reach highs this year.
(Editor’s note: Set-Aside Alert looked at all small business award notices on FBO.gov, which we consider to be a general indicator of small business awards. However, those are only awards over $25,000; many small business awards are not listed on FBO.gov.)
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