Column: Looking outside the box

by Tom Johnson, publisher, Set-Aside Alert

We often make the point that the federal market is very transparent. Opportunities are published openly, as are contract awards. Acquisition regulations are available to anyone.

What we often do not realize is how much other information is available about the federal market. In order to target your marketing and sales efforts, look for other resources that describe the government and its activities, so you can spend time where it will count the most.

Real Estate

Let’s start with government buildings. Perhaps you sell landscaping or janitorial services, office supplies and furniture, or security services. Where does the government lease or own buildings? These could be your target markets.

The General Services Administration’s inventory of over 8,000 building leases is posted at www.gsa.gov/portal/content/156807. More than 8,300 properties are listed with geographic coordinates, lease payments, type of facility, percent devoted to office space, rentable square footage and government tenant agency. Are you interested in more than just leased locations?

Try GSA’s REXUS tool, hosted on the Data.gov website (https://goo.gl/bEbnQV), displaying over 22,000 owned or leased properties across the US. Identify a point of contact for each property, or search the list of regional inventory contacts.

Personnel

The federal government employs 2.6 million civilian employees and has 1.4 million personnel on active duty in the armed forces. For the civilian employees, the Office of Personnel Management maintains data on the counts by location, grade level, job function and other useful statistics in its Central Personnel Data File (CPDF). The file is accessible through OPM’s FedScope query tool at www.fedscope.opm.gov.

Be sure to read the “Getting Started” section and other usage information before trying to access this application. You may find it valuable to first email FedScope@opm.gov and describe the kind of search you wish to accomplish. They will then guide you through the FedScope query process to retrieve the data.

Using FedScope’s Occupational Category field you can target personnel by location and by job classification--such as medical clinicians, information technology specialists, or vehicle service technicians. If you are focused on finding locations in your operating area where employment is significant, this is the tool to use – you can search by state, county or city to hone in on the best places.

(Editor’s note: FedScope apparently is not compatible with Google Chrome. Internet Explorer seems to handle the underlying Cognos software without a problem.)

Fleets

Uncle Sam maintains a fleet of over 625,000 vehicles, not including combat vehicles. That amounts to one vehicle for every four civilian employees. Over 60% of these vehicles are trucks. Breakdowns by agency and type of vehicle are available in GSA’s annual Federal Fleet Report (http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/102859). The Homeland Security Department operates 53,000 vehicles nationwide.

Aircraft

Similar data is available for civilian agency aircraft in GSA’s Federal Aviation Interactive Reporting System (http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/104076).

The government operates 500 helicopters, 700 airplanes, 15 unmanned aircraft (drones) and one glider (owned by NASA). Interestingly, State Department operates the largest number of aircraft, while the Homeland Security, Justice and Agriculture departments are next largest, each with over 200 units.

Transportation

GSA also has Mail Management Records tables on mail management statistics (http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/235245). Use of courier services was a $1.1 billion expense for fiscal 2014. Veterans Affairs Department shipments totaled nearly $350 million last year, but when measured in pieces shipped, the Social Security Administration and Treasury departments took the lead. The majority of the pieces went by USPS, while UPS and Fedex carried less than 2% each.

Military Installations

The Defense Department has an online tool to identify domestic military installations that have features such as medical facilities, base housing, commissaries and exchanges. An overview of every installation is posted online at www.militaryinstallations.dod.mil.

You can analyze the on-post population, broken down by military, civilian and families. You also can find DOD schools, visitor security procedures, contact information, assigned units, auto shops, even fitness centers and golf courses.

Conclusion

These tools are just a small portion of the open source resources available to assist in your marketing and sales efforts. The more you know, the more targeted your efforts and the more likely your chances for success in the federal market. Invest some time to identify the sources of information specific to your market. The chances are great that they are hiding in plain sight.

Tom Johnson has focused on the federal contracting market since FPDS came into being. He can be reached at tjohnson@setasidealert.com. Let us know of your experiences and tips for finding useful information so we can share them (with attribution) with other small businesses.

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Column: Looking outside the box

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Correction: The Set-Aside Alert edition of Oct. 23 should have identified former House Speaker Rep. John Boehner as a Republican from Ohio. We apologize for the error.