By Kevin Plexico, Senior Vice President of Information Solutions at Deltek
With fiscal year 2023 behind us, companies can quickly take a deep breath and recover from what is, for many, the busiest time of year in the government contracting market. But very quickly, companies must pivot to the new fiscal year. It is the time to reset and focus on growth and determine which major procurements to pursue to lay the foundation for success in the years ahead.
Each year around this time, GovWin’s analyst team helps to set up government contractors for success by publishing reports and webinars on the top opportunities in the federal government for the upcoming fiscal year. This year’s reports include analysis of the top 20 unrestricted opportunities, the top 10 set-aside opportunities, the top 10 professional services opportunities and the top 10 architecture, engineering and construction, or AEC, opportunities in the federal market.
What’s unique about this year’s top federal opportunities?
At the beginning of every fiscal year, our team of analysts identify the top upcoming federal contracting opportunities, sourced from our GovWin IQ database. These bellwether opportunities are determined based on the total expected contract value or the anticipated ceiling value. Since the start of October, we have been releasing these findings through our popular series of webinars and reports.
Each year the top federal opportunities account for billions of contracting dollars. Recently, we’ve seen a trend of industry participation consolidating, despite the overall growth in contracting. I noted this last year as a factor that played a part in the top FY 2023 opportunity list.
The number of firms receiving federal awards is declining despite significant increases in federal spending. Consolidation is driven by a few factors, including:
- Agencies adopting IDIQ contracts to speed up buying and leverage purchasing power, which offers fewer vendors prime positions.
- Barriers to entry becoming higher for many contractors, driven by rising contract compliance requirements (CMMC, subcontracting, HR/Finance requirements, etc.).
Another factor driving the top opportunities this year is growth in small business contracting, which is occurring more rapidly and more consistently than with larger businesses. Since 2011, our researchers have seen a 49 percent growth rate in small business contracting, compared to 24 percent growth in the ‘other than small’ category. In addition, small business contracting has also shown much more stability than contracting with ‘other than small’ businesses.
The different types of top opportunities for FY 2024
Our research team has assembled a high-level overview of FY 2024’s top opportunities that companies should carefully consider in order to ensure their growth in the years ahead. We broke the top opportunities down into four categories: unrestricted, set-aside, the aforementioned AEC and professional services.
Unrestricted federal opportunities
Unrestricted opportunities are available to all government contractors. These procurements are often the most complicated but can provide access to billions of dollars in task order opportunities for many years.
Some of the names of contract opportunities that appeared in our recent report of Top 20 Unrestricted Federal Opportunities for FY 2024 will be familiar to most in the industry as many are follow-on procurements to existing contracts. The top three that we identified in this report each had an estimated value of $75 billion or more, including:
- Community Care Network Next Generation, or CCN NEXT GEN, from the Department of Veterans Affairs
- Solutions for Enterprise-wide Procurement VI, or SEWP VI, from NASA
- ALLIANT 3, from GSA
Federal set-aside opportunities
Set-aside opportunities are reserved for small businesses as a way to reserve a part or the entirety of a government contract for a small business. Agencies have varying ways of awarding these types of procurements to provide participation opportunities to companies from various socioeconomic categories.
We noted the Top 10 Federal Set-Aside Opportunities for the year ahead in this report from Deltek’s industry-leading research team.
Architecture, engineering and construction opportunities
AEC opportunities can come in many forms, whether they are an agency seeking an architecture and engineering firm to advise on capital requirements and project considerations, or a private company working for the government on a major construction project for a new headquarters, hospitals, civil works or military facilities.
This report goes into detail on the Top 10 Federal AEC Opportunities for FY 2024.
Professional services opportunities
Professional services opportunities can come from federal government agencies and departments requiring assistance with business operations, management consulting, personnel and HR services, with marketing related services such as advertising and PR, as well as legal and accounting services.
FY 2024’s Top 10 Professional Services Opportunities can be found in this report.
What proactive government contractors should do next
After identifying the top opportunities available in federal market and determining which of those might be a good fit, your business will be ready to build a strong pipeline early to lay the foundation for success in the years ahead.
Some of the next steps that businesses are taking to succeed in this current contracting environment are focusing on strategic teaming initiatives, investing more in business development and using tools like GovWin IQ to find relevant government contracting opportunities to increase their pipeline.
If your company is targeting federal unrestricted, AEC, professional services or set-aside opportunities, and you are preparing to pursue one or more of these top opportunities in the coming fiscal year, you may want to arm yourself with the following information:
- Spending trends within your target markets
- Procurement patterns anticipated for the coming year for the agencies utilizing the contracts
- Detailed intelligence to help you build a strong pipeline
More specific details on how these trends and opportunities may affect your business are easily found in our complimentary, on-demand Top Opportunities webinar series – and you can download the corresponding reports as well.
