When talking to new businesses seeking Federal contracting opportunities, EZGovOpps is often asked about searching by a “Place of Performance.” While targeting opportunities by geographic preference can be productive, there are some pitfalls to using this for your search criteria.
Across the Federal landscape, every solicitation released is required to list a place of performance for that opportunity in federal databases. Often, contracting offices will put down their own location as a place of performance, rather than the actual location. Certain contracts are more likely to be listed like this, such as IT-related opportunities. As such, those looking for new contracting opportunities must be careful when using this search criteria.
For example, contracts awarded through the US Army Corps of Engineers, for construction services, are typically denoted with the proper place of performance. The Army Desktop and Mobile Computing 3 (ADMC-3), on the other hand, which was just awarded to 9 companies last month, is a $5 billion procurement vehicle for commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) IT equipment. Because this opportunity required IT deliveries to multiple locations both within the Continental United States (CONUS) and outside of CONUS (OCONUS), the Place of Performance listed in the procurement systems was actually the default address for the headquarters for Army Contracting Command – Rock Island (ACC-RI), the contracting authority.
While on the subject of CONUS and OCONUS, it is worth noting that the Federal government rarely indicates if a place of performance is within CONUS. However, when searching for opportunities, if OCONUS is mentioned as a place of performance, you can confidently take that to mean that services will be performed overseas, with particular locations listed in the contracting requirements.
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