For contracting officers and contract specialists
A vehicle claim is a public record and you would check it, so it is stated first: no multiple award schedule, no governmentwide acquisition contract, no agency-wide indefinite delivery contract of our own. What remains is real — a subcontract under a partner’s vehicle, a simplified acquisition inside your thresholds, or an agency contract — and this page describes each without dressing it up.
A requirement lands and the first question is not what is best. It is what can be executed inside the time and the authority available — and that eliminates most of the market before anybody is evaluated on merit.
Vendors make elimination slow. Capability statements describe reach rather than instruments, a partner relationship is described in language that reads like a held vehicle, and the honest answer to "what can we buy you through" arrives three meetings in, after somebody has already sunk effort into shaping a requirement around a company that cannot be reached.
Meanwhile the calendar is not yours. Funds have a period of availability, a fiscal year ends whether or not an award is made, and a continuing resolution can freeze new starts. A route that takes four months is not a route if the money expires in nine weeks.
And the risk is asymmetric in your direction. An award made through the wrong instrument, or a sole-source justification that cannot survive review, is your file and your name — not the vendor’s. So a route that is merely arguable is not attractive at any price.
The small-business and socioeconomic dimensions add another layer that vendors routinely misrepresent, and a misrepresented status is worse than an absent one because it becomes your problem during review.
A contracting officer cannot begin until they know which instrument is available, and vendors structure their material to defer that answer — so the elimination that should take a paragraph takes weeks.
This page exists to invert that. The answer is in the hero rather than in a meeting, and it is stated in the form you would check: instruments held, none; routes that exist, listed.
What we hold today: no multiple award schedule, no governmentwide acquisition contract, no agency-wide indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract of our own, and no pre-existing blanket purchase agreement. Registration and the ordinary representations and certifications are a different and lower bar, and holding those is not a vehicle — a company that implies otherwise is counting on you not to distinguish them.
What exists instead is four routes, each with real limits. A subcontract or teaming arrangement under a vehicle a partner already holds, where the prime carries the instrument and the flow-downs. A simplified acquisition inside your own thresholds, which is genuinely available for a bounded first scope and is the commonest honest starting point. An agency contract awarded through your own competitive process, on your timeline. Or a pilot authority, where your agency has one — which has its own page rather than being folded in here.
And there is a fifth answer we will give when it applies: not a candidate. Where a requirement attaches to an instrument or an authorization we do not hold, the useful thing is to say so during market research rather than to propose a structure around it and let you find out during evaluation.
Time to eliminate or shortlist this company — measured by whether the instrument answer was available before the first meeting rather than after the third.
Requirements shaped around an unreachable vendor — measured by count of requirements that had to be re-shaped after the acquisition route was established.
Market research defensibility — measured by whether the vendor’s stated position can be checked against the public record without a call.
Route fit against the period of availability — measured by whether the proposed route can complete inside the funds’ own clock, established at the start.
Surprises during review — measured by count of vendor representations that changed between market research and evaluation.
any vehicle, schedule, governmentwide acquisition contract, blanket purchase agreement, or set-aside eligibility beyond what our registration record shows. Nothing on this page should be read as a held instrument, and if a statement anywhere in our material implies one, this page is the correct one and that statement is wrong.
Under a teaming or subcontracting arrangement the prime holds the instrument and the direct relationship with the government, and the flow-down clauses come to us through the subcontract. We are a subcontractor in that structure and we describe ourselves that way in every document, because a subcontractor describing itself as being on a vehicle is the misrepresentation this page exists to avoid.
For a simplified acquisition the relationship is direct and the scope is bounded by your own thresholds. This is the commonest honest first step, and it fits the bounded first scope this architecture recommends anyway.
For an agency contract the timeline is yours and we do not shorten it. A vendor promising to compress your acquisition process is promising something that is not theirs to give.
And where a requirement attaches to a FedRAMP authorization, we hold neither an authorization nor a certification, so that is not a route and we will say so rather than propose a workaround.
Because a contracting officer can check it. Instrument holdings are public, socioeconomic representations are public, and a company that shades either one has told you what its other representations are worth. Leading with what we do not hold costs us conversations and buys the only thing that matters here, which is that everything else on this page can be believed.
It also costs us specific opportunities and we would rather pay that early. A requirement that must be executed through a schedule this quarter is not a requirement we can serve, and the useful moment to say that is during market research.
Every representation we make to the government is made in the public record and repeated consistently in every document. Where a status is registered, we describe it as registered. Where a relationship exists with a prime, we describe ourselves as a subcontractor.
And on assurance: an independent SOC 2 Type II attestation is in progress and no report exists yet, so nobody can be handed one. That is stated the same way here as everywhere else, for the same reason.
Market research documentation is the first thing, and it should be able to stand on the public record rather than on our statements. This page is written so that a contracting officer can cite what we do not hold and verify it independently.
For a subcontracting route, counsel and the contracting officer will want the flow-down position in writing. We accept flow-downs through the subcontract and we do not negotiate them into vagueness; where a flow-down is one we cannot meet, that is said before the teaming agreement rather than after award.
For a simplified acquisition, the file needs a defensible basis and a bounded scope. The bounded first scope this architecture recommends independently tends to fit inside those thresholds, which is convenient rather than accidental.
And the assurance position goes in the file plainly: no authorization held, no equivalency claimed, deployment inside a boundary the agency already authorized where that route applies.
One bounded observation or administrative scope, sized to fit a simplified acquisition or a subcontract line under a partner’s existing vehicle, with the deliverable and the measurement written before award.
Sizing the first scope to an existing route is not a sales tactic — it is the only structure in which the acquisition question does not dominate the engineering question. A first scope that requires a new instrument has made the instrument the project.
The bounded observation phase this architecture recommends everywhere tends to fit inside simplified acquisition thresholds, which means the first engagement can be executed on a timeline that matches a period of availability rather than outrunning it.
If your requirement genuinely needs an instrument we do not hold, the right answer is that we are not a candidate for that requirement now, and you should have that answer before you shape anything.
No. No multiple award schedule, no governmentwide acquisition contract, no agency-wide indefinite delivery vehicle of our own, and no existing blanket purchase agreement. Registration and current representations are a different and much lower bar and we hold those, but they are not a vehicle and we will not describe them as one. If your requirement must be executed through a schedule this quarter, we are not a candidate and that answer belongs in your market research file rather than in a later meeting.
Then that sentence is wrong and we would like to correct it. Under a teaming or subcontracting arrangement the prime holds the instrument; we are a subcontractor to them. Those are different positions with different flow-downs and different accountability, and a subcontractor described as being on the vehicle is a misrepresentation regardless of who wrote it. Ask us in writing and the answer will be the same as the one on this page.
You should not, unless the bounded first scope is worth it on its own terms. That is why the recommended first engagement is sized to a simplified acquisition — an observation phase that produces a measurement your agency keeps whatever happens next, with no new instrument required. If that measurement is not worth a simplified acquisition to you, the honest conclusion is not to proceed, and no vehicle would change that.
Then the period of availability should size the scope rather than the other way round, and it is the first thing to establish. A simplified acquisition for a bounded observation scope is the route most likely to complete inside a short clock; an agency contract is not. If neither fits the time remaining, the right answer is to wait for the next period rather than to compress a scope into something that cannot deliver a real measurement.
We tell you during market research and we do not propose a structure around it. We hold neither a FedRAMP authorization nor a FedRAMP certification and claim no equivalency, so any position requiring one is closed. Where deployment inside a boundary your agency has already authorized is permissible for the requirement, that route exists and is described precisely rather than gestured at — and where it is not permissible, we are not a candidate.