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Forecasting of federal opportunities is a time consuming project that may or may not be worth it for businesses. There are many paid software programs out there that can provide the yearly forecasts much quicker and easier than most federal contractors can do on their own. It is the opinion of Schemtosh Consulting, LLC that you should know how and where to forecast opportunities on your own before deciding to spend the money for someone else to do it for you. In this blog we will walk you through the process of forecasting federal opportunities for contractors.

Step 1:
The first step in federal forecasting is to decide what agencies to target. If you have done business with the VA in the past then you probably want to know what opportunities they are putting out this year. Try to compile a list of federal agencies that might purchase your product or services. You can find data by keyword on which agencies spent the most through the following link: https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/AdvancedSearch.aspx

Step 2:
Now that you have identified the agencies that spend the most based upon your keywords you will want to visit their website to find their procurement forecasts. Many of these forecasts are published between December 1st and February 28th, or the governments major planning phase. As an example, I can provide a walkthrough the Department of Veteran Affairs on how to find potential opportunities for medical supplies.

Go to www.google.com.
Search Department of Veteran Affairs Procurement Forecast.
Look for the hit that shows Entire VA FCO Query and click on it.
From here you have a series of drop down menus that allow you to search by year or classification code, pick the appropriate ones for your business.
Download the forecast.

Step 3:
Now that you have the procurement forecast, what can you do with it now. At Schemtosh we will highlight the opportunities that we think are most pertinent to our clients. Once we have identified all of the opportunities we like to reach out to the contracting officer if listed and ask them if they know when the opportunity is going to come out and where they might post the opportunity. This helps us know when to keep an eye out and possibly be ready to bid this opportunity before anyone else can.

There is a lot more information you can focus on besides just the opportunity and contracting officer. You can see estimated amount of opportunity or where it might be procured from. If you find this process too tedious and don’t want to pay some software company specifically to forecast opportunities for you, feel free to reach out to us and we can help make this information profitable for your company.
steve@schemtoshconsulting.com
(740)525-8664