In This Week’s Newsletter:
- Opportunity Spotlight of the Week: GSA SP4
- Four To Follow: Four Interesting Pursuits
- Capture Corner: Get the Rates Before You Promise the Work
- Pricing Insights: Pricing Tools in Federal Contracting
Opportunity Alert – GSA SP4
Contact Katie: katie.clatterbuck@hinzconsulting.com
General Services Administration (GSA), Next Generation of the GSA SmartPay 4 Master Contract (SP4).
On September 14, 2026, the Contracting Office released an RFI and Draft PWS, asking for interesting parties to provide responses on the requirement of providing a full-service and innovative commercial charge card and payment program accessible and delivered world-wide. Responses are due no later than 7:00PM ET on October 5, 2025. This $70B IDIQ is still estimated for release in October 2027 with a potential award date in November 2028. Reach out to Hinz Consulting for Capture Management, Competitive Analysis, Price to Win, or Proposal support, and continue to monitor SAM.gov and NUWC Newport acquisition forecasts for updates on this opportunity.
Four to Follow
- Department of Navy, Gateway Modem Engineering Support Services. The Navy has a need for SATCOM Gateways support such as project management, software engineering, equipment and material support, systems engineering, system cybersecurity, technical support, system implementation and integration, test and evaluation, configuration management, lifecycle logistics, asset management, site programming circuit network collection, mapping, navy multiband terminal (NMT) antenna support and training support. This Small Business Set-Aside $50M RFP is estimated for release via SeaPort NxG by December 2026, with an estimated award date of June 2027. Continue to monitor SAM.gov and your SeaPort NxG portal for updates on this opportunity.
- US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), Joint Special Operations Forces Training and Readiness Support (JSTRS). USSOCOM has need of a contractor to provide a team comprised of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) with deep knowledge of SOF and partner organizations, proficient in key training tools such as the joint training system, joint training tool, defense readiness reporting systems, universal joint task list, and joint lessons learned information system. The 8(a) Set-Aside $242M is set for release via OASIS+ 8(a) around November 2026 with an award set for April 2027. Continue to monitor SAM.gov and your eBUY portals for updates on this opportunity.
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Spectrum Resource Management Engineering Programmatic Support (SRM-EPS). NASA requires expertise in regulation management, engineering, budget formulation and execution, public engagement, and program support. Functional areas include spectrum management, programmatic resources, software application development, data management, policy and strategic communications, and administrative support. This $135M Small Business Set-Aside IDIQ is set for release in November 2026 with an award date in March 2027. The competition type is currently unknown. Continue to monitor SAM.gov for updates on this opportunity.
- Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US Coast Guard (USCG), Engineering and Technical Support Services for Surface Vessel Design Sustainment and human Systems Integration 2027 (HIS). USCG requires lifecycle management of surface assets from concept development through disposal, including acquisition of new cutters and boats, maintenance and upgrades of existing vessels, and management of vessel configuration and performance data. This $100M Small Business Set Aside is set for release via OASIS+ SB in January 2027, with an estimated award timeframe of June 2027. Continue to monitor SAM.gov and your eBUY portals for updates and changes of the procurement timeline on this opportunity.
Get the Rates Before You Promise the Work
Contact Nick: nick.mccauley@hinzconsulting.com
Here is a capture moment that might feel familiar.
You get the teaming agreements signed. On paper, you have a winning team. The exhibit has clean workshare targets. Leadership relaxes. Then the rate cards come in, and the bid you thought you had just became too expensive to win. The workshare you promised no longer fits the price you need. Now you are renegotiating with people who already believe they are locked in.
That is not a teammate problem. That is a timing and sequencingproblem.
Capture managers often rush the signature to show progress, or because they are excited about how much stronger the team suddenly looks. If you have small daughters (or are just a fan of Disney princesses), you already know this story. It is Anna in Frozen, falling in love with Prince Hans after one day. The duet is great. The due diligence is not.
Every capture is a bit different, and every teammate brings their own quirks. The process below is still a repeatable set of steps you can run on most pursuits so the rug does not get pulled out from under you.
When this starts The window is capture, often months before final. Rarely the week the proposal calendar hits your inbox. The requirement is real enough that you have passed your internal pursue gate and can sketch lanes of work. You should have had customer conversations, a sources-sought, an industry day, or a draft RFP.
A draft RFP is a hypothesis. Scope moves. Labor categories get added or removed. Place of performance changes. Price can suddenly matter more than technical. A 20 percent workshare that made sense on the draft can be the wrong number the day the final drops. You cannot fully lock the team off a draft. You also cannot wait for perfect information.
Step 1 — Nondisclosure agreement: Sign it as soon as the conversation gets specific. Before you map who owns which part of the job, trade resumes, or talk dollars. If you are drawing the map, this step is already late.
Step 2 — Lanes of work, not a committed percentage: Assign the work you can see as swim lanes: program management, engineering, cybersecurity, test, field support. That is enough to price against something real. It is not enough to trap either side when the final RFP rearranges the job. Committed workshare percentages feel like progress at this stage. They are often just a future fight.
Step 3 — Rates against those lanes: If you can, get fully burdened rates, what sits inside the rate and what does not, escalation, and any floor they will not go below. Be honest with potential teammates: the rates inform the workshare decision.
Many subcontractors will say they will never give rates until they know their target workshare. On a price-sensitive bid it hurts both sides. A percentage with no rates is a guess. Rates with no lane of work are also a guess. The honest trade is: here is the work we think you own on this draft, here is a rate card against that work, and here is a target workshare we revisit when the final drops.
If a partner will only talk workshare and will not even provide ballpark rate ranges, they are asking you to promise volume before they tell you what that volume costs. That is not partnership. It is foreshadowing how they will behave for the rest of the bid if you keep them on the team.
Step 4 — Price the team as a set: One late or expensive teammate does not sit in a box. Their rates change the labor mix, the small-business story, and what you can still offer the next partner. If you lock Company A at a rich workshare before you have Company B’s rates, you have already spent workshare you may need for the company that actually fills the gap. Teaming is a portfolio, workshare and price have to clear together.
Step 5 — Teaming agreement, with a lookback: Sign when the rates, the lanes, and a revisable workshare can live in the same document. Put the dated rate card in the agreement. Call the percentage a target based on the current draft. Build in a lookback when the final RFP hits — or when scope, place of performance, or evaluation criteria materially change. Keep the right to resize workshare, change the labor mix, or walk if the team price stops being competitive. Let the sub see their piece of the pricing. Do not give them a veto over the whole bid.
They will push on that language. Push back while you still have options. Once the proposal writing schedule is live, you are negotiating with your own calendar.
Step 6 — Reopen at final RFP: When the final lands, rerun the same math: lanes, rates, compliance, total price. If the requirement changed, the target workshare can change. That is not bad faith. That is capture catching up to the government.
Don’t leave the ending to chance: A hard workshare percentage with no rates is a promise you cannot price and a promise you might not be able to keep. A rate card after the first color review is a problem you scheduled..
Define the work you can see as early as you can, price that work, and only provide committed workshare targets once you confirm a teammates rates will work with your price.
Pricing Tools in Federal Contracting
Contact Dr. Tom: thomas.hudgins@hinzconsulting.com
Pricing a federal bid is not the same as pricing a product. The number has to survive a contracting officer, a competitive range determination and, on larger awards, a DCAA audit. The toolset reflects that.
Microsoft Excel remains the backbone. Rate build-ups, basis-of-estimate worksheets, staffing models and cost volumes are still assembled in spreadsheets, because they adapt instantly to whatever format the solicitation demands. The risks are equally well known: broken formulas, competing file versions, and no clean audit trail when someone asks how a number was derived.
ProPricer, acquired by Deltek in 2024, is the purpose-built alternative. It manages labor categories, CLIN structures, base and option periods, escalation, and layered indirect rates covering fringe, overhead, G&A and fee. Its what-if capability matters most in the final hours of a bid. A separate government edition helps agencies evaluate what contractors submit. Newer cloud-based entrants are now bundling pricing into the wider capture and proposal workflow.
Behind the proposal sits the accounting system. Deltek Costpoint and Unanet GovCon maintain DCAA-compliant job cost records and indirect rate pools, so provisional and forward pricing rates flow into bids from audited history rather than from memory.
Market intelligence is largely free. GSA’s Pricing Intelligence Suite on buy.gsa.gov, including the CALC+ tools, exposes awarded ceiling labor rates from Multiple Award Schedule contracts. USAspending.gov and FPDS show what agencies actually paid. SAM.gov carries Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon wage determinations that set labor floors. Deltek GovWin IQ adds paid pipeline and competitor intelligence.
On major defense programs, cost estimating and earned value tools such as ACEIT and Deltek Cobra support parametric estimates and control account baselines.
The pattern repeats across the industry. Small firms price in Excel, win work, grow, and eventually discover that defensibility, rather than modelling sophistication, is what the government is really buying.
I have tried Propricer before but I have to admit, I still like MS Excel more, using Propricer is great and it can do some great things, but one still has to build solicitation tables. Ultimately, use what works for you and your company.
- September 14-16th: Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, MD
- September 24th: 2026 Intel Summit in Falls Church, VA
- October 20th: Google Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C.