The following information is from the Defense Supply Center Richmond, illustrating procurement processes at a DoD buying office. DSCR is part of the larger DoD buying organization, and if you understand better what DSCR is doing, you will be better prepared to work with the other Supply Centers and federal buying offices.

There are also special types of contracts, including:

Cost-reimbursement contracts provide for the final price to be determined either when the work is finished or at some interim point during contract performance. If a contract is cost-reimbursable, the contractor can legally stop work when all contract funds are spent. Thus, the cost risk is essentially shifted to the government. There are various types of cost-reimbursement contracts:

When requesting a bid package, you need to be familiar with the types of contracts, or pricing arrangements, that the government uses in buying a product or service. The type of contract used is determined by the circumstances of the acquisition and the extent to which the government wishes to accept the cost risks. The contract type used will have an important effect on the way you price out the contract. These pricing arrangements reflect the risk involved in contract performance.

These are the types of contracts that small businesses will, for the most part, be dealing with. Under the fixed-price arrangement, the final price is basically determined before the work is performed. There are various types of fixed-price contracts:

A less common way to receive bid leads is by getting registered on a qualified product list (QPL), a qualified manufacturers list (QML), or a qualified bidders list. Qualification lists are used only for products that require lengthy or costly testing to determine whether they meet the government's requirements. The lists identify the specifications and the manufacturers or distributors of each qualified item. When the government wishes to procure a product for which a qualification list exists, bids or proposals are usually accepted only for specific products or from companies on the list.

To get the package, you can do one of the following:

Once you have found a bid that you are interested in, the next step is to get the bid package (it is also sometimes referred to as a solicitation package). Getting the bid package is often as easy as downloading it off the Internet.

The Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as various other Department of Defense (DoD) organizations and agencies, use electronic bulletin boards (EBBs) to inform the public about contracting opportunities, provide details of government solicitations, and respond to questions about solicitations. EBBs also permit electronic submission of bids and proposals.

Sometimes you can create your own contracting opportunities by submitting an unsolicited proposal. Such a proposal is a written offer to the government to perform a task or effort that you initiate. To be considered, an unsolicited proposal must offer a unique and innovative concept to the government. You can learn about an agency's research and development (R) needs from advance notices on www.fedbizopps.gov and from informal contacts with agency personnel.

Bid boards, while still used by some buying agencies to post bid opportunities, are becoming a thing of the past, as the Internet becomes more a part of business life.

One way to find bid leads is through FedBizOpps (http://www.fbo.gov), the official web site listing of all federal government contracting opportunities and awards over $25,000. Federal agencies are required by law to post their contracting opportunities over $25,000 here.

SUB-Net is a part of the Small Business Administration web site on which large businesses, government agencies, and other prime contractors post solicitations and bid opportunities.

Another way of receiving bid leads is to get your company included on the Solicitation Mailing List (SML) of the specific buying offices likely to have a need for your product or service. The SML database lists the capabilities of businesses interested in selling to the government, and thus enables a buying office to find potential sources to meet its needs for products and services.

The NSN (National Stock Number) is the 13-digit number that the federal government assigns, for purposes of identification and inventory control, to every piece of supply, equipment and material that it uses and buys. You can think of the NSNs as a federal cataloging system based on the concept of one NSN for any one item and one single item manager for each particular class of product. (Note that, because services are not inventoried, services don't fit this model. For services, only the first four digits are used. See the discussion of FSCs, above.)

The Solicitation Number for a specific bid opportunity is a wonderful source of information that can help you identify a procurement office. Using the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) buying centers, let's look at what the number means and the type of contract that is contemplated.

OK, let's get down to the nitty gritty. How do you go about finding leads on all those millions of contracts that the federal government awards each year? We discuss several ways:

The NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) and the SIC (Standard Industrial Class) codes identify products and services by type of industry and are used by the government to evaluate economic performance. The NAICS codes, which replaced the SICs in October 2000 as the codes the government uses to classify businesses and industries, were developed jointly by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to provide new comparability in statistics about business activity across North America.

Registrant Name: Enter the name of the person that acknowledges that the information provided in the registration is current, accurate, and complete. The person named here will be the only person within the registering company to receive the Trading Partner Identification Number (TPIN). (The TPIN is a password to protect access to your registration and banking information on the CCR.)

Anyone who does business with the government can't help but be confused at times by the different types of codes that the government uses to identify, classify and inventory the products and services that it uses. However, it is important for you to understand the importance and purpose of each type.

The FSC (Federal Supply/Service Code) is a four-digit code used by government buying offices to classify and identify the products, supplies, and services that the government uses and buys. An understanding of which FSCs apply to your products or services is crucial to finding opportunities. For instance, you will need to know the FSCs that apply to your products in order to register to do business with the government. And since buying offices have responsibility for specific products, you can also use your FSCs to identify potential buying offices.

Any company, large or small, wishing to do business with the Federal government must register in the Central Contractor Registration (CCR), the central databank for government contractors.

Legal Business Name and Doing Business As: Your legal business name is the name under which you are incorporated and pay taxes. If you commonly use another name for normal operations, such as a franchise or licensee name, then include that in the space below the "Legal Business Name" field.

Under recent law, the government is legally mandated to use Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) for all contract payments. Therefore, all registrants must complete this section. (There are exceptions: foreign vendors doing business outside the United States, utility companies, and government agencies do not have to supply this information.)

Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) Number: The Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number is a unique nine-character identification number provided by The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B). If you do not have a DUNS number, call Dun and Bradstreet at 1-866-705-5711 or 610-882-7000 to request one. Be prepared to provide an address, telephone number, business start date, and type of business. The process takes about 10 minutes and is free of charge. The number will be issued within three working days. If you already have a DUNS number, the D&B representative will advise you over the phone.