Month: November 2010

Pentagon demand for electric motors has been stable over the last five years, with Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) annual purchasing at around $26 Million.  Many industries studied by BidLink have shown the same pattern of a significant increase in sales from 2006-2007, then stabilization.  In September 2010, defense secretary Robert Gates called for $100 Billion in cuts to the Defense Department budget over the next five years.  Fortunately for companies that make replacement parts, this means more business as many of these cuts could affect large projects like the F35 aircraft, while not affecting the process of repairing and restocking, and technologically upgrading the military.   The Defense department has expressed their commitment to cut waste without reducing capabilities.

We examined the competition in this industry for FY 2009, since at the time of this article, 2010 had not yet ended.  Honeywell International (CAGE code 70210) is the clear leader by number of contracts, winning 450% more than the second place holder, Arc Systems (67245).

This follows a similar pattern that we have seen in other industries analyzed by BidLink.  It seems that each industry has a clear leader, winning significantly more contracts than the other competitors.  Much of this business comes from long term contracts, which are periodically re-awarded.   Opportunity exists for savvy competitors.

By sales volume, Honeywell (70210) almost tripled the sales of GE Avation Systems (81039) in 2009. The other eight competitors were almost evenly matched.  The largest contract for 2009 was 296 AC Control Motors, NSN: 6105-00-938-8503 at $6.102.17 each for a total contract value of $1,806,242.32 (see contract).

BidLink.net is a provider of defense industry information for contractors worldwide.  This data includes millions of defense contracts, procurement history, part numbers and vendor details.  This unique combination of resources allows BidLink to monitor and extract important information for the defense contracting industry.  BidLink.net, based in Washington, D.C., provides bid consolidation, searching and notification services, as well as part number (NSN) lookup to many military activities and thousands of private companies around the world.

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It’s  been a while since we published an update of new features.  We have been working quietly on a few upgrades that let you do more with BidLink..net.  In a few weeks, we will be releasing this new upgrade, but you can get a sneak preview by clicking here, or going to test.bidlink.net.

Don’t worry, we haven’t changed the site so much that you will not recognize it.  Most of the changes are improvements to existing features, and we’ve added a few new features too.

Information Center

A new addition to BidLink is the information center.  This is your one-stop shopping for help, reference, videos and information.  It even has a vast resource of DOD documents and specifications, just a click away.  You can get to it almost anywhere on the site, by clicking on the icon wherever you see it, or clicking on areas with a highlighted background.   It’s also in the left navigation under Help and Information.  Feel free to explore it’s greatness.  There is a video describing the information center here.

New Bid Search

The bid search underwent a major overhaul.  The interface has been simplified, although it is even more powerful.  It provides easy access to “not” searches, which help you to refine your results by removing unwanted bids before you see them.  This can save quite a bit of time.  More help on the New Bid Search is here.

Quick Search

We have added the quick search to more areas of the site, and fixed some bugs.  It can now search more databases, including Mil-Specs.  Unlike before, where BidLink would send a request to the Government for a mil-spec, we now serve them from our own network.  BidLink has almost 200,000 mil-spec documents, comprising much of the DOD’s library.  A video on the Quick Search is here.

Beyond features, there’s more data.  Lots more.  We now host a library of contract actions, which are procurement history that doesn’t fall under DOD’s NIIN based indexing system.  These may include GSA contracts, DD350 and more.  Look for contract actions when you search a company in the vendor lookup tool. We have also added more procurement history from hard to get sources like Navy and TACOM.

We’ve expanded our vendor data area with more information on companies and their activity.  NSN lookup has more part numbers, including replaced NSNs.  Forecast data offers the DOD’s predictions on future buying activity; ML-C tells you the unit price in case there is no procurement history.  NSN status has also been added.

We hope you enjoy the new BidLink.net, and value your comments.  The next few weeks will be polishing the new system .   If you find any bugs, or have suggestions, use the contact area in the information center to drop us a note.

-Tom Gerbe

BidLink Development Staff