The U.S. Military is a reliable source of revenue, purchasing almost a quarter Billion dollars of fasteners last year.
Readers asked us how to get started with defense contracting, how to search for bids and look for specifications. Although working with the Defense Department may seem foreign at first, it is actually a very structured process that’s easy to understand.
The CAGE code
Companies that wish to sell directly to the Department of Defense (DOD) must register with the government. As of February 2011, there are 600,119 active registrants in the Central Contractor Registry (CCR). This is the central database where you register your company to do business with the DOD. This step is easy; simply go to www.ccr.gov and choose “Central Contractor Registration”. Fill in your company details and in three to five days, you’re registered. They will issue a CAGE code; a five character alphanumeric sequence that is used to identify your company to the DOD.
What’s nice about the U.S. Military is that they have a database for everything. There is a database of companies, a database of awarded contracts, solicitations, part numbers, military specifications and on and on. When you combine these databases you can do some pretty powerful things. Since the CCR database contains a list of all companies registered to sell to DOD, you can easily find all of your competition. They are even broken down by industry using FSC or NAICS codes. By combining the CCR database with procurement history, you could look at all of the contracts awarded to your competition and analyze pricing for previous bids. This can be used to determine a competitive price that undercuts your competition while maximizing profit.
Finding Bids
The Department of Defense issues open solicitations (Bids) for fasteners using some basic categories. Knowledge of how these categories are structured and classified can greatly increase your chances finding and winning the bids for items that you supply.
In this example we will examine the fastener industry. The Federal Supply Class (FSC) and item name categories are accurate ways to search for bids. Fasteners are categorized under 7 basic FSC’s, they are:
5305 – Screws
5306 – Bolts
5307 – Studs
5310 – Nuts and Washers
5315 – Nails, Machine Keys, and Pins
5320 – Rivets
5325 – Fastening Devices
Information such as the National Stock Number (NSN), part number, specification(s), preferred manufacturers, and item names are commonly listed in a solicitation. Searching for open solicitations using classifications such as the FSC or the item name (or combination of both) can greatly increase the accuracy of your search and decrease the amount of time you spend searching.
The National Stock Number is the official label for items the military repeatedly purchases. It is a 13-digit number consisting of basically a Federal Supply Class (FSC) (the first 4 digits), a country code (the next 2 digits) and a unique serial number (the remaining 7 digits). The important one to remember is the FSC. For example if the NSN listed in the solicitation is 5305-00-071-2078 you know it is some type of screw because the first 4 digits are 5305.
When searching for bids, it is advantageous to have multiple types of searches. For example, a Federal Supply Class search for 5305, plus an item name search for “Screw, Cap” would produce solid results. You could also use the NSN lookup to search for competitor’s part numbers and add that to your search.
Item Names and Specifications
Each NSN has a title, officially known as the item name. The item name is very specific word or group of words used to describe the NSN. The item name contains a basic name and possibly a modifier such as “Screw,Cap”, the basic name is “Screw” and the modifier is “Cap” describing the type of screw.
The NSN 5305-00-071-2078 is assigned the item name “screw,cap,hexagon head”. If you wanted to search for bids on hexagon head cap screws you could try the item name “screw,cap,hexagon head” and would get accurate results. If you searched on the word “cap screws” you would return little or no results as that’s not how the government classifies screws. If you tried simply the item name “screw,cap” you would see many results including both hexagon head, socket head, etc. When using the official government item name your results will be plentiful and accurate. By searching the government’s item name database you can find all item names pertaining to your products.
Every NSN will have at least one or more reference numbers associated to it. These reference numbers can either be a manufacturers’ part number, military specification/standard, commercial specification/standard (such as ASME) or a combination of all. These reference numbers may be listed in either the solicitation or in the part number cross reference (MCRL / MCRD) of the military NSN database.
The above example is BidLink’s NSN lookup display for the NSN described above. It shows a list of company part numbers registered with the Government, which relate to the NSN, as well as two specifications. Control Flow and Bosch both have their own unique part/reference number. Their manufacturers’ numbers are listed in the left column. The other two rows pertain to the ANSI and Military standards, so you can figure out if this is something you can supply. The Defense Department is moving away from using Military standards by allowing commercial standards bodies to define and manage the standards. If you wanted to make this part, you would start by acquiring the ANSI and Military standards to determine if this is something you can produce competitively.
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.
This article was written exclusively for Fastener Journal. http://fastenerjournal.com/
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