r/govcon

Good day all,
I’m a former contracting officer now working as a Director of Contracts on the industry side. ForgeHammer is something I’ve been building to help small firms with the proposal process. Specifically, the parts that tend to trip people up when responses get evaluated.

It’s past internal testing and I’d like to see how it holds up with real users on live pursuits before going further.

What I’m offering:
3 months free access
Personal onboarding and ongoing support from me
A real conversation about your proposal process along the way

What I’m asking for:
Biweekly 20-min feedback calls
A written case study and testimonial at the end

Fit: small business, 1–10 federal proposals/year, actual bids coming up in the next 3 months.

After the pilot you can convert, walk away, or we work something out.

If you’re interested, send a DM with company size, proposal volume, and the part of your proposal process you’d most want help with. I’ll pick 3 by end of next week.

Questions welcome.

www.govsight.co

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. USMC vet (OIF multiple deployments as an All-Source Intelligence Analyst - MOS-0231), I ran a construction company for 10+ years and still do...helped small businesses get through SAM.

Got tired of seeing the same rejections over and over:

- Legal name commas not matching CP-575

- EIN <14 days old hitting TIN match failures

- Notarized letters missing the administration type statement

- SDVOSB denials from DD-214 name mismatches

So I built a tool that reads documents with personally trained AI and catches these before you submit and adds some tips and details you didn't know. It's $39-$49 (one-time) depending on edition.

Not trying to spam this sub — just sharing because I know how many of you are dealing with this. Happy to answer questions about SAM in the comments without any pitch.

Standard and *Veteran editions are available.

If you want to check it out: link in profile or message me.

I’ve been building one for years, and will be able to white label several products under different brands.

Anyhow, I know of ERI, ProPricer/GovWin, McNulty, Hinz Consulting, Red hat, Richter, among a few others in the GovCon space.

I’ve been learning more about Implan, Lightcast, and Labor Titan as well with much higher price points and geared toward economic development.

Anyone use any of these tools?

What do you like/dis of the features. Any you wish you could be seeing that would scale your pricing output or increase confidence in your bids?

Trying to flesh out use cases and GTM strategies for price analysis, calculation of reasonable salary ranges and wrap rates, and an initial commercial price list for GSA with progress toward cost narrative and price analysis automation with potential to help public buyers to crate IGEs.

Would love to share it with anyone interested and appreciate your thoughts and comments on must-have (avoid) tools like mine or (GovWin)

Hope everyone had a great weekend and a wonderful week ahead 👊🏼

Cheers,
GovCon Jon ✌🏼

Body

I’m trying to avoid checking a bunch of my random portals every week and still missing stuff. ideally looking for something that surfaces actually relevant opportunities not just another massive feed

Also curious how people are handling the actually responding to these once they find one. Are you keeping past answers in a doc somewhere or using ai to write answers?

Feels like there has to be a better workflow here but curious what other teams are doing

Anyone have experience with this system I have a few invoices that are pending approval

Getting ready to submit my first proposal for an FBI OSINT IDIQ.

Currently coordinating with my subcontractor for the Technical Approach.

Also I would get a lawyer to review my subcontract agreement.

I think AI is about to create a really weird problem in GovCon.

People are going to start sounding like experts long before they actually understand FAR, compliance, capture, or proposal strategy.

The scary part isn’t AI replacing people… it’s people using AI confidently without enough real experience behind it.

Anybody else seeing this already?

I’m tired of tracking RFP deadlines in Excel. What was your transition like to a dedicated platform?

Hi everyone,

I recently launched a small healthcare/public health consulting firm. My background is in healthcare operations, public health programs, emergency response, and project management (PMP/MPH).

I already completed:

- LLC formation

- EIN

- SAM.gov registration

- SBA certification applications

- Capability statement

Now, I’m trying to figure out the smartest next move to actually win work.

For those already in government contracting:

How did you get your first contract/subcontract?

Is teaming/subcontracting the best path at the beginning?

Best way to connect with primes?

Any advice for healthcare/public health consulting specifically?

I’d appreciate any realistic advice, lessons learned, or recommendations.

Thanks!

Are you struggling to find experienced acquisition and contracts management support, without the overhead of a full-time hire?

We have a solution.

Our senior-level team is available to provide embedded, full lifecycle contracts management and consulting support, immediately, through an Independent Contractor Agreement.

Our team brings deep expertise across:

✅ End-to-end contract lifecycle management (pre-award through post-award execution)
✅ FAR/DFARS compliance and audit readiness
✅ Proposal development and negotiation strategy

Our team lead has managed contracts exceeding $6B in value across DoD, federal, and commercial contracting environments. Combined, we offer both strategic leadership and hands-on execution, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.

Why choose a team-based contractor model?

🔹 Lower overhead vs. a traditional hire
🔹 Immediate access to senior-level expertise
🔹 Scalable support that grows with your organization
🔹 Predictable, fixed-cost engagements

We are available to start as early as May 18,2026.

📩 Interested? DM us directly for more information, team bios, and resumes. We’d love to connect.

Been tracking new 8(a) solicitations daily for the last month and noticed something weird: of ~140 active 8(a) notices right now, 23 are in NAICS 541512 (computer systems design) and 19 in 541611 (admin/management consulting). That's ~30% of the active pool in two codes.

Expected construction and facilities (236220, 561210) to dominate the way they usually do in small business spend. Those are way down like 8 and 6 notices respectively.

Two things I can't tell:

1. Is this a real shift in agency demand toward IT/consulting set-asides, or is the construction work getting routed through HUBZone and SDVOSB and just not hitting the 8(a) feed?

2. Anyone in 541512 or 541611 actually seeing more agencies reach out this month, or is this just a SAM.gov reporting quirk?

Response deadlines also feel compressed. 40% have due dates within 21 days, which is short for anything substantial.

Y'all seeing the same?

A friend introduced me to a friend of his. That guy introduced me to another company. In talking to the other company we struck a deal and completed a TA to go after this opportunity. We've had several calls for 3 weeks now.

The guy who introduced us is getting angrier and angrier that he's not part of the deal and that we moved on without him. He brought nothing to the table.

You guys starting out- don't be like the introduction guy. Stop imagining that you have skills and abilities and useful relationships when you don't. And if you don't have an agreement beforehand, you can't hallucinate that an agreement exists or "Should" exist when none exists.

So I have two concerns regarding my software subcontractor.

1. Where to find a pre-filled subcontract between me as the prime contractor and the subcontractor, the software development company, online? I’m sure there are templates out there.

It makes kind of complicated that it’s for software services. I don’t have thousands to shell out for a lawyer to draft up a subcontract. As I understand it, there are specific FAR Clauses that need to be pushed down from the prime contract to the subcontract.

There are also issues with software IP ownership.
I know that I also have to include the required work that falls within the scope of the contract. I just know how I should go about these putting these in the subcontract.

2. My subcontractor charges $12K for two iterations and I did math, that comes out to $288K a year. So if the work or performance lasts a year or longer, a $250K< contract will bury me. That is rather high for software engineers.

But this is company is highly rated, it has a 5.0 rating on Clutch.co. They don’t have federal past performance. But they have developed a lot of software for 500 fortune companies. I already have a good relationship with this company. I don’t know if I should aim for slightly larger contracts to bid on.

This isn’t for a particular contract as I haven’t submitted my proposal yet. I’m pretty much finished with my Technical Volume, the last section is the Technical Approach which I will fill out once I see a contract for NAICS that interests me.

So this could be a problem for my Pricing Volume, and plus I don’t really have any overhead and neither does this subcontractor.

I’m just stuck on these issues, where can I find subcontract templates and should I go after higher value contracts.

I myself am no longer interested in doing Government contracting but I am interested in helping people helping people fund their contracts, the money is great so put me on you guys list for where you can go to get funding.

Small GovCon firms — how are you tracking CDRLs across multiple contracts? Spreadsheet, Deltek, something else? Asking because I'm building something and want to make sure I'm solving a real problem.

I spent 15 years running a business before retiring last year, and I quickly realized that most "guides" out there are just sales pitches for expensive courses. I’m a skeptic who prefers data over fluff, so I built The Bidding Compass to offer clear, accurate roadmaps for small businesses and veterans. Here are 3 things you can do in 10 minutes to fix your profile right now:

1. Refine your PSC Profile: Keywords and Product Service Codes are your search tags; if they aren't sharp, contracting officers won't find you on SAM.gov.
2. The "Yellow Pages" Trick: Register with the SBA's Dynamic Small Business Search (DSBS). This is where officers look specifically for set-aside contracts.
3. Automate Your Inbox: Don't manually search every day. Set up saved searches on SAM.gov so the government emails you when bids in your NAICS codes pop up. Want the full roadmap? I’ve put together a Free Bidding Starter Checklist that breaks down the entire registration and bidding process into actionable steps. No gatekeeping, just the facts I used to navigate my own multimillion-dollar bids.

Hello Everyone,

I'm a recently established small business trying to break into government subcontracting, specifically for software development.

I've began the SAM registration process (awaiting CAGE), registered on GDIT, local and state agency platforms. I've attended local workshops and assigned to a counselor.

My current ask is after doing doing the sourcing and research for ideal prime candidates, what's an effective strategy to build meaningful business relationships?

Given I'm new to the space, I'm trying to understand what works and what doesn't for outreach. I've already created my capability statement.

Thanks in advance!

Curious if anyone here has any insight or success stories on government contracting as a single person co. Can be any area but I’m specifically targeting systems integration, data and IT.

I’ve been considering going this route for a while but my 9-5 is always a distraction and the priority. Now I might get laid off in the next 30-60 days and need how realistic it is to start gov contracting. Research says best to start as a sub/1099 to get some experience before I bid as a prime.

FWIW I already have an active LLC (from freelancing) the business bank account, taxes filed for 6 years and started the Sam.gov process.

I don’t have any industry certs but will most likely pass those tests quickly as I already actively study those topics to learn (the actual cert wasn’t a priority cause $).

Appreciate any lived experiences / advice.