Plain English glossary

Federal contracting has its own vocabulary. Here's what each term on this page actually means.

NAICS

North American Industry Classification System. A 6-digit code the government uses to categorize what a contract is buying. NAICS 561720 means "janitorial services." Your SAM.gov registration lists which NAICS codes you're registered to bid in.

PSC (Product Service Code)

A separate 4-character code that classifies the specific service being bought. For janitorial, common PSCs are S201 (Custodial-Janitorial Services) and S299 (Other Housekeeping Services). Two contracts with the same NAICS can have different PSCs depending on what's in scope.

Percentile band (P10–P90)

A way of describing the spread of contract values. P50 (median) is the middle: half the contracts paid less than this, half paid more. P25 is the bottom quarter; P75 is the top quarter; P10 and P90 are the extreme low and high. Bidding between P25 and P75 keeps you in the "defensible bid" range — not so low the agency questions your ability to perform, not so high you lose on price.

Set-aside

A federal rule that says only certain types of businesses can bid on this contract. Common ones: Small Business, 8(a) (small-disadvantaged-business), WOSB (woman-owned), SDVOSB (service-disabled-veteran-owned), HUBZone. You can only bid if you're certified in the matching category.

Sole source

A contract awarded without competition because only one company is eligible. We strip these out of the percentile bands above — sole-source contracts wouldn't be open to you anyway, so they don't reflect what you'd be competing against.

AbilityOne / JWOD

A federal program (formally Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act) that gives certain non-profits a sole-source preference for federal cleaning, mailroom, and similar service contracts. If a facility is on the AbilityOne Procurement List, it's effectively un-biddable for a commercial small prime. Check before you spend time on a proposal.

SCA wage determination

The Service Contract Act requires that federal service contracts pay at least a minimum hourly wage set by the Department of Labor — different by county and by job classification. For janitors, the SCA code is 11150 — Janitor, and the wage floor varies from ~$15/hr in low-cost counties to ~$24/hr in major metros. You cannot legally staff a federal janitorial contract below this.

Recompete

A federal contract has a period of performance — typically 1-5 years, sometimes with option-year extensions. When it ends, the agency "recompetes" the work, opening a new bid. Watching contracts 12-18 months from their expiry date gives you a head start on capture planning before the new solicitation drops.

USASpending.gov / SAM.gov

Two public government sites. SAM.gov is where new contracts are posted as solicitations (open for bidding). USASpending.gov records what was actually awarded — who won, how much, when. FedRange uses USASpending for the pricing comparables on this page and SAM.gov for live opportunity metadata in the analyzer.