How to Not Sink: Positioning Your Business for GWACs and IDIQs Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love the Contract Vehicle

All Opinions Expressed are my own.

Let’s cut to the chase: in today’s federal contracting environment, if you’re not on a major GWAC or IDIQ, you’re standing on the beach with a surfboard while everyone else is halfway to Maui.

Once upon a time, you could build a healthy book of business through standalone contracts, open market buys, and maybe a few GSA Schedules sprinkled on top. But those days are fading like the memory of FedTeDS. Agencies are streamlining. Category Management is gospel. And Best-in-Class contracts—you know, the ones blessed by OMB—are becoming less optional and more existential.

So how do you get in on the action? Below is a (semi-sarcastic but still strategic) guide to positioning your business to win long-term GWACs and IDIQs—because in this market, it’s either vehicle up or vanish into the 8(a) backlog.

1. Start Before You Think You Should

If you’re waiting for the Draft RFP to “start capture,” that’s adorable. The real players started two fiscal years ago, probably while you were still arguing with your BD team about whether to renew Shipley licenses.

Begin with:

  • Sources Sought responses that don’t read like warmed-over brochures.

  • Courting COs like it’s prom season.

  • Finding teaming partners before they’re all taken (they will be).

The best time to position for a GWAC or IDIQ was yesterday. The second-best time is 18 months before the final RFP drops.

2. Know Your Gaps (Before the Government Does)

These solicitations are scored like Olympic gymnastics. You don’t get points for “trying really hard.” You get points for meeting the threshold—dollar values, scope matches, labor categories, ISO certs, and yes, whether your past performance project ended within the Jurassic period.

Ask yourself:

  • Do you have projects that actually map to the PWS, or are you playing Past Performance Mad Libs?

  • Are your certifications current, or did your CMMI expire during the Obama administration?

  • Can you meet the surge and scope demands of a 10-year contract without turning your PMO into a puddle?

If you answered “kind of,” find a teammate. If you answered “what’s CMMI,” find a therapist. And then a teammate.

3. Stack Your Team Like a Vegas Heist Movie

Let’s be real—no one company can do everything in the scope of OASIS+, CIO-SP4, or Alliant 3. The trick is to build a team that looks like you can, without looking like you picked names out of a GovWin raffle.

Your dream team:

  • Prime with infrastructure and proposal stamina (read: can survive 300 pages of Excel).

  • Sub with niche magic (AI/ML, cyber, telepathic requirements analysis).

  • Strategic partner with incumbency gold or an 8(a) badge that still sparkles.

Just make sure your partners:

  • Aren’t “teaming” with everyone else.

  • Can pull their weight in the proposal.

Don’t have conflicts of interest big enough to require Senate confirmation.


4. Compliance is the New Creativity

You could write the most dazzling, insight-laden, capture-driven response in the history of procurement—and still lose because you called Attachment J-3 “Appendix 47.”
These proposals aren’t written so much as engineered. What you need:

  • A compliance matrix so detailed it makes your accountant blush.
  • A writer who won’t faint when asked to cross-reference 17 artifacts in a single sentence.
  • A reviewer who lives to find formatting violations like an SEC auditor with insomnia.

Remember, non-compliance isn’t disqualification—it’s disintegration.

5. Post-Award is Where the Money Lives

Winning a GWAC or IDIQ is not the finish line. It’s the start of an entirely new and painful kind of business development. Because now you have to go get the task orders.

That means:

  • Marketing your slot like you’re the hottest band at GovConpalooza.

  • Building out one-pagers tailored to each agency’s niche pain.

  • Chasing down TOCs, COs, and POCs like you owe them money—or they owe you.

Your shiny new BIC contract won’t feed your pipeline unless you feed it first.

6. It’s a Survival Play, Not a Vanity Metric

This isn’t about bragging rights. Being on a GWAC or IDIQ—especially Best-in-Class contracts—is increasingly the difference between getting invited and getting ignored.

Agencies are consolidating buys. Task orders are going to “on-ramp” contractors. Procurement offices are told to use BIC vehicles first, second, and third. If you’re not there, you’re invisible.

This is not exaggeration—it’s economics. In a tightening budget environment with Category Management on overdrive, access to vehicles is access to revenue.

Final Words: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

GWACs and IDIQs aren’t easy. They’re not fast. They’re not even always fair. But if you want to play long-ball in federal contracting, you have to get on the field—and in today’s game, that means getting on the vehicle.

You can choose to position now, or you can explain next year why you’re not bidding anything above $250K. Up to you.

#GovCon #FederalContracting #CaptureStrategy #ProposalWriting #GWAC #IDIQ #BestInClass #GovernmentContracts #BDStrategy #ContractVehicles #OASISPlus #Alliant3 #CIOSP4 #GovBiz #ProcurementStrategy



Location: Washington, DC, USA

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