A lot of teams treated 2025 like a warm-up lap. Policies were “final,” but awards didn’t consistently test readiness.
You've registered in SAM, checked all the boxes, and set up your email alerts. Now you're waiting for the perfect opportunity to land in your inbox. Months pass. Maybe you bid on a few things and hear nothing back. Meanwhile, you're watching companies with similar capabilities win contracts you never even knew existed.
You've probably heard that federal contracting is competitive. And in IT services or professional consulting, that's true: dozens of companies fighting over the same contracts, racing to the bottom on price.
But here's what most contractors don't realize: there are entire industries where government agencies struggle to get even a single bid. Not five bidders. Not three. One.
You've built websites for years. You know React, you know UX, you ship projects on time. Somewhere along the way you heard that the federal government needs websites built, and now you're wondering if there's real money there for a small shop like yours.
Here's what nobody tells you: every federal agency has web presence needs. Not just the Department of Defense building classified systems, but the National Park Service updating their visitor portals, the Small Business Administration maintaining their resource pages, and dozens of other agencies that need exactly what you already do. The work exists. The question is whether you're positioned to compete for it.
Every time the Pentagon announces another massive AI contract, I watch contractors scramble in the wrong direction.
Last summer, the Department of Defense awarded contracts to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI. The headlines were everywhere. Contractors saw those numbers and started asking, "How do we get in on that?"
GSA's OASIS+ contract program just got bigger. As of January 12, 2026, all six solicitations are open under continuous enrollment, and five new service domains have been added to the original eight. For professional services contractors, this is the clearest path into long-term federal work.
If you missed the earlier submission windows, the door is open again. And it's staying open.
Large architecture, engineering, and construction firms are reconsidering whether state-level disaster response contracts are worth the effort. That strategic withdrawal is creating opportunities for small businesses willing to invest in learning fragmented state procurement systems.
The math changed. When disaster response was heavily federal, big primes could pursue one massive FEMA contract and scale across multiple events. State-managed response means chasing different systems, different relationships, and different requirements in every state. For firms optimized around federal efficiency, that fragmentation destroys their business model.
For regional small businesses, the fragmentation is a competitive advantage. You already know your state. You're already local. You just need to understand how state emergency procurement actually works.
If you're pursuing defense contracts, the annual defense authorization bill shapes almost everything about how those opportunities flow. The 2026 NDAA just became law, and it includes changes that will affect your positioning, compliance requirements, and competitive strategy heading into the new year.
You've been hearing about "reshoring" for years now. Mostly abstract policy talk. Press releases about semiconductor plants in Arizona. Maybe some vague references to supply chain resilience that sound good in speeches but don't connect to your actual business.
Then you try to figure out what it means for federal contractors, and the picture gets murkier. Is this just political messaging? Or is something actually changing in how DoD buys things?
Here's what we've learned from helping over 300,000 businesses position for federal contracting success: Something real shifted in 2025. And it creates openings for contractors who understand what's actually happening beneath the headlines.
