GWAC Spending Trends, FY 2019-2022

Published: November 16, 2022

Federal Market AnalysisCategory ManagementContracting TrendsGSAGSA ContractingNASANIHSpending Trends

Spending on Best-in-Class Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts is rising.

The term “Best-in-Class” (BIC) first entered federal contracting parlance six years ago. We here at Federal Market Analysis concluded at the time that the designation of the new General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule (GSA MAS) and a handful of other Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts, or GWACs, as BICs was going to lead federal agencies to award more contract dollars through these vehicles as opposed to competing them on the open market.

Recent data on the flow of contract dollars through GWACs designated as BICs confirms the prescience of this outlook. Looking at the data from fiscal year 2019 through 2022 shows a 27% increase in federal spending on BIC GWACs, equating to an additional $7.0B.

Keep in mind that the total shown for FY 2022 includes all of the civilian sector and only a small part of the contract spending reported by the Department of Defense (DOD). Thanks to a 90 day delay in reporting contracting data, complete figures for the DOD won’t be availible until late January. This means the final tally of strong growth in contract spending via GWACs will look explosive.

As it is, DOD components, including two of the Military Departments and the 30+ agencies of the 4th Estate (i.e., Defense Agencies) already lead GWAC spending without FY 2022 spending having been reported.

The three largest civilian departments – Helath and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs – round out the top six, which is not a surprise, followed by the Navy, which is. Why the Navy’s GWAC spending isn’t on par with the other parts of the DOD can be explained by its use of the SeaPort-Next Generation Multiple Award Contract (MAC). With thousands of contractors holding Seaport-NG master contracts, this creates a large environment that is basically an alternate contracting universe. Hold a SeaPort-NG MAC and your company can compete for task orders. Don’t hold one and your company loses out on the ability to participate.

As for the GWAC BICs, the table below shows which programs are seeing the most business.

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The fifth iteration of NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) vehicle continues to hold its own against the GSA GWACs that tend to dominate the market. The GSA runs six of the GWACs shown, in fact, with the balance being run by the National Institute of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC). For those not familiar with NITAAC, these contracts are the Chief Information Officer–Solutions and Partners 3 (CIO-SP3) iterations for large and small business and the Chief Information Officer-Commodities and Solutions (CIO-CS) GWAC. These NITAAC vehicles make up a much smaller portion of GWAC spending.

Spending on these ten GWACs totaled $30.8B in FY 2022 without counting the DOD. This spending comprises a significant percentage of the contracting market, meaning that companies not holding spots on one or more GWACs can’t compete for a piece of the pie.

The commonly heard admonition caveat emptor, means “buyer beware.” In this case, the equivalent for sellers is equally valid: caveat venditor for those not holding spots on BIC GWACs.