Recompete

What does recompete mean in government contracting?

When a government contract's period of performance ends (including any option years), the agency usually still needs the work done. Unless it can justify a sole-source award, it must run a new competition for the follow-on contract. That follow-on competition is the recompete. The company currently doing the work is the incumbent, and everyone else bidding is trying to unseat them.

Recompetes matter because they are the most predictable opportunities in the market. A brand-new requirement might be cancelled or unfunded, but a recompete represents work the government has already been paying for, often for years. The budget exists, the requirement is proven, and the end date is public data.

The government contract recompete process

A typical federal recompete follows a knowable sequence:

• 12 to 24 months out: The agency begins acquisition planning. Market research notices, Sources Sought, and draft requirements may appear. Agency acquisition forecasts often list the upcoming recompete, sometimes naming the incumbent and the new solicitation number.
• 6 to 12 months out: Industry days, RFIs, and draft RFPs. This is where capture work happens; by the time the final RFP is out, strong competitors have already shaped their approach.
• 3 to 6 months out: The solicitation is published, proposals are submitted and evaluated.
• Award and transition: If the incumbent loses, a transition period hands the work over. Incumbent win rates are high but far from guaranteed, and agencies dissatisfied with performance use the recompete as their exit.

How contractors find recompete opportunities

The raw signals are public: contract end dates in FPDS and USAspending, expiring contract vehicles, agency acquisition forecasts, and Sources Sought notices that reference an existing requirement. The traditional approach is a spreadsheet of target contracts and their end dates plus SAM.gov alerts. Tools automate this by tracking expirations continuously: BidSparq, for example, flags live solicitations that are recompetes of expiring contracts, names the incumbent where the data supports it, and publishes a weekly Federal Contract Recompete Index of expiring federal contract value by agency, industry, and quarter.