Tech Docs/Drawings:

If you are only interested in solicitations the have government provide tech docs and drawings then select Has Drawings

It is difficult to bid if you don't have access to the technical documents and drawings.

You won't be able to view Tech Docs/Drawings) (details) until you have registered in DIBBS and in cFolders (details)

Set Aside:
Look for solicitations set aside for various classes of companies

Sm Bus Set Aside: includes the standard small business set aside and the Combined set aside. Both of these set asides are suitable for small businesses.

Hub Zone and Service Disabled Vet Owned Sm Bus are the other two choices.

Click here for more information from the Small Business Administration.

Supplier Restrictions:

• Items labeled Unrestricted have a sufficient set of Tech. Doc/Drawings and can be manufactured by any competent supplier.
• Items labeled Restricted do not have a sufficient set of Tech. Doc/Drawings for a supplier to manufacture the item. The information may be unavailable, incomplete, proprietary, etc. or manufacture of item is restricted.
• Items labeled Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) are appropriate for distributors.

JCP:
Filter for solicitations that don't require a JCP or those that do.

A company must be certified by the Joint Certification Program (JCP) administered by the Defense Logistic Information Service to be eligible to download documents marked Export Controlled.

This certification establishes that a company is a U.S. or Canadian contractor eligible to receive unclassified technical data that is under the control of the U.S. Department of Defense or the Canadian Department of National Defense. Details.

Source Approval:

Filter for solicitations that don't require source approval or those that do.

There are two kinds of source approval you may encounter in a solicitation.
- Approval by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
- Approval by the government procuring activity (Govt)

In either case you can not submit a bid without the approval of the applicable organization.

Quality Requirements:

Some solicitations have Quality Requirments that include ISO 9001 registration or equivalent. (see FAR 52.246–11)

If you do not have ISO 9001 certification or equivalent then select No QA Reqts.

Product Group:

Creating Product Groups helps you quickly find solicitation of interest.

You can use one of the 8 existing Product Groups which you can modify or you can create your own.

CAGE Code:

Enter a CAGE Code to find solicititations that have been supplied in the past by a particular company

You can use your on CAGE Code by clicking on "My CAGE Code" to find items you have previously produced.

Cage Code Group:
Just like Product Groups and NSN Groups, CAGE Code Groups help you locate solicitations of interest.

Applying your CAGE Code Group filter will find all solicitations that reference your CAGE Codes as sources or as previous suppliers in the solicitation’s price history.

Cage Code Groups are especially useful for looking supplies of items you can resell to DLA.

Solicitation Types:

Fast Award
Some solicitations are candidates for Fast Award. This means that if you bid on one of these and your bid is under $10K, the government can consider it and award it 3 days after issue date regardless of bid due date.

Automated Indefinite Delivery Contracts are long-term contracts for a single material that DLA stocks and generally plans to order multiple times per year. Contracts will be for 1 year and have a guaranteed contract minimum quantity. (see DLA announcement here)

Identified Material
With the Identified Material filter you find solicitations whose Characteristics have identified one or more materials for the item.

NOTE: When an item has no material identified it means one of two things:

• There are no characteristics available for the part
• The characteristics do not include a material identification

We have also added an optional check box (Details) that adds another column, Complete Materials, e.g., STEEL, STAINLESS
Ultimately the tech. docs and drawings determine all materials

Using Basic Filters Supplier Restrictions - select "Unrestricted" to see only solicitations with unrestricted drawings. Set Aside - select a set aside type, e.g., "Small Business", to see only solicitations for a particular set aside type. Product Group - Select a Product Group, e.g., "Machining", to find solicitations that are appropriate for that group. Press Apply Selections to see results. Other Important features Click on the Extended Price column header to sort the list from largest to smallest contract value. Click Hist. in Price Hist. column for previous supplier's prices. Clear all filters and enter a keyword (screw, bracket, etc.) in Nomenclature to find solicitations that use that word.

NSN Part No.:

You can search for a National Stock Number (NSN) to see if an NSN of interest is being procured.

You don't have to enter the entire NSN number. You can just enter the first few digits.

Since the first 4 digits of the NSN are associated with specific applications, you can filter for specific applications. For example, all NSNs for "AEROSPACE CRAFT AND STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS", start with 15, so you can just enter 15.

Piece Part No.:

If you are looking for a particular part number but do not have the NSN, you can use this filter.

Also, if you are looking a certain class or group of part numbers that contain certain letters, you can enter a partial part number (such as MS) and the filter will show only PNs that contain MS.

Nomenclature Search:

Enter text to find solicitations of interest

For example, if you enter bear you will find solicitations that include bearing, bearings, and polar bear.

If you enter bearings you will not find solicitations for bearing since the search must find all the letters you enter in sequence.

Extended Price Minimum:

Suppose you are only interested in solicitations with estimated Extended Price exceeds $10,000.

Just enter $10,000 to eliminate all solicitations below $10,000.

NAICS Full Search:

Select a 6 digit NAICS number from the list. You can type the first digit to find the desired part of the list.

NAICS Partial: You can enter from 1 to 6 digits of the NAICS, starting from the left.

For example,
33 will bring up solicitations for Manufacturing

332 will bring up solicitations for Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing

332710 will bring up solicitations for Machine Shops

Solicitation Number:

You can search for a Solicitation Number. to find a solicitation that you are interested in.

You don't have to enter the entire Solicitation Number.
For example, if you are interested in Solicitation SPEFA315Q2764, you can just enter the last 4 digits to find solicitations that contain 2764. Of course you may get a few extraneous results but they are easily ignored.

NSN Group:

NSN Groups help you determine if any NSN part numbers you are interested in are being procured in the day's listings.

If you have previous provided parts to DLA, you might want to check if they are being procured again.

View Solicitation:

Check out the requirements in this solicitation. Your quote must be consistent with all required schedule, government regulations, military and other standards, etc. listed in the solicitation document.

Failure to meet all requirments will result in your product being unacceptable.

Send Solicitation:

If you find an interesting solicitation that you want to keep track of, click on Send to create and send an reminder email to yourself.

The email will contain all the information about the item and links to the solicitation, price history, drawings, part characteristics, etc.

Also, you could forward the email to co-worker to help evaluate the solicitation.

Save a Solicitation:

You can save a solicitation by clicking on the Save entry.

When you Save a solicitation, you can mark it as a solicitation you Quoted and/or add a note.

To view the status (including award) your saved solicitations, just click on near the top of this page.

Repost:

Repost indicates that a solicitation that has been previously posted (within the last 30 days) by DLA.

The likely reason for a repost is that DLA received no bids and is trying to attract at least one bidder.

This reposted solitation will likely have minimal competition.

Repost Filter:

Checking the Repost box sets a filter for only those solicitations that have been previously posted by DLA (within the last 30 days).

This filter is a great way to find solicitations that received no bids

These reposted solitations will likely have minimal competition.

Commercial Packaging Filter:

Many solicitations do not require compliance with "Standard Practice for Military Packaging MIL-STD-2073". Rather they require compliance with ASTM D 3951: Standard Practice for Commercial Packaging.

This standard is applied to military shipments that are for immediate use, that are not mission critical, designed for depot consumption, that are being shipped small parcel within the contiguous United States that are not for stock.

Not Already Awarded Filter:
Since some solicitations can be awarded before the quote due date (those designated ), it is useful to be able to filter out those that have been awarded before the quote due date.

Also, others may remain open well past the response due date. This generally occurs when no acceptable bids have been received.

Use this filter to keep from considering and bidding on solicitations that have been awarded and to look for solicitations that are past the quote due date but not awarded.
(This filter is most useful older solicitation dates.)

Unit Price:

Unit Price is the unit price DLA paid for this item when they last purchased it.

Click on Hist. to see more price information.

Price History:

Click on Hist. to see the previous prices DLA has paid for this item, along with the quantity.

Click on the CAGE code to see the name of the company that supplied the items.

Use this information to help determine a competitive quote price.

Extended Price:

Extended Price is the quantity (QTY) being purchased times the last Unit Price paid for this item.

This is an estimate of the total contract value of this solicitation.

Quote Due Date:

This is the deadline for submitting a quote.

You can normally expect DLA to provide you with the name of the company that won the job within 7-10 days - hopefully the winner will be you.

Delivery Days:

This is the number of days after award that the item is to be delivered in accordance with box 6. in the Solicitation document.

If there is no entry, the delivery requirements with be explanied in the solicitation. Check for first articles and other delivery complications.

NSN:

NSN is National Stock Number. Any part that has standardized drawing/specs and is thought to have ongoing demand, will be issued an NSN by Defense Logistics Agency.

Piece Part No.:

The solicitation document often will provide additional information under a Part No. heading. This data may be a prime manufacturer part number (Lockheed, Boeing, etc.) or it could be added detail for a tabulated drawing showing multiple dimensions for a single part. It may also call out industry standard specifications for a part.

Often the piece part number is the drawing that the Gov't has identified as the Basic Drawing for the NSN being procured.

JCP:
Indicates whether a JCP certification is require to quote the solication.

A company must be certified by the Joint Certification Program (JCP) administered by the Defense Logistic Information Service to be eligible to download documents marked Export Controlled.

This certification establishes that a company is a U.S. or Canadian contractor eligible to receive unclassified technical data that is under the control of the U.S. Department of Defense or the Canadian Department of National Defense. Details.

Set Asides:

Any company can bid on a set aside, but designated group gets a preference
Y: Small Business Set Aside.
H: HUB Zone Set Aside (Historically Underutilized Bus. Zone)
R: Disabled Veteran Small Business Set Aside
L: Woman Owned Small Business
E: Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Sm. Business
C: Combined Set Aside (Y, H, R, L, E)
N: Not Set Aside

Technical Documents (Drawings):

Tech Docs provides the link to the cFolders location for the Technical Data Package (TDP) for this solicitation.

In addition to the Solicitation Document, your quote must comply with all the requirement in the TDP.

Basic Drawings:

Finding the Basic Drawing that gives you the overall picture of what is being procured is often difficult.

If the entry for Basic Draw is Avail click to view its number.

It is quite common for the technical data package to have many files. If you just want to get a basic view of what the item is, look for the file we list as Basic Drawing and open it first.

Quote:

Once you have found an opportunity and decided to submit a quotation to DLA, just click on the Quote item and you will be taken to the DLA quote page for the item.

IMPORTANT: You must first separately log on to the DLA website before DIBBS Navigator can take you directly to the quote page.

Part Characteristics:

Part Characteristics often provides basic information about the part, such as dimensions and material.

This infomration can sometimes help you decide if the part is of interest.

Forecast:

The forecast provides an indication of DLA's intention to buy additional quantities of the item in the future.

The forecast is not a guarantee of future solicitations and should not be a deciding factor in deciding to submit a quote.

Just because you get an award for an item doesn't mean that you will necessarily win a future award.

Source Approval:

Some solicitations will require that you be specifically approved either by the original OEM or by the Government to produce this item.

If a Source Approved item is of particular interest, there is a process for getting your company approved.

Castings/Forgings:

Some solicitations suggest that Castings or Forging may be required in the manufacture of a part

• If Casting is suggested there will be a C in the Cast/Forg column
• If Forging is suggested there will be an F in the Cast/Forge column
• If Casting or Forging is not specificlly called out there will be a C/F in the Cast/Forge column

First Article:

Some solicitations require the contractor to produce a First Article to be submitted to the government prior to producing the full number of contracted parts.

A check box in this column indicated that a First Article is involved in this solicitation.

Suppliers:

If you want to supply items as a distributor, knowing the companies that DLA has designated as a supplier is very helpful.

Click to see the DLA identified as suppliers of this item.

To see the suppliers in the solicitation document, search for p/n.

Inspection:

DLA will inspect the items you supply. Inspection can be done at your facility (inspection origin) or at the destination (inspection destination)

The solicitation document will contain statements like:

• DESTINATION INSPECTION REQUIRED - FAR 52.246-1 (or -2) APPLIES.
• ORIGIN INSPECTION REQUIRED - FAR 52.246-1 (or -2) APPLIES

Free On Board (FOB or delivery location):

DLA will specify the FOB point as either Destination or Origin.

FOB Destination means you ship to end user and YOU PAY for the shipping.

FOB Origin means you do not ship the item. DLA will pick it up at your facility. YOU DON'T PAY for shipping.