U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY - OFFICE OF SMALL BUSINESS PROGRAMS Public Acquisition Forecast Companion notes This README accompanies the CSV created from the tabular portion of the DOE public acquisition forecast. The notes apply to each release and do not depend on a particular generation date, file name, or row count. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. FILES IN THIS RELEASE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Accompanying acquisition forecast CSV One header row followed by one row per published forecast record. Acquisition forecast README This file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. WHAT IS IN THE FORECAST ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOE uses the forecast to provide advance planning information on forecasted prime contracting actions valued above $25,000. Each row carries source-provided information about a current award and the related acquisition, including the current award's performance end month. A row is a published forecast record. It does not necessarily represent a unique future solicitation. Similar or related requirements may appear in more than one row, and a forecasted action may change, be cancelled, or not be recompeted. All information is for planning purposes only. It is not a pre-solicitation, invitation for bid, request for proposal, or commitment by the Government. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. CSV PREPARATION AND FORMAT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prepare the public CSV as follows: - Remove all title, instruction, blank, and generation-date rows above the table. The first CSV row must begin with 'Performance End Date'. - Preserve the published column names and column order. - Save as a comma-delimited UTF-8 file so the published punctuation, including the en dash in value-range labels, is retained. - Use standard CSV quoting. Descriptions, company names, and other text may contain commas or double quotation marks. - Preserve NAICS codes, contract numbers, and other identifiers as text. - Confirm that 'Performance End Date' contains a formatted month-year value, not an Excel serial number. The workbook displays this field as MMM-YYYY. - Do not split multi-value cells in the distributed CSV. For example, multiple program manager email addresses are separated by semicolons, and some contract-number cells contain more than one identifier. - Preserve source values in the public file. Perform trimming, standardization, or recoding only in separate derived fields used for analysis. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. COLUMN DEFINITIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Performance End Date Month and year in which the current award's period of performance ends. The workbook displays the value as MMM-YYYY. Treat this as a month-level date even if a conversion tool exposes an underlying full date. Do not infer a specific day. 2. NAICS Code Six-digit North American Industry Classification System code associated with the acquisition. Preserve the value as text. 3. NAICS Description Source-provided title associated with the NAICS code. 4. Program Office DOE program office associated with the record. This is an office name, not a federal award-system office code. Office names and organizational alignments can change between releases. 5. Current Incumbent Source-provided name of the business currently performing the work as of the source release. Capitalization and punctuation are part of the published value. 6. Current Contract Number Source-provided award identifier or identifiers for the current action. A cell may contain more than one identifier separated by ' / '. Preserve the complete raw value as text. This field is not a guaranteed stable key across releases or award systems. 7. Acquisition Description Free-text description of the acquisition or requirement. Wording, abbreviations, punctuation, and level of detail are not standardized. 8. Estimated Value Range Published categorical estimate of the acquisition's value. This is a range code, not an exact dollar amount. See section 5. 9. Contracting Officers Business Size Selection Source-provided business-size selection for the action. Published values may include 'Small Business', 'Other Than Small Business', and 'Unavailable'. This field is not an independent certification of a vendor's size status. 10. Type of Set Aside Source-provided set-aside or competition-strategy designation. Punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, and wording may vary even when values have similar meanings. Preserve the raw value and create a separate normalized value when grouping records. 11. Contract Type Published form of the current contract action. Typical values include 'Contract', 'Purchase Order', 'Delivery / Task Order', and 'BPA Call'. This field describes the action form, not the pricing arrangement. 12. Principal Place of Performance State Source-provided state or District of Columbia location for the principal place of performance. 'Unavailable' is an explicit source status and is not the same as a blank value. 13. Small Business Program Manager Contact information associated with the program office. A value may contain one email address, several semicolon-separated addresses, or a status message such as 'Vacant' or 'Not Assigned'. Verify current contacts in the DOE Small Business Program Manager Directory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. ESTIMATED VALUE RANGE CODES ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The published labels are: R1 – $25K–$250K R2 – $250K–$7.5M R3 – $7.5M–$25M R4 – $25M–$50M R5 – $50M–$100M R6 – $100M+ K means thousand dollars; M means million dollars. Treat these as categorical source labels. If converting them to numeric lower and upper bounds, document how shared endpoints are handled and retain the original label. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. ANALYSIS AND JOINING NOTES ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - The file does not contain a stable row-level identifier. Do not use row order as a key, and do not assume a row will remain unchanged or in the same position in a later release. - 'Current Contract Number' is the closest award-level identifier in the file, but formats vary and a cell may contain multiple identifiers. For matching work, preserve the raw field and compare each identifier in a separate derived field. - 'Program Office' is a name rather than a code. Direct name joins to USAspending, FPDS-derived data, SAM.gov, or other federal award data may not match without an office-name-to-code crosswalk. - Rows may share a date, NAICS code, office, incumbent, or description. Do not deduplicate records using any one of those fields alone. - Literal values such as 'Unavailable', 'N/A', 'Not Assigned', and 'Vacant' communicate source status. Do not automatically convert all of them to a single null value. - Source text may contain leading or trailing spaces and semantically similar values with different punctuation. Keep raw columns unchanged and add normalized columns for analysis. - Treat each release as a point-in-time snapshot. Current incumbents, contacts, acquisition strategies, descriptions, and program-office names can change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. CAVEATS AND QUICK LINKS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - DOE may revise the requirement, estimated value, business-size selection, set-aside strategy, schedule, or other details before a solicitation is released. - For active acquisition announcements and the most timely procurement information, use FedConnect and SAM.gov. Only an issued notice or solicitation is authoritative for a specific procurement. - A business must meet the applicable SBA size standard to qualify as a small business for a procurement. - Advertising or marketing submissions are not permitted through the forecast. DOE Small Business Program Manager Directory https://www.energy.gov/osbp/small-business-program-manager-directory FedConnect https://www.fedconnect.net/ SAM.gov Contract Opportunities https://sam.gov/opportunities SBA Small Business Size Standards https://www.sba.gov/content/small-business-size-standards ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. QUESTIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOE Office of Small Business Programs smallbusiness@hq.doe.gov