The practical guide library

Independent educational guides to federal contract award research, data interpretation, and reproducible methods. Not a government website, official procurement system, or live award database.

8 guides shown

Start here

FPDS research moved: use the official SAM.gov route

Find the current official award-data entry point and rebuild a repeatable research habit.

Money basics

Ceiling, obligations, and outlays answer different questions

Avoid turning a headline contract value into an unsupported revenue or market-size claim.

Data structure

Count awards and actions without double-counting

Choose the row level and identifier before building totals or win counts.

Agency research

Map the awarding office and funding organization separately

Follow the organizational trail without attributing every purchase to the same agency.

Award histories

Read modification history before calling a result a new win

Separate new awards, later funding, corrections, and administrative actions.

Research methods

Design a contract search another person can reproduce

Combine keywords, codes, dates, and a manual relevance sample.

Data quality

Run a ten-minute award-data quality check

Check coverage, missing fields, duplicates, and mismatched dates before drawing conclusions.

Practical decisions

Turn award research into a useful market brief

Move from a list of historical records to a short, evidence-backed business decision.

Put the guidance into a working record ↗