744 Open Federal Construction Notices: What SDVOSBs Should Know (July 26)

246 of 744 open federal construction notices have a response deadline within the next 7 days.

That's one in three open solicitations closing soon. This post covers only 6 construction NAICS codes — Residential Remodelers, Commercial & Institutional Building Construction, Roofing, Other Building Exterior, Plumbing/HVAC, and Painting — not federal contracting broadly. All figures are a point-in-time snapshot as of 2026-07-26.

Which solicitations are closing fast — and how much time do I actually have?

246 of the 744 open notices close within 7 days (as of 2026-07-26). The average response window across all 6 NAICS codes is 28.5 days, but that average masks real variation. Painting & Wall Covering (238320) averages only 18.3 days. Commercial & Institutional Building (236220) averages 31.5 days. Residential Remodelers (236118) averages the longest window at 43 days. If you're chasing roofing (238160) or HVAC/plumbing (238220), plan for roughly 22–23 days on average — close to the Painting timeline, not the Commercial one.

Which NAICS code has the most open federal construction work right now?

Commercial & Institutional Building Construction (236220) dominates with 448 open notices as of 2026-07-26 — more than all other 5 codes combined. Plumbing, Heating & Air-Conditioning (238220) is a distant second at 176. Roofing (238160) has 72 open notices. Painting (238320), Residential Remodelers (236118), and Other Building Exterior (238190) each have 18, 16, and 14 open notices respectively. If your primary NAICS is anything outside 236220, your addressable pool is significantly smaller.

Which agencies actually set aside construction work for SDVOSBs?

Veterans Affairs is the clear answer. The Department of Veterans Affairs has 110 open notices, and 60 of them — 54.5% — are set aside for SDVOSBs (as of 2026-07-26). No other agency in the top 10 comes close. The Department of Defense has 357 open notices but only 6 SDVOSB set-asides, a 1.7% share. The General Services Administration has 23 open notices with 1 SDVOSB set-aside (4.3%). The Departments of Agriculture, State, Commerce, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Energy each show zero SDVOSB set-asides in this dataset. If SDVOSB set-asides are your primary lane, the Department of Veterans Affairs is where to focus.

What does the overall set-aside mix look like?

Of 744 open notices as of 2026-07-26: 402 (54%) are set aside for small business broadly, 69 (9.3%) are SDVOSB set-asides, and 273 (36.7%) fall into other categories. Fewer than 1 in 10 open notices is an SDVOSB set-aside. Qualifying as an SDVOSB opens a specific slice — it doesn't open the whole market.

Where is the DC/Maryland/Virginia work concentrated?

Of the 484 open notices that list a place-of-performance state, 45 show a DMV-area state (as of 2026-07-26): Virginia has 16, Maryland has 15, and DC has 14. That's 9.3% of located open notices. Note that 260 open notices carry no state at all, so these counts are a floor, not a ceiling. Among all states with location data, North Carolina leads with 61 open notices, followed by Texas (45), California (23), New York (19), Illinois (18), Florida (18), Mississippi (17), and Pennsylvania (17).

By the numbers

• 744 total open notices across 6 construction NAICS codes — as of 2026-07-26
• 246 notices closing within the next 7 days — as of 2026-07-26
• 389 notices posted in the last 7 days — as of 2026-07-26
• 28.5 days average response window overall — as of 2026-07-26
• 448 open notices in NAICS 236220 (Commercial & Institutional Building Construction) — as of 2026-07-26
• 176 open notices in NAICS 238220 (Plumbing, Heating & Air-Conditioning) — as of 2026-07-26
• 69 SDVOSB set-aside notices open (9.3% of all open notices) — as of 2026-07-26
• 54.5% of Department of Veterans Affairs open notices are SDVOSB set-asides (60 of 110) — as of 2026-07-26
• 1.7% of Department of Defense open notices are SDVOSB set-asides (6 of 357) — as of 2026-07-26
• 45 open notices in DC, Maryland, and Virginia combined, of the 484 open notices that list a state — as of 2026-07-26
• 260 open notices carry no place-of-performance state — as of 2026-07-26

Methodology and limits

Source: SAM.gov opportunity notices, ingested daily into our own cache. What's counted: A notice is "open" if its response deadline falls after the snapshot timestamp. NAICS scope: This post covers exactly 6 NAICS codes — 236118, 236220, 238160, 238190, 238220, and 238320. It does not cover federal construction contracting broadly.

Known limits:

• Missing states: 35.5% of all cached rows carry no place-of-performance state. Every geographic figure in this post is calculated only against notices that do list a state, and is labeled as such. Geographic counts are a floor, not a complete picture.
• No contract values: The value column is NULL on every cached row. No dollar amounts exist in this dataset. No figures in this post imply or estimate contract values.
• No trend data: The live snapshot archive began 2026-07-26. Only 1 day of observed history exists. Week-over-week or directional trend claims are not possible and are not made. This is a point-in-time snapshot only.

Note: "Veterans Affairs" in the agency figures refers to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a federal agency. "Virginia" in the geographic figures refers to the state of Virginia. These are different figures derived from different fields and should not be combined or compared.