542 federal construction notices close in 7 days — are you ready?

542 of 1,122 open federal construction notices have a response deadline within the next 7 days as of 2026-08-31.

That's nearly half the open pipeline due in one week. If you haven't triaged your bid queue this week, do it today. This post covers only 6 construction NAICS codes tracked in our SAM.gov cache — not federal contracting overall.

Which set-aside type dominates right now?

Small business set-asides lead by a wide margin. Of 1,122 open notices as of 2026-08-31:

• 673 (60%) are set aside for small businesses broadly
• 127 (11.3%) are SDVOSB set-asides
• 322 (28.7%) fall into other set-aside categories

If you're an SDVOSB, 127 notices are carved out specifically for you. That's a focused, workable list.

Which agency actually sets aside construction work for SDVOSBs?

One agency stands out sharply from the rest:

• Veterans Affairs (the federal department): 153 open notices, 95 set aside for SDVOSBs — 62.1% SDVOSB share
• Department of Defense: 525 open notices, 24 SDVOSB set-asides — 4.6% share
• General Services Administration: 19 open notices, 1 SDVOSB set-aside — 5.3% share
• Department of Transportation: 14 open notices, 2 SDVOSB set-asides — 14.3% share
• Interior, Agriculture, State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Justice: combined SDVOSB share ranges from 0% to 3.1%

If you are an SDVOSB chasing set-aside work, Veterans Affairs is the single highest-percentage agency in this dataset by a large margin.

How much time do I have to respond to a federal construction solicitation?

The overall average response window across all 6 NAICS codes is 27.3 days as of 2026-08-31. But it varies significantly by trade:

• Residential Remodelers (236118): 50.4 days avg — most lead time
• Commercial & Institutional Building Construction (236220): 30.9 days
• Plumbing, Heating & Air-Conditioning (238220): 25.4 days
• Roofing (238160): 24.6 days
• Painting & Wall Covering (238320): 18.5 days — least lead time
• Other Foundation, Structure & Building Exterior (238190): 26.0 days

Roofing and painting contractors in particular: your clock runs fast. Build that into your bid calendar.

Where is the work, for contractors in the DMV region?

Of the 763 open notices that list a place-of-performance state as of 2026-08-31, 63 are in the DC-Maryland-Virginia region — 8.3% of located notices:

• Virginia (state): 36 open notices
• DC: 17 open notices
• Maryland: 10 open notices

For context against the broader located dataset, Virginia (state) ranks 4th nationally among the 763 located notices. North Carolina leads with 69, followed by Texas (60) and Oklahoma (41).

Note: 359 open notices carry no place-of-performance state and are excluded from every geographic figure above.

Is activity picking up or slowing down?

This is an early signal only — treat it with caution. Over 33 observed days in our live snapshot (2026-07-26 through 2026-08-27), the first week-over-week comparison shows open notices at 1,356 on 2026-08-24 and 1,378 on 2026-08-27. That is one data point across 33 days of observation. It is too early to call a direction. We will report additional week-over-week readings as they accumulate.

277 new notices were posted in the last 7 days as of 2026-08-31, which gives a sense of current posting pace — but that is a single-window count, not a trend.

By the numbers

• 1,122 total open notices across 6 NAICS codes — as of 2026-08-31
• 542 open notices with deadlines in the next 7 days — as of 2026-08-31
• 277 notices posted in the last 7 days — as of 2026-08-31
• 127 (11.3%) of open notices are SDVOSB set-asides — as of 2026-08-31
• 673 (60%) of open notices are small-business set-asides — as of 2026-08-31
• Veterans Affairs (federal department): 62.1% SDVOSB share across 153 open notices — as of 2026-08-31
• 27.3 days average response window overall — as of 2026-08-31
• 500 open notices under NAICS 236220 (Commercial & Institutional Building Construction) — largest single code — as of 2026-08-31
• 63 open notices in the DMV, of 763 that list a state (8.3%) — as of 2026-08-31
• 359 open notices carry no place-of-performance state and are excluded from all geographic counts — as of 2026-08-31

⚠️ "Veterans Affairs" above refers to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (a federal agency). "Virginia" in the DMV section refers to the state of Virginia. These are different figures drawn from different parts of the dataset.

Methodology and limits

Source: SAM.gov opportunity notices, ingested daily into our own cache.

What's counted: "Open" means the response deadline is in the future as of the snapshot timestamp. This post covers 6 construction NAICS codes only (236118, 236220, 238160, 238190, 238220, 238320) — not federal contracting overall.

Known limits:

• Missing state data: 359 of 1,122 open notices (and 33.1% of all 3,907 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 says so explicitly.
• No contract values: The value column is NULL on every cached row. No dollar amounts exist in this dataset. None are reported here.
• Trend history: Our live snapshot covers 33 observed days (2026-07-26 through 2026-08-27). One week-over-week reading is available and reported as an early signal only — not a trend, not a directional call. The rolling cache also silently drops notices as they age past the window, so changes in open counts between snapshots reflect cache aging as well as real market activity.
• Point-in-time counts: All opportunity counts are a single-instant read of a rolling ~60-day cache. They are not a historical series and should not be compared across different snapshot dates as if they were.