How to read a federal solicitation and its wage determination

Read it in this order

1. The cover form: deadline, set-aside, NAICS code.
2. The instructions to offerors: what to submit, how, and by when.
3. The evaluation criteria: how the winner is picked.
4. The work statement: what you'd actually do.
5. The wage determination: the minimum you must pay.
6. The price schedule: what you fill in.

Reading the instructions and evaluation first tells you in ten minutes whether the bid is worth an evening of pricing.

The cover form

Commercial services solicitations, which covers most janitorial, grounds and pest control work, usually start with a Standard Form 1449. Other solicitations may use an SF 33. Amendments come on an SF 30. On the cover form, look for the solicitation number, the offer due date and time, whether the buy is set aside and for whom, the NAICS code and its size standard, and where to deliver your offer. You'll sign and return it with your offer. The official forms are in GSA's forms library.

How the document is laid out

Larger negotiated solicitations often follow the Uniform Contract Format, with lettered sections. The ones that matter most:

Smaller commercial solicitations don't use the letters. Instead, look for provisions or addenda titled along the lines of "Instructions to Offerors" and "Evaluation", plus the attachments list. The federal acquisition rules, including the clauses solicitations cite, are published at acquisition.gov. Those rules are being rewritten in plain language under the FAR overhaul, and agencies have adopted the new text at different times, so clause numbers and wording can differ between solicitations. Always go by the solicitation in front of you.

The work statement

The Performance Work Statement (PWS) or Statement of Work describes the job. For cleaning and grounds work, pull out:

• Buildings or areas, square footage or acreage, and floor or surface types
• Task lists and frequencies: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, as-needed
• Service hours, holidays, and any after-hours or weekend work
• Who supplies what: consumables, equipment, chemicals, storage space
• Quality standards and how the government will inspect (often a surveillance plan)
• Staffing rules: supervisors on site, background checks, badges or base access
• Reports, logs and meetings you'll owe

Turn it into hours. Our janitorial bid estimator takes square footage, frequency and a production rate and shows the math.

The price schedule

The schedule lists line items (CLINs), each with a quantity and unit such as "12 months" or "each". Expect a base year plus option years; you're usually pricing all of them, and evaluation often adds them up. Watch for separate line items for one-time or as-needed work (floor stripping, carpet extraction, emergency call-outs), and check whether the agency wants a firm-fixed price or unit prices.

Instructions and evaluation

• Instructions say what volumes to submit (price, technical approach, past performance), page limits, file types, the submission method (email, a portal, or a named system) and the deadline. Follow them exactly; offers that don't can be rejected.
• Evaluation says how the award is decided. Two common approaches: lowest price technically acceptable, where the cheapest offer that meets every requirement wins, and best value tradeoff, where a better technical approach or past performance can beat a lower price. The method changes how much effort to put into the written parts.
• Look for a questions deadline and any site visit. Both usually come well before the offer deadline.

The wage determination

Federal contracts whose main purpose is services done by service employees, such as cleaning, grounds and pest control, are generally covered by federal service contract labor standards (still widely called the Service Contract Act). Covered solicitations attach a wage determination (WD) issued by the Department of Labor. It sets the minimum wage and fringe benefits you must pay each class of worker on the contract. How to read one:

1. Check the header: the WD number, revision number and date, and the states and counties it covers. It must match the place of performance. The solicitation names the exact WD and revision that apply.
2. Find your occupations in the list, for example Janitor, Housekeeping Aide, Window Cleaner, or Laborer, Grounds Maintenance. Each has a code and a minimum hourly rate.
3. Read the fringe benefits section under the rate table: a health and welfare amount per hour, vacation by years of service, and a list of holidays workers get with pay. These are owed on top of the hourly wage, as benefits or as cash.
4. Read the footnotes. They cover things like required sick leave and any executive-order minimum wage that applies, and they can change your cost.
5. Watch for a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). If the current workforce is unionized, the solicitation may attach a WD based on that agreement, and a successor contractor generally must pay at least those wages and benefits.

Build your price up from those numbers: WD wage plus fringe, then payroll taxes, workers' compensation and insurance, supplies, supervision, overhead and profit. Pricing below the WD doesn't make you competitive; it makes your offer a problem. Look up WDs at SAM.gov wage determinations, and see the Department of Labor's service contracts page for the rules.

Amendments and questions

Amendments can change the deadline, scope, attachments or wage determination. Each one comes as an SF 30 or an updated notice on SAM.gov, and the solicitation says how to acknowledge it, often by signing and returning the SF 30 or listing it on the cover form. Check for new amendments the day before you submit. Questions go to the contracting officer or specialist named in the solicitation, in writing, by the questions deadline. Answers are usually published to everyone as an amendment.

General information from the Bid Brief team, not legal or contracting advice. The solicitation, its clauses and its amendments control. We aren't affiliated with SAM.gov, the Department of Labor or any government agency. Last reviewed Nov 4, 2026.