Research who currently holds a contract, pull their rates, compare against your pricing, benchmark against the market, and use your bid history to sharpen your competitive strategy.
Incumbent analysis answers a simple but critical question: what is the government paying today, and how fast are rates escalating? When you're bidding on a recompete or consolidation, the current contractor's pricing is your baseline.
Open your proposal in the Pricing module, then switch to the Incumbent Intel tab.
Two search methods are available:
Method A—By Contract Number (PIID): Enter the contract number (e.g., 140P2022F0195). The system queries USAspending.gov and returns the contract details.
Method B—By Recipient Name: Enter the company name with an optional agency filter. The system returns up to 25 matching contracts—select the right one.
After the contract loads, enter the FTE count and source. The system uses this to calculate the implied hourly rate:
Implied Rate = Total Obligation / (FTEs × 2,080 hours/year)If you don't know the FTE count, use the reverse calculator: enter your estimated bill rate and the annualized obligation, and the system computes the implied headcount.
This is the most important output. It shows each funded period of the contract:
| Column | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Period | BASE, OY1, OY2, or 52.217-8 extension |
| Mod # | Modification number from the funding action |
| Obligation | Dollar amount obligated for that period |
| Annualized | Obligation normalized to 12 months (for partial-year periods) |
| Implied Rate | Calculated hourly rate based on your FTE count |
| Escalation | Percent change from the previous period's implied rate |
The Implied Rate column shows what the incumbent is effectively charging per hour. The Escalation column shows the trend—consistent 2–3% is normal; flat or declining rates suggest the incumbent is under price pressure.
If you're bidding on a consolidation, add each incumbent. When two or more are loaded, the system generates a side-by-side rate comparison and a Consolidation Analysis:
| Metric | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Combined Annual Spend | What the government pays today across all incumbent contracts |
| Combined FTE Estimate | Total headcount across incumbents |
| Blended Average Rate | Weighted average hourly rate—your pricing target |
A Savings Targets Table shows what the government saves at different discount levels (0%, 5%, 10%, etc.). If the government's stated goal is 10% savings through consolidation, this tells you the exact dollar amount—price your proposal to deliver that savings while maintaining margin.
Competitor analysis compares your proposed rates against other companies' published GSA ceiling rates—pulled directly from GSA CALC+.
Switch to the Competitors tab.
The Frequent Competitors table auto-populates from your bid history—companies that have won bids where you lost. Start here. Then search and add additional competitors:
Search CALC+—the system queries GSA CALC+ for their published contracts.Load Catalog—the system imports all their LCATs and rates.The catalog is cached for 7 days. Rates come from the competitor's published GSA schedule—these are ceiling rates, not necessarily their proposed rates (they may discount further).
Once a competitor's catalog is loaded, you need to map your positions to their equivalent LCATs. The system uses Claude AI to do this automatically:
Build AI Crosswalk.| Status | What It Means | Action Required |
|---|---|---|
| High (85%+) | Match is reliable | None—use as-is |
| Review (60–84%) | Possible match, verify | Confirm or correct |
| Low (<60%) | Uncertain match | Correct or reject |
The competitive positioning analysis is only as good as the crosswalk. A bad match—mapping your Senior Systems Engineer to their Help Desk Analyst—produces misleading comparisons. Review all Review and Low confidence matches before acting on the data.
The main output is a side-by-side rate comparison showing your ceiling, your discounted rate, each competitor's published rate, and the delta.
How to read the delta column:
Summary cards show your overall blended rate vs. each competitor, with an overall position: Competitive (green, 5%+ below), Neutral (yellow, within 5%), or Above Market (red, 5%+ more expensive).
Switch to the Bid History tab. This is your historical win/loss record and the most direct signal about whether your pricing strategy is working.
Select a grouping dimension from the dropdown—Vehicle, Agency, Division, Year, Work Type, or Contract Type—and review win rates by segment.
What to look for:
| Metric | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Price Losses | Count of bids lost specifically due to pricing |
| Avg Price Gap | How far above the winning bid you typically are |
| Loss Reason Breakdown | What fraction of losses are price-driven vs. technical vs. past performance |
If your average price gap is 15%, you're consistently bidding 15% above the winner. That's not a small tweak—it may indicate your wrap rate or discount strategy needs fundamental adjustment, not incremental refinement.
The win pricing metrics show your average gross margin and discount on winning bids. Use these as calibration points for current proposals.
Agencies where you have high win rates and low price gaps are your sweet spot—bid more aggressively there. Agencies with low win rates and large price gaps need a different pricing strategy or a different BD approach before investing in more bids.
The recommended sequence for a competitive bid:
The Operator's View
Having more information is almost always better when analyzing incumbents and competitors—but only if you’re analyzing it correctly. Arcvue makes the data side easy: pull a competitor’s published rates, surface their predecessor contract details, select likely LCATs, set an estimated discount, and hit enter. The tools handle the retrieval. The real work starts after that.
Three things worth paying close attention to:
Modifications tell a story. Changes in scope show up in contract modifications. If the legacy contract supported eight FTEs and the new RFP calls for six, bidding against the old staffing model is a costly mistake. Look at what changed, not just what was.
Use the Q&A to pressure-test scope. The pre-solicitation Q&A process is an underutilized source of context. Use it to probe whether support levels have shifted. Numbers without context are either noise or a trap.
Back into their discount. Selecting a competitor’s assumed discount isn’t a science, but if you can get within plus or minus five percent—and you’ve been diligent about matching their likely LCAT selection—that’s genuinely powerful comparative pricing intelligence. If you can confirm current headcount on the contract, run it through the Status Quo analyzer. It compares your pricing to the current contract as though it were going to continue for the new PoP, inclusive of escalations, and will give you a reasonable estimate of what the Government currently feels like it’s paying in total and per FTE. That number is worth knowing before you price.
Common Questions
Vehicles & Import using the Excel template. Even 2–3 years of partial data provides useful patterns.