September is the busiest month in federal contracting. Agencies rush to obligate money that expires on the 30th. October is the reverse. The new fiscal year opens, the pipeline thins, and many firms read the quiet as a signal to stop looking.
This year the quiet has a cause you can read. Fiscal 2027 opened on a continuing resolution, signed in early September, that funds the government through December 11, 2026. Agencies are spending at roughly their fiscal 2026 rates under fiscal 2026 conditions until Congress passes full-year bills or another stopgap. A CR does not stop contracting. It changes which contracts move.
What a continuing resolution allows
Work that already exists keeps going. Under a CR, an agency can generally:
- exercise options on contracts that are already running,
- award recompetes and follow-ons for programs funded last year,
- buy the recurring supplies and services it was already buying.
If the work you chase is a recompete of something the agency bought in fiscal 2026, the CR is mostly a timing question. The solicitation may slip a few weeks. It is unlikely to disappear.
What it holds back
A CR bars agencies from starting projects or activities that were not funded the year before. Those are the "new starts". Defense carries extra limits: no production of items not already in production, no production-rate increases above fiscal 2026 levels, and no new multiyear procurements.
So the new program announced at a spring industry day, the expansion an agency has budgeted for fiscal 2027, or the follow-on at a much larger scope will usually wait for full-year appropriations. You can still see the work, in forecasts, Sources Sought notices and draft RFPs. It just cannot be awarded yet.
"Subject to the availability of funds" is still worth bidding
Some solicitations will go out anyway, with a clause saying the government's obligation depends on funds being appropriated. Firms sometimes read that as a reason to pass. It usually is not.
The clause lets the agency run the competition now and award when the money lands. The evaluation is real, and so is the award. What changes is your exposure between submission and notice to proceed. Check three things before you price:
- How long your price has to hold. Bid acceptance periods can stretch past the CR. Price the materials and labor that will apply when the work starts, not the ones that apply today.
- Whether the start date floats. A performance period that begins "upon award" can begin in January rather than November. Staffing and mobilization plans should not assume otherwise.
- What happens after December 11. If the government shuts down on December 12, open solicitations can be paused and due dates moved. Watch for amendments, and acknowledge every one.
What to do with the quiet weeks
The firms that win the spring awards are usually doing their work now, while competitors wait. Four things pay off during a CR:
- Answer the Sources Sought notices. New starts that cannot be awarded can still be shaped. This is when an agency decides whether the work is a set-aside and how it is described. A Sources Sought notice is the bid before the bid.
- Read the agency forecasts. Most agencies publish procurement forecasts for the new year. Mark the ones that match your NAICS codes and set-aside status, and check what a set-aside actually excludes before you count yourself in.
- Fix your registrations. An expired SAM.gov registration or a stale representation is a disqualification waiting for a deadline. Registered in SAM.gov is not one thing.
- Make your bid/no-bid calls early. When the money lands, the solicitations land together. Deciding in advance which ones you will chase is what keeps a January surge from becoming a January scramble. The bid/no-bid call takes twenty minutes if you have done the reading.
The date to watch
December 11 is the next decision point. Congress can pass full-year bills, pass another stopgap or let funding lapse. The first starts the new-start pipeline. The second extends the current situation. The third pauses most of it.
You cannot control which happens. You can control whether, when the money arrives, you have already read the work, shaped what you could, and decided what you are bidding.
