Federal contracting in Montana
$1.1B in federal prime contracts went to work performed in Montana in FY2025 — 46th of 56 states and territories, 0.2% of the national total.
Federal figures: USAspending snapshot 2026-09-08, fiscal years 2020–2025 complete plus FY2026 through 2026-05. Obligations in US dollars.
What the money does here
Federal buyers obligated $1.1B on prime contracts performed in Montana in fiscal 2025, which ranks it 46th of 56 states and territories and is 0.2% of everything the federal government contracted for that year. That is $1,057 per resident.
Since fiscal 2020 the total has moved +61%, from $713M. The largest single buyer is Department of Defense, at $441M — 38% of the state's federal total, out of 20 federal agencies that obligated anything here.
Of the sectors broken out here, construction is the largest in Montana: $408M, or 35.6% of the state's federal spending, having moved +149% since fiscal 2020. The single busiest place of performance is Cascade County ($291M).
Seven years of federal contracting
Obligations by fiscal year, attributed to the state where the work is performed. Switch between every sector and each break-out on its own, and between full fiscal years and a matched window that makes the current year comparable.
FY2026 is hatched because it is 8 months, not twelve (2025-10 to 2026-05), and its defence figures stop where the Pentagon's 90-day reporting hold begins. It is not comparable to the columns beside it. Across the complete years, FY2020 to FY2025, all sectors obligations moved +61%.
Who buys here
Federal agencies by what they obligated on work performed in Montana in fiscal 2025.
| Agency | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | 38.5% | $441M | |
| Department of Agriculture | 23.4% | $268M | |
| Department of Health and Human Services | 12.4% | $142M | |
| Department of the Interior | 7.6% | $87M | |
| General Services Administration | 6.0% | $69M | |
| Department of Transportation | 5.1% | $58M | |
| Department of Veterans Affairs | 2.2% | $25M | |
| Department of Homeland Security | 1.8% | $21M | |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration | 1.3% | $15M | |
| Department of Justice | 0.9% | $10M | |
| Environmental Protection Agency | 0.5% | $6M | |
| Department of Commerce | 0.2% | $2M | |
| All other agencies | 0.1% | $1M |
What they buy
The industries that federal money in Montana actually lands in, by NAICS code.
| Industry | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial and Institutional Building Construction NAICS 236220 | 26.3% | $301M | |
| Nonscheduled Chartered Freight Air Transportation NAICS 481212 | 13.5% | $155M | |
| Engineering Services NAICS 541330 | 6.2% | $71M | |
| Highway, Street, and Bridge Construction NAICS 237310 | 5.8% | $67M | |
| Support Activities for Forestry NAICS 115310 | 5.1% | $59M | |
| Temporary Help Services NAICS 561320 | 4.6% | $53M | |
| Other Aircraft Parts and Auxiliary Equipment Manufacturing NAICS 336413 | 2.9% | $33M | |
| Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology) NAICS 541715 | 2.7% | $31M |
Where in the state
Places of performance within Montana, which is a different question from where the buying office sits.
| County | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cascade County | 25.4% | $291M | |
| Gallatin County | 12.1% | $139M | |
| Lake County | 8.2% | $94M | |
| Lewis And Clark County | 7.0% | $80M | |
| Ravalli County | 6.1% | $70M | |
| Missoula County | 5.8% | $67M | |
| Yellowstone County | 5.8% | $66M | |
| Silver Bow County | 4.4% | $50M |
Who wins here
The largest prime contractors on work performed in Montana. Companies registered under several entity IDs are summed into one row — the federal data reports each registration separately, which understates large parents three to five times if taken at face value.
| Prime contractor | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARCHER WESTERN FEDERAL JV | 13.9% | $159M | |
| BRIDGER AIR TANKER LLC | 6.9% | $79M | |
| SWANK ENTERPRISES, INC. | 3.8% | $44M | |
| S & K AEROSPACE, LLC | 3.8% | $44M | |
| HENSEL PHELPS CONSTRUCTION CO | 2.9% | $33M | |
| BILLINGS FLYING SERVICE LLC | 2.5% | $29M | |
| S & K FEDERAL SERVICES LLC | 2.3% | $26M | |
| MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY | 1.9% | $22M |
Prime contracts only. A firm working as a subcontractor to one of these names does not appear, however much of the work it does.
Small business
Of the $635M obligated in Montana over the matched window, $73M — 11.5% — went out under a small-business set-aside, against 6.7% nationally. In fiscal 2020 the state's share was 29.6%.
Set-asides are the part of the federal market a small firm can compete in on something other than scale, so the share matters more than the dollars. Open set-aside work in Montana is listed in the portal.
Open in Montana right now
Offra is tracking 11 open public solicitations in Montana — federal, state and local. Public record last confirmed Oct 1, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC.
Busiest industries
- Commercial & institutional building construction2
- Logging2
- Building equipment contractors1
- Building foundation & exterior contractors1
- Other specialty trade contractors1
- Services to buildings & dwellings1
Where the notices come from
- SAM.gov11
How to read this page
- The two halves measure different things.
- Everything above the live section is federal prime-contract obligations from USAspending, attributed to the state where the work is performed. The live counts are our own open-notice corpus, where a federal notice is filed against the contracting office's address, because that is what the source publishes — only about a third of SAM.gov notices carry a usable place of performance. The two are not interchangeable and are deliberately not added together.
- Obligations, not award value.
- What was actually put on contract in the window, including modifications to older awards. A negative figure is not an error: it means money came back off existing contracts faster than new money went out.
- Prime contracts only — so infrastructure money is largely invisible.
- Award types A–D. Grants, loans and direct payments are excluded because they are not contracts. Most federal infrastructure money reaches contractors as grants or formula funds to state agencies, which then let their own contracts; none of that is a federal prime contract and none of it appears here. That is a fact about the measure, not about the spending.
- Fiscal 2026 is 8 months, and its defence figures stop early.
- The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withhold contract actions from federal reporting for 90 days. Nothing in the data marks it — a recent month simply shows almost no defence activity, which reads exactly like a collapse and is not one. This snapshot treats the record as complete only through 2026-05, a boundary found by reading the monthly defence series and locating where it falls off a shelf rather than by counting days. Use the like-for-like window on the chart to compare the current year to its predecessors.
- Contractors are rolled up; subcontractors are absent.
- Federal data reports one row per registered entity, not per company, so a large parent appears several times. Those rows are summed here. Subcontract work is not reported at this level at all.
- The figures move after publication.
- Recent months revise upward for weeks as modifications post, so the most recent year on this page is provisional by construction. Snapshot taken 2026-09-08.
The wider federal picture — which agencies moved, which contractors arrived, and what changed nationally — is in the federal contracting study. Every state's open-tender count is on the coverage map.
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