There are many sub-opportunities to be a subcontractor for a large prime contracting firm for the federal government.
Following is a listing of some of the big players in government contracting and their area of interest. This data should give you some understanding of the amount of contract support that the large primes provide to the federal government. Note that this is the most current data that we had available to us at the time of publication.
Our top picks. Following are our picks of the 20 federal contractors out of the top 100 that we think small businesses stand the best chance of getting some work from. We eliminated foreign companies because they are not required to comply with laws protecting subcontractors. (We are not saying that they wouldn't, but it is an issue that you don't have to even think about when you subcontract with U.S. manufacturers.)
We also eliminated educational institutions when picking our top 20. While they may offer some service opportunities, they are generally looking for very specialized expertise, and opportunities are thus very limited for the general population of small businesses.
| Our Top 20 Federal Contractors |
| Federal Contractor |
Total $ Awards for 2006 |
| Lockheed Martin Corporation |
$26,635,874,572 |
| The Boeing Company |
20,293,350,668 |
| Northrop Grumman Corporation |
16,627,067,499 |
| General Dynamics Corporation |
10,526,161,839 |
| Raytheon Company |
10,068,657,019 |
| L3 Communications Holdings Inc. |
5,197,90,394 |
| BAE Systems PLC |
4,734,920,429 |
| United Technologies Corporation |
4,452,662,076 |
| Science Applications International |
3,210,604,531 |
| Computer Sciences Corporation |
2,884,071,378 |
| Humana Inc. |
2,641,741,534 |
| ITT Corporation |
2,522,008,179 |
| General Electric Company Inc. |
2,327,705,161 |
| Honeywell International Inc. |
1,678,516,318 |
| Harris Corporation |
1,339,125,502 |
| Alliant Techsystems Inc. |
1,128,381,646 |
| Alliance Contractor Team |
1,023,465,614 |
| Oshkosh Truck Corporation |
940,574,560 |
| Textron, Inc. |
814,684,786 |
| SupplyCore |
113,037,327 |