Why this page exists
We publish a lot about how to work with us, and the volume itself becomes a problem. A capture manager with a bid due in nine days does not want a reading list. A department chair who needs a small-business partner before a solicitation closes does not want a capabilities brochure. So this page is the whole partnership library compressed into six sections, one per reader, each ending in a single concrete next step. Read your section. Skip the rest.
Precision Federal is an SBIR and STTR shop. We build production AI, ML, data, and cloud systems, and we take federal, state, and commercial work as prime or subcontractor. Our team is led by a former professor in technology who ranks in the Kaggle Top 200 of more than 200,000 competitors, holds seven cloud certifications, and has spent twenty years building production systems for federal agencies across five consulting firms, three of them federal. Behind that sits a standing bench of named engineers, licensed professional engineers, and domain specialists covering defense, health, energy, transportation, and public-sector data.
The registration chain is already complete: SAM.gov active, CAGE 1AYQ0, NAICS 541715 and 541512, JCP and DD-2345 certified for militarily critical technical data. That matters because it removes the most common source of delay in a teaming conversation. Nobody has to wait on us to get registered, get a CAGE code, or get access to controlled technical data packages before work can start.
Where a partner typically plugs us in
Editorial weighting of the request types that reach us — illustrative, not a measured statistic.
If you are a prime capture manager
We write the AI/ML section of your technical volume, staff it with named people, and stand behind the numbers in it. We hold our own SAM registration, CAGE code, and DD-2345 certification, so adding us to a team does not add a registration task to your schedule. And we answer a fit question in one business day, because the worst thing a sub can do to a capture schedule is take a week to say no.
The mechanics on your side are familiar. If the contract is expected to exceed $750,000, FAR 52.219-9 puts a small business subcontracting plan on you, with goals negotiated against the categories in FAR 19.704. We fit the small business line and the NAICS 541715 research-and-development line at the same time, which is a combination that tends to be short on most teams. On past performance, FAR 15.305(a)(2)(iii) lets you take credit for the record of a proposed subcontractor when that subcontractor will perform a meaningful portion of the effort, so the workshare split and the past-performance narrative should be written together rather than in sequence.
Next step. Send the topic or solicitation number and the close date to [email protected]. You get a yes or no within one business day, and if it is a yes, a one-page scope with named engineers, hours, and a workshare percentage you can drop into your subcontracting plan.
If you are a university researcher or faculty PI
An STTR needs a small business to hold the award, and we do that work end to end. We handle the registrations, the cost volume, the commercialization plan, the reporting, and the contracting so your lab does the research it wanted to do in the first place. We also build the software side of the effort, which is usually the part that stalls when a lab is asked to ship a working system on a nine-month clock.
The statutory shape is fixed and worth restating. Under the SBIR and STTR statute at 15 U.S.C. 638 and the SBA rules at 13 CFR 121.702, an STTR requires a small business concern and a nonprofit research institution, with a minimum of 40 percent of the work performed by the small business and a minimum of 30 percent by the research institution. The principal investigator may be primarily employed at either party, which is the provision that makes STTR attractive to faculty who cannot leave a tenured appointment. Subject inventions arising at the institution stay inside the Bayh-Dole framework at 35 U.S.C. 200-212 and 37 CFR Part 401, and the allocation-of-rights agreement between the two parties is where that gets settled before submission, not after.
Next step. Send the solicitation link, your department, and the research area to [email protected]. You get a fit read within one business day and, if it fits, a draft allocation-of-rights outline plus the work-split percentages before you have to commit anything to your sponsored programs office.
If you are a system integrator
We are the AI bench you rent instead of hiring. Our engineers work inside your repository, your ticket system, and your delivery cadence, under your architecture, with your name on the deliverable if that is what the customer contract requires. We take the modeling, retrieval, evaluation, and data-engineering work that your generalist teams can do slowly and we do it at the speed a program review expects.
Integrators care about two things beyond skill: whether we survive the security review, and whether we disappear when the option year lands. On the first, we work to NIST SP 800-171 practices for controlled unclassified information, we understand what DFARS 252.204-7012 obligates on incident reporting inside 72 hours, and we track the CMMC program requirements at 32 CFR Part 170 as they phase into DFARS 252.204-7021 clauses. On the second, we take named-key-personnel clauses seriously and we will tell you before a bid whether a specific person can be committed for the period of performance, rather than discovering it at award.
Next step. Send the workshare description, the clearance or CUI level, and the start date to [email protected]. You get named engineers with availability windows and a rate structure within one business day.
If you are a commercial company that needs engineering capacity
We build the system, not a slide deck about the system. A typical engagement starts with a fixed-price proof of value against your real data, ends with running code in your cloud account, and is scoped so that the first useful output arrives in weeks rather than quarters. We work in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and we hand over infrastructure as code so your team can operate what we built without us.
Commercial buyers usually arrive with one of three problems. The first is a model that works in a notebook and dies on the way to production, which is a data-access and evaluation problem far more often than a modeling problem. The second is a document or records workflow where generation is the wrong tool and deterministic extraction with span-level provenance is the right one. The third is capacity: a roadmap that is correct and a team that is fully committed through the next two quarters. All three are ordinary work for us, and all three are quotable on a fixed price once we can see the shape of the data.
Next step. Send a two-paragraph description of the workflow and the shape of the data, including record volume and formats, to [email protected]. You get a fixed-price proof-of-value scope with a deliverable list and a date within two business days.
If you are a state or local vendor
We team on state, county, and city technology awards as a subcontractor or as the technical partner on a joint response. We know how to write to a state evaluation sheet, which is a different document from a federal Section M, and we build the analytics and AI portions that state IT shops increasingly require and rarely staff internally. We are equally comfortable as the in-state face of a bid or as the out-of-state specialist a resident bidder brings in.
Two rules govern most of these deals. Resident-bidder and reciprocal-preference statutes vary by state, and several apply a mirror penalty to out-of-state bidders based on how that bidder's home state treats the reciprocal case, which is the situation Iowa Code § 73A.21 addresses. Separately, when the money is federal pass-through, the Uniform Guidance at 2 CFR Part 200 applies to the state's procurement, including the procurement standards at 2 CFR 200.318 through 200.327 and the subrecipient-versus-contractor determination at 2 CFR 200.331. Getting that classification right at proposal time decides whether your teammate is carrying subrecipient monitoring obligations or a simple purchase order.
Next step. Send the state, the RFP number, and the due date to [email protected]. You get a go or no-go within one business day, and a draft technical outline for the AI, data, or cloud sections within three.
If you are an investor or a board
We do technical diligence on AI companies and we report what we find, including when the finding is that the claimed benchmark cannot be reproduced. Our reviews cover the model and data pipeline, the evaluation methodology, the security and compliance posture, the intellectual property chain, and the realistic cost to run the system at the volume the plan assumes. Reports are written to be read by a non-technical board without losing the technical substance an operator would need.
For companies with federal revenue in the model, there is a second layer worth pricing. SBIR-funded software and technical data carry protection under DFARS 252.227-7018 for a defined period after award, and whether that protection survives depends on markings that are frequently applied incorrectly. Ownership structure has consequences too: 13 CFR 121.702 governs SBIR eligibility, the affiliation rules at 13 CFR 121.103 can pull a portfolio company over the 500-employee ceiling through common control, and majority ownership by multiple venture capital operating companies is only workable at agencies that have elected to allocate funds under 15 U.S.C. 638(dd). A term sheet written without those three facts can quietly destroy the revenue line it was underwriting.
Next step. Send the company name and the specific claim you want tested to [email protected]. You get a scope, a fee, and a delivery date within two business days, under NDA before any material changes hands.
What to send, and what comes back
The table below is the same six answers in one view. The pattern is deliberate: every request is one email, none of them requires a call to get started, and every one of them produces a written artifact rather than a meeting invitation.
| You are | Send this | You get back |
|---|---|---|
| Prime capture manager | Topic or solicitation number, close date | Yes or no in 1 business day; one-page scope with named engineers and workshare percentage |
| Faculty PI | Solicitation link, department, research area | Fit read in 1 business day; draft allocation-of-rights outline and work-split percentages |
| System integrator | Workshare description, clearance or CUI level, start date | Named engineers with availability windows and a rate structure in 1 business day |
| Commercial buyer | Two paragraphs on the workflow, record volume and formats | Fixed-price proof-of-value scope with deliverables and a date in 2 business days |
| State or local vendor | State, RFP number, due date | Go or no-go in 1 business day; technical outline in 3 |
| Investor or board | Company name and the claim to test | Scope, fee, and delivery date in 2 business days, under NDA |
You do not need permission to include our credentials in your bid
UEI Y2JVCZXT9HP5, CAGE 1AYQ0, NAICS 541715 and 541512, SAM.gov active, JCP and DD-2345 certified. Our SAM record is public at sam.gov and can be pulled for your compliance matrix before we have ever spoken. If your capture calendar is tight, build the matrix first and send the email second.
How a partnership actually starts
The sequence below is what happens after the email, and it is short on purpose. Most teaming relationships die in the gap between interest and signature, so we compress that gap and put the first technical artifact in front of you before either side has spent real money.
From first email to first deliverable
What we decline, and why saying so is useful
We turn down work that we cannot do well, and we say so on the first day rather than the thirtieth. Pure staff augmentation billed by the seat with no defined deliverable is one category. Work requiring a facility clearance under the NISPOM at 32 CFR Part 117 is another, though that is solvable on a team where a cleared partner holds the facility and we hold the engineering. Any engagement whose value depends on a benchmark we are not allowed to reproduce is a third.
The reason to publish the decline list is that it makes the yes worth something. A partner who has read this page knows that a yes from us is a scoped commitment with names attached, not a marketing reflex. That is the entire basis on which a capture manager can put a subcontractor into a technical volume nine days before a close and sleep afterward.
Common questions before the first email
Do we have to sign anything before you will look at a solicitation?
No. Send the number and the close date and you get a fit answer. An NDA comes before anything proprietary changes hands, which is usually step two rather than step one.
Will you bid against us later on the same subject area?
That is what the exclusivity language in a teaming agreement is for, and we negotiate it plainly. Narrow, time-boxed exclusivity tied to a specific solicitation is normal and we sign it. Open-ended exclusivity across an entire technology area is not, and we will say so rather than sign and hedge.
Can you be the prime instead?
Yes. We hold the registrations to prime federal work and we do, and we also subcontract without ego about which chair we sit in. If your organization cannot hold the award for a structural reason, say so in the first email and we will scope it the other way around.
What if the close date is next week?
Send it anyway. Short-fuse responses are a normal part of this business, and a one-business-day answer exists precisely so a tight calendar is not a reason to skip the conversation.
Frequently asked questions
Send the solicitation number and the close date, and ask for a written yes or no with a date attached. A firm that cannot answer a fit question in one business day will not meet a proposal schedule either, and the response time itself is diagnostic.
A partner that holds the award, carries the registrations, writes the cost and commercialization volumes, and performs at least 40 percent of the work under 13 CFR 121.702. The research institution performs at least 30 percent, and the allocation-of-rights agreement between the parties should be drafted before submission.
Yes. FAR 15.305(a)(2)(iii) permits the evaluation of a proposed subcontractor's past performance when that subcontractor will perform a meaningful portion of the effort. Write the workshare split and the past-performance narrative together so the percentages support the claim.
Reproducibility of the headline benchmark on held-out data, the true cost to run at planned volume, the provenance of training data, and the intellectual property chain. For federal revenue, add the SBIR data-rights markings under DFARS 252.227-7018 and the affiliation analysis at 13 CFR 121.103.
It does when the funding is federal pass-through. The Uniform Guidance at 2 CFR Part 200 governs the procurement, and the subrecipient-versus-contractor determination at 2 CFR 200.331 decides which monitoring obligations flow down to a teammate.