How Small Businesses Can Find DOE Prime Contractors and M&O Subcontracting Opportunities

The Department of Energy does not buy the way most agencies do. It says that roughly 80 percent of its annual procurement base goes to its management and operating (M&O) contracts, the large agreements under which private companies and university consortia run national laboratories, weapons plants and cleanup sites, and that "most Small Business dollars flow through the M&Os and FMCs to Small Business contracting partners as subcontracts."¹

For a small business, that changes the question. The buyer is often not a DOE contracting officer but a site contractor's procurement office. This guide covers how to find those contractors, how to read DOE's public data about them, and what the data cannot tell you.

of DOE's annual procurement base goes to M&O contracts, by DOE's own estimate

~80%

of DOE's annual procurement base goes to M&O contracts, by DOE's own estimate

awarded to small businesses in FY2024, counting M&O first-tier subcontracts

$11B

awarded to small businesses in FY2024, counting M&O first-tier subcontracts

major site and facility management contracts on DOE's October 2026 list

37

major site and facility management contracts on DOE's October 2026 list

Why DOE counts subcontracts as prime awards

In fiscal year 2024, DOE obligated about $50 billion in contracts and awarded $11 billion to small businesses, according to its 2025–2030 small business strategic plan.² The $11 billion includes first-tier subcontracts that M&O contractors awarded to small businesses, which DOE describes as "counted as prime credited spend per legislative authority."²

That authority is in the Small Business Act. Since a 2014 amendment, first-tier subcontracts awarded by DOE-sponsored M&O contractors to small, service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone, small disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses "shall be considered toward the annually established agency and Government-wide goals for procurement contracts awarded."³ DOE's scorecard page shows what that means in practice: its small business goal is listed as 5 percent on prime awards alone and 17.03 percent once M&O first-tier subcontracts are included.⁴ (The page mixes fiscal year labels for these goals, so treat the pairing as approximate.)

The practical consequence: DOE's small business numbers depend heavily on what its site contractors buy from small firms. Those contractors have reasons to find you.

Step 1: Identify the site contractors

Start with two DOE documents rather than a search engine.

• The master list of site contracts. DOE's Office of Management publishes a list of 37 DOE and NNSA site and facility management contracts, as of October 2026, in PDF and spreadsheet form. For each it gives the contractor, the owning companies, the contract number, the contract type, the business model (for example, an M&O contract for a federally funded research and development center, or a cleanup contract) and the award and end dates.⁵
• The Small Business Program Manager Directory. DOE's Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) publishes a directory, updated October 6, 2026, covering 102 organizations and 139 contacts, including 46 site and major contractors. Entries list names, titles, email addresses, phone numbers, supplier-portal and forecast links, prime contract numbers and Unique Entity IDs.⁶ Some positions are listed as vacant.

The directory also records two things worth checking before you invest time in a site: whether the contractor reports its small business subcontracts to DOE's internal tracking system (22 do), and whether it posts subcontracting opportunities to SAM.gov (13 do; 27 are listed as pending review).⁶ Where a contractor does not post to SAM.gov, its own supplier portal is the place to register.

Step 2: Read DOE's acquisition forecast for what it is

DOE's Headquarters and Federal Field Office Acquisition Forecast is public, free and published as a spreadsheet. The current edition was published October 6, 2026, and the forecast page says it is updated monthly.⁷

Two features of the forecast are easy to miss:

1. It covers DOE's own prime contracting actions above $25,000. Its README states that it "does not contain row-level M&O or facility-management subcontract forecasts."⁸ For subcontracting at a site, use that contractor's own forecast and supplier portal, linked from the directory above.
2. Several columns describe the expiring contract, not the next one. The README says the end date, business size, set-aside and contract type columns describe the current award.⁸ OSBP's own training slides call the forecast "often an expiring contracts list today."⁹ Read each row as "this contract ends then, and the work may be competed again," not as a promise of a set-aside.

We tabulated the October 6 file ourselves.⁷ It has 968 rows from 50 program offices.

The most common NAICS code in the file is 541519, other computer related services, with 209 rows. The file names 655 distinct incumbents. Because each row names the incumbent and its contract number, the forecast doubles as a list of companies already doing the work, which is useful when looking for a prime to team with on the recompete.

Step 3: See who already subcontracts at each site

Prime contractors must report their first-tier subcontracts of $30,000 or more under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, and those reports are published on USAspending.gov.¹⁰ For DOE sites that file them, the reports show which companies already sell to a site contractor, in what amounts and when.

The counts below come from FedSub's copy of USAspending subaward data.

Name	Bar	Subcontractors
Fluor Marine PropulsionNaval Nuclear Laboratory · 3,512 subaward reports		1,093
Consolidated Nuclear SecurityY-12 National Security Complex · 8,486 subaward reports		1,053
Triad National SecurityLos Alamos National Laboratory · 2,833 subaward reports		1,052
Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & TechnologiesKansas City National Security Campus · 4,888 subaward reports		962
PanTeXas DeterrencePantex Plant · 1,303 subaward reports		359
Fluor Federal Petroleum Operations945 subaward reports		244
Nuclear Waste Partnership1,229 subaward reports		199
Central Plateau Cleanup Company1,358 subaward reports		170
Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure511 subaward reports		133
Mission Support and Test ServicesNevada National Security Sites · 220 subaward reports		103

Source: USAspending.gov first-tier subaward reports under DOE prime contracts, as loaded by FedSub; distinct subcontractor UEIs per prime contractor.

Across all DOE prime contracts of $250,000 or more with activity since fiscal 2022, 1,237 companies held at least one award, but only 96 of them reported any first-tier subcontract under those awards. Their 28,457 reports went to 4,707 distinct companies, 954 of which describe themselves as small in their SAM.gov registrations.

These counts are lower bounds. FedSub's load is missing some reports that USAspending does show: for example, USAspending lists 595 first-tier subaward reports from 311 recipients on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's M&O contract for FY2022–FY2026, which were absent from the FedSub copy when we checked on October 30, 2026.¹¹

Where the public record goes quiet

Several of DOE's largest M&O contracts show no first-tier subaward reports at all on USAspending. When we checked on October 30, 2026, that was true of the contracts for Sandia National Laboratories (DE-NA0003525), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (DE-AC52-07NA27344), Argonne National Laboratory (DE-AC02-06CH11357), the Savannah River Site (DE-AC09-08SR22470), the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant (DE-AC27-01RV14136) and the Savannah River National Laboratory (89303321CEM000080).¹²

That does not mean these sites do not subcontract. DOE's directory shows that all of those contractors except the Waste Treatment Plant report small business subcontracts to DOE's internal tracking system instead.⁶ DOE has published public extracts of that system on data.gov for some years, but we could not find extracts for fiscal years 2018 through 2026. In other words, for some of the largest buyers in the department, the subcontract-level picture is not public, and the contractor's own small business office is the only source.

Oversight reports add two cautions. In 2019, the Government Accountability Office found that DOE's 24 largest prime contracts accounted for $23.6 billion of fiscal 2016 obligations, and that those contractors awarded about $6.9 billion, nearly 30 percent, to subcontractors. It also found more than $3.4 billion in subcontract costs that had not been audited as required over ten years.¹³ In 2025, GAO reported that NNSA and six of its M&O contractors claimed $16.8 billion in small business contracts for fiscal years 2018 through 2022, and estimated that $1.1 billion of that went to firms that were not small, with another $1.9 billion it could not verify.¹⁴

For small businesses the lesson is straightforward: size representations to site contractors are checked, and errors are found.

Step 4: Use DOE's programs that open doors

• The DOE Mentor-Protégé Program. It is separate from SBA's mentor-protégé program. Under DOE's June 2026 rule text, a mentor must be performing at least one DOE contract; a protégé must be a small business (or a historically Black college or university or minority institution), have been in business at least two years, and be small under the NAICS code of its subcontract with the mentor. Agreements run up to three years and can be extended to five, and a protégé may have only one mentor.¹⁵ OSBP lists 23 current mentors, including the contractors that run Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Sandia and Livermore, the Kansas City campus and the Savannah River Site.¹⁵
• Capability sheets. OSBP accepts capability sheets through an online form that requires a Unique Entity ID. The form says submissions are shared within DOE for market research, "including with contractor Small Business Program Managers at DOE Laboratories."¹⁶ OSBP's slides say it also takes general capability briefings weekly, requested by email to smallbusiness@hq.doe.gov.⁹
• Site events. OSBP's estimated fiscal 2027 calendar includes Idaho National Laboratory industry days (November 11–12, 2026), the Sandia Small Business Opportunities Fair (March), SLAC's Small Business Opportunity Day (May 12, 2027) and the DOE Small Business Forum & Expo (June 1–3, 2027, in Aurora, Colorado). OSBP marks these dates as estimates.⁹

Practical conclusions

1. Target the site contractor, not only DOE. Most of DOE's small business dollars arrive as subcontracts. Use the master contract list and the program manager directory to find the right procurement office.
2. Register where each site buys. Thirteen site contractors post subcontract opportunities to SAM.gov; for the rest, the supplier portal is the front door.
3. Treat the forecast as a recompete calendar. It lists DOE prime contracts that are expiring, with their incumbents. It does not forecast site subcontracts.
4. Use reported subcontracts where they exist, and know where they do not. First-tier reports show who already sells to a site. For several major laboratories there are none to read, so ask the site's small business office directly.
5. Get your size status right. GAO found more than a billion dollars of claimed small business awards that went to firms that were not small.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Small Business Programs, "Doing Business with DOE," https://www.energy.gov/osbp/doing-business-doe (accessed October 30, 2026). ↩

2. U.S. Department of Energy, Small Business Strategic Plan 2025–2030, https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-12/DOE%20Small%20Business%20Strategic%20Plan.pdf. ↩ ↩²

3. 15 U.S.C. 644(g)(3), added by section 318 of Public Law 113-76, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/644. ↩

4. DOE Office of Small Business Programs, "SBA Scorecards," https://www.energy.gov/osbp/sba-scorecards (accessed October 30, 2026). ↩

5. DOE Office of Management, "DOE/NNSA Major Site & Facility Management Contracts," https://www.energy.gov/management/doennsa-major-site-facility-management-contracts (October 2026 list). ↩

6. DOE Office of Small Business Programs, "Small Business Program Manager Directory," https://www.energy.gov/osbp/small-business-program-manager-directory; data file dated October 6, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. DOE Office of Small Business Programs, "Acquisition Forecast," https://www.energy.gov/osbp/acquisition-forecast; data file https://www.energy.gov/documents/osbp-acquisition-forecast-public-2026-10-06csv. ↩ ↩²

8. DOE Office of Small Business Programs, "Acquisition Forecast README," https://www.energy.gov/documents/acquisition-forecast-readme. ↩ ↩²

9. DOE Office of Small Business Programs, "AMP: Access, Match, Pursue" webinar slides, August 19, 2026, https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2026-10/AMP%20DOE%20SB%20data%20and%20tools%202026-08-19.pdf. ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.204-10, "Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards," https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.204-10. Subaward reporting moved from FSRS.gov to SAM.gov in March 2025. ↩

11. USAspending.gov subaward records for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory M&O contract (DE-AC05-00OR22725), https://www.usaspending.gov, checked October 30, 2026. ↩

12. USAspending.gov award records, for example https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/awards/CONT_AWD_DENA0003525_8900_-NONE-_-NONE-/, checked October 30, 2026. ↩

13. U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-19-107, March 12, 2019, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-19-107. ↩

14. U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-25-106820, March 13, 2025, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106820. ↩

15. DOE Office of Small Business Programs, "Mentors – DOE Mentor-Protégé Program," https://www.energy.gov/osbp/mentors-doe-mentor-protege-program; DEAR 919.70 class deviation text, June 2026, https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2026-06/DEAR%20parts%20919%20and%20952%20Deviation%20Text%20-%20Final.pdf. ↩ ↩²

16. DOE OSBP, "Small Business Capability Sheet Submission Form," https://app.smartsheetgov.com/b/form/6b8e2e95bca54b85bf8ef442452f5f4d. ↩