The Small Business That Keeps Winning Its Own Follow-On

Twenty dollars and ninety-three cents.

That is what was left on R. Ward & Associates' first Army range contract when the Corps of Engineers stopped writing orders against it.

Three task orders, $9,499,979.07 obligated into a $9,500,000 ceiling.

The next one ended the same way. Twenty-four orders, $48,956,440.44 against $49,000,000, leaving $43,559.56.

On Thursday the Savannah District gave them a third. W912HN-26-D-A018, another $49,000,000 firm-fixed-price IDIQ, this one for the Western Hemisphere Command Sustainable Range Program.

Four proposals came in.

The company is a small business in Ozark, Missouri, registered service-disabled veteran owned, and its own site describes what it does in one line: leaders in range development and live-fire training.

Its federal prime record opens in August 2008 with a $3,755.02 firing range presentation. Of the 30 awards on it since, 28 came from the same contracting office.

The Ceiling Is the Clock

Here is the part worth your attention.

W912HN22D1000 was signed July 6, 2022 with a five-year ordering period running to July 6, 2027. The money on it ran out on April 7, 2026.

The 24th order, W912HN26FA034 for indoor baffle range work at $2,025,702.04, took cumulative obligation to 99.911% of the ceiling (chart below).

That left 455 days of ordering period with $43,559.56 behind it. The median order on this contract ran $1,470,999.32, so the remaining room was about three percent of one typical task.

And the work the orders buy is ordinary sustainment, which is exactly why it kept coming:

indoor baffle range sustainment and operations for USASOC at Fort Carson and Joint Base Lewis-McChord
Live Fire Training Investment Strategy technical support, including the biggest single order on the contract at $5,957,695.89
range operations technical support for Army Reserve Command
Integrated Training Area Management training land modernization at Fort Dix
range studies and modernization for what was then FORSCOM

"Which clock does a single-award task order contract actually run on?"

On this one, the ceiling emptied at month 45 of 60, and the five-year term on the face of the contract described nothing that happened after that.

One Bidder, Then Two, Then Four

The requirement has been to market three times, and each trip drew twice the field of the last one (chart below).

In 2019 the Corps ran W912HN19R1006 as a service-disabled veteran-owned set-aside under NAICS 541618. FPDS records one offer, and the award notice caps it at "not to exceed $9,500,000."

In 2022 the office widened it. W912HN22R1000 went out as a 100 percent small business set-aside under 541330, ceiling $49M, and drew two.

This year it stayed open to all small business and drew four.

So the shelter came off after the first cycle, the pool got deeper twice, and the company that was already doing the work won anyway. On a firm-fixed-price engineering services competition, seven years of orders on the exact program is the past-performance volume nobody else in the room brings.

Savannah Moved Twice as Fast the Second Time

The schedule is worth stealing if you run capture on this kind of work.

Market research went out 15 months ahead of award: W912HN25RFIRANGE, posted June 9, 2025, responses closed June 30. The presolicitation followed on July 2, 2026 and did something most presols do not, which is say the number and the rules out loud: $49M, 100 percent small business, NAICS 541330, firm fixed price, five-year ordering period, RFP expected on or about July 17.

The RFP posted August 4, amended August 24 and again September 2 with ProjNet answers folded in. Proposals closed September 3 at 2 p.m. That is a 30-day window, and when we censused every DoD services solicitation posted in the first eighteen days of this month, the median one gave bidders 11.3 days.

Then 21 days from proposal close to award.

Compare the two cycles end to end, from the day the ceiling emptied to the day a new contract existed:

2021 to 2022: ceiling reached May 24, presolicitation 212 days later, award 408 days later
2026: ceiling reached April 7, presolicitation 86 days later, award 170 days later

Same office, same requirement, less than half the elapsed time. No bridge, no extension, no gap.

Final Thoughts

The customer underneath all of this changed names while the contract was running. FORSCOM, U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South folded into U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command at Fort Bragg on December 5, 2025.

The new solicitation carries the note "formally known as FORSCOM" and keeps going, with the Reserve and USASOC still on the customer list.

What the record here argues is that the useful date on a single-award task order contract is the one you have to calculate. This one burned its ceiling at 75 percent of its term, and the office started moving about three months after that, not fifteen months later when the term expired.

So run the same arithmetic on the new one. Five years, $49,000,000, and an incumbent whose demonstrated pace empties that in roughly four.

If you want a shot at the fourth contract, watch for the market research notice. On this office's record it arrives about a year before anyone else hears about the requirement.

Thanks for reading.