Understanding Contracts, IDVs, and Vehicles in Federal Procurement Data

If you've worked with federal procurement data, you've likely encountered several related but distinct concepts: Awards, Contracts, Orders, IDVs (Indefinite Delivery Vehicles), GWACs (Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts), and Vehicles. These terms can be confusing, especially when the same words (for example, "vehicle") means different things in different contexts.

In this post, we hope to help clarify some of these concepts, explain how they relate to each other, and help you choose the right Tango API endpoint for your use case.

The Three Major Concepts

Contracts

Contracts are agreements between the government and a contractor for specific goods or services. They have specific requirements and an agreed-to price for delivery of those requirements. Contracts can exist independently, or they can be issued under an IDV (more on that below).

Example: A contract for $500,000 to provide IT support services to the Department of Commerce for one year.

IDVs (Indefinite Delivery Vehicles)

IDVs are framework agreements (in the commercial sector, we might call them a master-services agreement) that establish terms and conditions for future orders or contracts. An IDV has a scope, and it establishes pricing for future orders or contracts. But an IDV does not actually involve specific requirements or deliverables like a contract does.

There are different types of IDVs in government. For example, one common type of IDV is a BPA (Blanket Purchase Agreement). Another common type is an IDIQ (an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity). Legally, there are meaningful differences between a BPA and IDIQ, but from a data perspective, both are IDVs.

When the government "places an order" against an IDV, that order is (from a data perspective) a contract! So, IDVs and Contracts can have a parent-child relationship. And, in fact, within Tango (and the Federal Procurement Data System), if a Contract has a "parent award," it will always be an IDV.

Example: A Blanket Purchase Agreement between the Department of Commerce and a vendor for an undetermined number of IT services over a 5-year period.

Vehicles (Tango's Model)

Here's where things get tricky, though. Sometimes, the government will make a single IDV awards to a a single vendor for its requirements. Other times, the government will make multiple IDV awards to multiple vendors for its requirements. In those "multiple-award" situations, the government will say that it's "creating a vehicle" (singular!), even though it's actually creating multiple vehicles.

In Tango, we define a Vehicle as a collection of IDVs* that groups multiple IDV awards. This is important because knowing which companies are on a vehicle or what types of work are being done on a given vehicle are important to know beyond individual awards or vendors.

Example: If GSA issued a solicitation that resulted in 50 different IDV awards to different contractors, Tango groups all 50 of those IDVs into a single "Vehicle."

It is important to note that many vehicles are specific to a given agency and many vehicles are used government-wide. For example, the GSA Multiple Award Schedule ("MAS" or sometimes, "GSA Schedules") is a Vehicle that is available government wide. Within MAS, there are thousands of individual IDVs with individual vendors. As another example, the NASA SEWP vehicle is one of several GWACs (Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts).

By contrast, the Department of Veterans Affairs has a vehicle called T4NG2 ("Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology 2"), which is a $60B vehicle to be used only by the VA.

How They Relate to Each Other

As you can see, the relationships between these concepts form a hierarchy:

Contracts → IDVs

Contracts can be children of IDVs. When a contract is issued under an IDV, it references the IDV as its parent_award. This is common when agencies place orders against existing IDVs like a GSA Schedule.

Example: A contract for $100,000 in cloud services might be issued under a company's GSA Schedule IDV.

IDVs → Vehicles

In Tango, Vehicles group multiple IDV awards together. This allows you to discover all IDVs that within that vehicle.

Example: A Vehicle might contain 50 IDV awards, each awarded to different contractors, all under the same GWAC program.

When to Use Each Endpoint

Now that we understand the concepts, here's when to use each Tango API endpoint:

/api/contracts/

Use this endpoint when you need:

• Standalone contracts (not issued under an IDV)
• Contracts that are children of IDVs (via parent_award)
• Individual contract details and terms

Use case: "I need to find all contracts issued to Company X in the last year." This represents actual work with a defined scope and deliverables, not just potential work in the future.

/api/idvs/

Use this endpoint when you need:

• Individual IDV awards
• Parent awards of IDV awards (e.g., a Blanket Purchase Agreement created against a GSA Schedule)

Use case: "I need to find all IDVs that Company Y has in place."

/api/vehicles/

Use this endpoint when you need:

• All IDVs or awardees that won an award on a multiple-award IDV vehicle
• Understanding the competitive landscape of that Vehicle

Use case: "I want to see all contractors who are on NASA SEWP"

Real-World Scenarios

Scenario 1: Finding Orders Under an IDV

Question: "I want to see all contracts issued under GSA MAS to a specific company."

Approach:

1. Use /api/idvs/ to find the specific IDV key
2. Use /api/idvs/{key}/awards to find all contracts issued under that IDV

Scenario 2: Understanding a Solicitation's Results

Question: "How many contractors are on SEWP"

Approach:

1. Use /api/vehicles/ to find the Vehicle for the solicitation
2. The Vehicle will show you all IDV awards that resulted from that solicitation
3. Each IDV represents an award to a different contractor

Scenario 3: Company Research

Question: "What IDVs does Company X hold?"

Approach:

1. Use /api/idvs/ filtered by the company
2. This will show you all IDV awards (federal "vehicles") that the company holds
3. You can then use /api/vehicles/ to see which solicitations these IDVs came from

Key Takeaways

1. Contracts are individual awards with defined scopes; they can be standalone or issued under IDVs.

2. IDVs are framework agreements (GWACs, MAS, BPAs) that enable future orders. In federal terminology, each IDV is a "vehicle."

3. Vehicles (Tango) group multiple IDV awards, representing the competitive process that produced them.

4. The terminology distinction matters: federal "vehicle" = IDV award; Tango "Vehicle" = grouping of IDVs.

5. Choose your endpoint based on your use case:

   • /api/contracts/ for individual contracts
   • /api/idvs/ for framework agreements
   • /api/vehicles/ for discovery of the competitive landscape

Understanding these relationships will help you navigate federal procurement data more effectively and choose the right API endpoint for your needs.