What Changed in February 2026
In a span of four days, two of the federal procurement systems that AEC proposal managers depended on quietly disappeared and reappeared inside SAM.gov.
- February 20, 2026 — the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS) was decommissioned. Subcontracting reports and individual subcontract reports moved into SAM.gov.
- February 24, 2026 — the public FPDS website (including the ezSearch tool that proposal teams used to research who won what) was shut down. FPDS contract-action data is now searchable inside SAM.gov.
If you are a proposal coordinator or principal who has not had to register an entity, log a subcontract report, or pull federal contract-award data since January, the next time you do those things will not look like the last time.
This post is for the person assembling SF330 packages, responding to GSA IDIQ task orders, and tracking competitor awards for go/no-go decisions who needs to know what changed and what to update before the next federal pursuit.
What Moved Where
eSRS → SAM.gov
eSRS was where "other than small" prime contractors and their first-tier subs submitted, reviewed, and approved subcontracting reports. If your firm is over the small-business size standard for any of its NAICS codes and has federal prime contracts with subcontracting plans, this affects you.
What changed:
- The Individual Subcontract Report (ISR) and the Summary Subcontract Report (SSR) are now filed inside SAM.gov.
- Active eSRS users were automatically transitioned. Login credentials carried over.
- The submission, review, and approval workflows are now SAM.gov roles — not eSRS roles. If your subcontract-reporting workflow involved a marketing coordinator submitting reports for a contracts officer to approve, both people need to confirm they have the correct SAM.gov roles assigned.
The first ISR most firms file under the new system will be the one that catches role-assignment problems. If your firm has not filed an ISR since February 20, walk through the role assignments before the report is due, not after.
FPDS → SAM.gov
FPDS (the Federal Procurement Data System) was the go-to tool for "who won this contract" research. Proposal teams pulled past-award data to support competitive analysis, teaming decisions, and Section H "team commitments" narratives.
What changed:
- The public FPDS website went dark February 24. Saved searches, bookmarked URLs, and ezSearch links no longer work.
- FPDS contract-action data is searchable inside SAM.gov under the "Data Bank" — but you need a SAM.gov account to access it. Public anonymous lookups are gone.
- The data itself remains. Historical contract actions, award amounts, vendor identifiers, and NAICS-code filters are all still available, but inside the SAM.gov interface and under SAM.gov account permissions.
Practical impact for AEC proposal teams: any internal process that pulled federal-award data via FPDS — competitive research, win/loss tracking, agency relationship mapping — needs to be re-pointed at SAM.gov. Saved searches need to be rebuilt. The competitive-research workflow your firm built around FPDS still works; the entry point changed.
What's coming next: CPARS
GSA has announced that the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) is the next system slated for absorption into SAM.gov, following the same phased approach used for eSRS and FPDS. No date is set, but the direction is consistent: GSA's stated goal is to consolidate from 13 federal procurement systems down to two.
For AEC firms, CPARS migration is the one to watch. Past-performance ratings, source for Section F narratives in the SF330, and the underlying data behind contracting-officer recommendations all live in CPARS. When that system moves, the workflow for pulling your own past-performance ratings — and for monitoring your competitors' — will change.
What Proposal Teams Should Do This Week
Five practical updates for the next federal pursuit:
- Confirm your SAM.gov roles. If your proposal team includes anyone who used to file or approve subcontracting reports in eSRS, log into SAM.gov and verify their role assignments. The last day to discover a role problem is the day a report is due.
- Re-point your competitive-research process. Any internal SOP, Notion page, or template that references FPDS URLs needs to be updated to SAM.gov Data Bank. Saved searches need to be rebuilt.
- Update boilerplate references. Some firms cite "FPDS records show..." in past-performance narratives or competitive justifications. Update the source attribution in your boilerplate library to "SAM.gov Data Bank."
- Verify your entity registration is current. SAM.gov registration renewals are annual. With multiple federal compliance windows tightening this spring — including EO 14398 — a lapsed registration is a worse problem than usual to discover mid-pursuit.
- Check the place-of-performance address. SAM.gov has tightened entity-address validation. P.O. boxes and unverified addresses are flagged as high-risk and can delay registration approval. If your firm's registration uses a P.O. box for the place of performance, plan for verification friction.
What's Less Settled
Two things are worth tracking but are not yet decided:
- Per-solicitation certifications. Federal contracting has historically used SAM.gov for entity-level representations and certifications — your firm registers once, and most of the certifications carry across all federal pursuits. There is ongoing discussion of moving certain certification categories from SAM-level to per-solicitation, which would mean reading and certifying clauses on a contract-by-contract basis instead of relying on the SAM registration. This has not been finalized, but proposal teams should expect more solicitation-specific certifications to appear in Section K of new SF330 solicitations through 2026.
- New certification language. GSA proposed in February 2026 to add certifications related to DEI, immigration enforcement, and national security to SAM.gov registration. This is separate from but related to EO 14398, and the proposed language is in a public comment window. Whether it lands in SAM as a registration-level certification or as a per-solicitation FAR provision is still being decided.
For AEC proposal managers, the practical posture is the same in either case: read Section K on every federal solicitation. Do not assume your SAM registration answers all certification questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
My firm is small business. Do I still need to file subcontracting reports in SAM.gov?
Subcontracting plan reporting is required for "other than small" prime contractors with subcontracting plans. If your firm is consistently small business across all your federal contract NAICS codes, you do not have a subcontracting plan and do not file ISRs or SSRs. Confirm your size standing under each NAICS code your firm uses for federal pursuits.
Where do I research a competitor's recent federal awards now?
Inside SAM.gov, the Data Bank section replaced FPDS public search. You need a SAM.gov account to access it. The data — contract action reports, award amounts, vendor identifiers, NAICS filters — is the same data that was in FPDS.
Did my saved FPDS searches transfer over?
No. FPDS public search URLs and saved queries do not work after February 24. You will need to rebuild any saved searches inside SAM.gov.
What is the SAM.gov Data Bank?
The Data Bank is the section of SAM.gov where contract-action data (formerly FPDS) is searchable. It is an interface to the same underlying federal contract data set, accessed through SAM.gov account permissions instead of public anonymous lookup.
When will CPARS move into SAM.gov?
GSA has announced that CPARS is next in the consolidation but has not committed to a date. Watch SAM.gov and GSA announcements through 2026 for timing.
Does this affect state DOT or local government proposals?
No. SAM.gov, eSRS, and FPDS are federal procurement systems. State and local procurements have their own systems and processes — though state-administered federal pass-through funding (IIJA, BUILD, FEMA BRIC) does flow federal registration and reporting requirements to subrecipients.
The SAM.gov consolidation is mostly an operational change — same data, different entry point. What it adds to is a stack of federal-contracting changes hitting AEC proposal teams in the same quarter: the FAR overhaul, EO 14398, and the ongoing IIJA reauthorization uncertainty. The proposal teams that come through this quarter best are the ones whose internal SOPs, boilerplate, and reference materials are easy to update — not the ones that have to chase every Word document on the shared drive.