Reference
Government contract number lookup: how to read a federal PIID
A federal contract number is a Procurement Instrument Identifier, or PIID — 13 to 17 characters recording which office bought, in which fiscal year, and under what kind of instrument. The format is fixed by FAR subpart 4.16, so the same positions carry the same meaning on every award issued since 2017.
The four parts of a contract number
Positions are counted from the left and never shift. Only the serial number varies in length — agencies pick four to eight characters and use the same width throughout.
No synced contract is available to work through right now. Browse expiring contracts.
Position nine says what kind of award it is
One letter separates a contract from an order placed against one. These are the letters that occur in the 0 contract numbers FedTally has parsed, with the FAR definition of each and how often it turns up.
| Letter | Instrument | Seen |
|---|
Letters K, M, N, S and T are reserved by the FAR for departmental or agency use, so their meaning is set by the issuing agency rather than government-wide. E, J, W, X and Z are reserved for future use; I and O are not used at all.
Numbers issued before October 2017 look different
FAR 4.1601(b) gave agencies until 1 October 2017 to adopt this format, and it applies to new awards only — a contract signed before then keeps the number it was given. Those numbers are agency-specific, usually shorter, and often start with letters standing for the agency rather than an activity address code. 0 of the 0 identifiers in the current snapshots predate the deadline and do not decode by position.
Where to look one up
- FedTally’s expiring contracts — the contract number, incumbent, value and end date for every award running out inside 180 days, by industry.
- USAspending.gov — indexes awards by contract number and returns obligations, agency and recipient.
- SAM.gov — the system of record. FedTally’s contract data is drawn from its Contract Awards feed.
Format and definitions from FAR subpart 4.16 (Unique Procurement Instrument Identifiers). Counts measured across the 0 contracts in FedTally’s current SAM.gov Contract Awards snapshots — public domain US Government data — and change as those snapshots resync.