Federal grounds maintenance contracts: finding and bidding mowing work
Military installations, VA medical centers, national cemeteries, Corps of Engineers parks and federal office campuses all buy mowing and grounds care, usually from small local landscaping firms. The bidding rules are the same as for any federal service contract, but grounds work has its own traps: prices built on a guessed number of cuts, acreage you have to measure yourself, and a season that decides when the bids come out. This page covers what is different about grounds work. For the general process, see how to bid on federal service contracts.
It explains how the process works. It is not legal advice; your state's free APEX Accelerator can help with a specific solicitation.
1. The codes to search
Grounds notices on SAM.gov usually carry NAICS 561730, Landscaping Services, and product and service code S208, landscaping and groundskeeping. The same NAICS code decides whether you count as small for a set-aside, so check your size against it with SBA's size standards tool (SBA revises the figures, so use the tool rather than a number you read elsewhere).
Codes are entered by people. Run keyword searches too: "grounds maintenance", "mowing", "landscape maintenance", "vegetation control", "tree trimming". Grounds work is also often bundled: with snow removal at northern sites, or with janitorial and minor repairs in a combined facilities contract that sits under a facilities support code. Read the scope before you dismiss a notice by its title.
2. How mowing is usually priced
Grounds contracts are usually bought as commercial services at a firm fixed price, but the price schedule is rarely one number for the year. Common structures:
- Per cycle or per occurrence. A line item for one complete mowing of an area, with an estimated number of cycles for the season. The estimate is the agency's guess, not a promise: a dry summer can mean fewer cuts. Read the schedule for whether you are paid per cycle actually performed.
- Per area, priced separately. Improved grounds (lawns cut often to a set height), semi-improved (cut a few times a year) and unimproved (cut once or twice, or not at all) are often separate lines with separate cut-height standards.
- Monthly or seasonal lump sums for routine care, with separate lines for one-off work such as leaf removal, mulching, aeration or storm cleanup.
The performance work statement sets the standard, often a maximum grass height that triggers a cut, a trimming and edging requirement, and a time limit for clippings on walks and roads. Your price for one cycle has to cover every one of those, at the acreage the maps show.
3. Measure it yourself
Solicitations usually include maps and acreage figures, but the figures can be old and say nothing about slopes, ditches, fences, headstones, signposts or the number of trees to trim around. Those decide whether an acre takes a zero-turn mower ten minutes or a crew with string trimmers an hour. If there is a site visit, go, and walk the steep and cluttered areas first. If the maps and what you see disagree, submit a written question before the question deadline: the agency's answer, published as an amendment, binds every bidder.
4. The wage floor
Federal grounds contracts over $2,500 are covered by the Service Contract Act, so the solicitation includes a wage determination with a minimum hourly rate and fringe benefits for each job title. For grounds crews the main title is 11210 Laborer, Grounds Maintenance; equipment operator and tree trimmer titles appear on many determinations too. Price every hour of labor at no less than the determination's rate plus health and welfare, vacation and holidays. The wage determination guide walks through reading one line by line.
5. Herbicides and pesticides
Many grounds scopes include weed control, fire ant treatment or fertilizer. Restricted use pesticides may be bought and applied only by a certified applicator or someone under that applicator's direct supervision, and states issue the certifications (EPA). Many performance work statements go further and require a state commercial applicator license for any application, plus records of what was applied and where. If nobody on your crew holds the license, price a licensed subcontractor or confirm the scope does not need one.
6. When grounds contracts are bid
Mowing follows the growing season, so many contracts start in spring, and agencies solicit them in the months before: winter is when a lot of seasonal grounds work is posted. A contract that starts in April may be solicited in January with a response window of a few weeks, so watch from late fall on. Multi-year contracts run a base year plus option years, and past awards with their end dates are public on USAspending.gov under NAICS 561730. The recompetes by state pages list grounds and cleaning contracts ending soon in each state.
Where we fit
The free weekly list sends every open federal grounds and janitorial solicitation, plus rebids coming up, your state first, every Monday. The bid desk ($149 a month, 14-day trial) adds a go/no-go note on each one, and we can draft the response when you decide to bid. See a full sample bid.
Checked October 21, 2026 against the linked pages. The notice on SAM.gov is the authority on dates and requirements.