The Government Buys Just About Everything. Even Pressure Washing.
One of my missions, ever since being an acquisitions officer, has been to expose people and small businesses to the fact that the U.S. government buys just about everything. Not just weapons systems and IT contracts — everything. This week’s video is a good example.
I went in depth on a service most people probably don’t think of as government contracting: pressure washing. Does the government spend billions of dollars on it? No. But there are real million-dollar, six-figure, and even seven-figure contracts out there for pressure washing — everything from solar panels to headstones and graveyards. I go through the specifics below, and if you want the full breakdown, you can watch the video here or on YouTube.
Here’s what I found when I ran a keyword search on USAspending.gov (free to use, by the way — no excuse not to be in there yourself).
One small business is sitting on a $734,975 contract for pressure washing services at Fort Bragg. That’s one just 1 contract. Pulling their full history, they did $1.2 million in FY23. It took them from 2014 to about 2021 before they were winning consistently.
I point that out because I want you to see it — this isn’t an overnight thing. It’s years of figuring out how to sell to the government. If you’re early in that process, that’s normal, not a red flag.
Their buyers are almost entirely DoD. The Army is the biggest purchaser by far, with NIH and DLA picking up smaller pieces.
Now the specifics, because this is where it gets fun:
- $420,000 for garage pressure washing
- $300,000 to pressure wash an airfield
- $72,000 to trim and pressure wash headstones — I’m guessing at a cemetery
- $4.3 million, across multiple years, for duct cleaning and solar panel pressure washing
That last one stopped me. Solar panel cleaning as its own federal service line isn’t something most people would think to search for. Which is exactly the point — you find it because you’ve done the research and identified what the government needs.
One big mistake is trying to guess what the government wants to buy, but our biggest advantage is we don’t have to guess. All of the data is public.
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This is exactly the kind of digging we do together inside GovClose — pulling apart federal spending data to find real markets before everyone else does, no matter what your niche is. If you want to see how we teach this, the free 20-minute training is here:
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Widening the search to every “pressure washing” and “power wash” contract in the data, I found $74 million spread across roughly 1,400 contracts, averaging $52,000 each. Average of nine competing offers per contract — though fewer than half of those contracts even reported a number of offers, so take that competition number with a grain of salt.
One more thing worth knowing: a lot of these smaller awards go through simplified acquisition procedures — a mechanism under FAR Part 13 built to cut paperwork and get contracts to small businesses faster. The threshold sits at $350,000, and it’s regulated in detail at acquisition.gov, which is free to read. It’s not thrilling material, but it’s the actual rulebook behind a huge share of small federal awards.
Here’s my ask: don’t walk away from this thinking “go start a pressure washing company.” Walk away knowing this exercise works for whatever service you already offer. Pick your niche, run it through the spending data, and let the numbers tell you whether the market’s real — instead of guessing.
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ABOUT RICK HOWARD
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Rick Howard is a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel and former DoD acquisitions officer who managed over $82 billion in federal contracts. He is the founder of GovClose and the DoD Contract Academy, with 400+ graduates working as government contract consultants, federal account executives, and business owners winning federal contracts.
