Competitive Radius and How It Differs From Similar Concepts
Competitive radius is not market share. Competitive radius is the set of contractors with whom a given firm shares overlapping procurement patterns, rendered visible on a proximity map.
The proximity map is a visualization on each contractor's dossier showing which other contractors occupy similar competitive space, defined by shared NAICS codes and common awarding agencies. This differs from traditional concepts in federal contracting because it does not describe what a firm has won, but rather which other firms it tends to encounter during source selection.
Market share describes a single contractor's share of total obligations within a given NAICS code or agency. It is a ratio, static in any given data window. Competitive radius instead describes a relationship between two firms, based on the degree to which their award histories overlap. Two firms can have identical market shares in the same corridor and completely different competitive radii if they win from different agencies or specialize within different NAICS subcodes.
Past performance is not competitive radius. Past performance evaluation is a subjective assessment of how well a contractor performed on previously awarded contracts, conducted by a contracting officer and documented in CPARS records. Competitive radius makes no judgment about quality or execution. It only identifies which contractors appear in similar award spaces, regardless of whether those contractors won or lost the competitions they entered.
Set-aside certification status is not competitive radius. A SDVOSB firm's eligibility for service-disabled veteran small business set-asides defines a legal bidding advantage, not a competitive relationship. Two SDVOSB firms may share the same certification and never compete for the same work if their NAICS codes or geographic service areas do not overlap.
The proximity map also differs from industry concentration measures like the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which quantifies total market concentration across all participants in a given market. Competitive radius is individual and directional. A federal contractor may appear in many proximity maps as a competitor to firms across different NAICS corridors, while the same firm may have a narrow radius of firms that compete against it.
Agency past performance reports capture contractor quality. NAICS designations capture contract type. Set-aside certifications capture eligibility. Competitive radius captures adjacency, which is none of these things. It captures the structural reality of who bids against whom, derived from award history patterns rather than from self-reported capability or regulatory classification.