Staffing Rates

For staffing firms, Cothon extracts implied per-person annual rates from federal staffing awards and turns them into a rate card and per-tender value estimates.

The rate card

Found under Competitive Intel → Staffing Rates, the rate card is a grid of role family × seniority level cells. Each cell shows:

• The median implied annual rate for that role and level
• Percentile ranges (p10 / p25 / p75 / p90) showing the spread
• The sample size behind the cell and the date window it covers

Rates are implied: derived from awarded contract values divided across the team size and term stated or inferred from the contract. Cells with wide interquartile spreads mean pricing in that role varies a lot — treat the median with more caution.

Drilling into the evidence

Expand any cell to see the underlying contracts: title, vendor, department, award date, contract value, headcount, term, and the implied annual rate — plus whether the value includes option years, the stated per-diem when one exists, security clearance requirements, and a link to the source notice. You can always audit where a number came from.

Beta value estimates on tenders

On tender pages, staffing firms see an Estimate · beta card. It estimates the likely contract value of an open staffing tender from the rate card: the roles and levels the tender calls for, multiplied by term. Each estimate reports which rate tier it used (role-and-level, role only, or a global fallback) and the sample size behind it.

What the rates are good for

• Rate benchmarking — check whether your card rates sit inside the p25–p75 band the government actually pays for a role.
• Bid/no-bid sizing — a rough sense of a tender's value when the notice doesn't state a budget.
• Spotting overheated roles — wide spreads and rising medians flag roles where competitors price aggressively.

Limitations

• Federal award data only — provincial staffing awards are not in the rate card.
• Rates can only be computed for contracts where team size and term are stated or reliably inferable; many awards are excluded.
• Small-sample cells are shown with their sample size — a median of 3 contracts is a hint, not a benchmark.