Kind: Measured report
By Asif Hussain, Founder and CEO, SpecIndex
A raw water job in Guntersville, Alabama needs push buttons. The manual names the exact Eaton station it wants and then, in the same sentence, opens the door to anyone who can match it. That one sentence is the federal market in miniature, and it is the finding of this read: federal manuals name brands plainly, and they leave a way in about three times in four.
Facts at a glance
- On October 16, 2026, we ran find_brand_positions for Trane, Eaton, Siemens, Armstrong, Zurn, and Victaulic, paging at a limit of 10 with offsets from 0 to 240, and read the first 250 rows returned for each brand, 1,500 rows in total. (From: Method note.)
- By that rule, 1,252 of the 1,500 rows are federal sourced, covering 642 distinct projects. (From: Method note.)
- The role field reads basis of design on 517 rows and approved equal on 735 rows, so the basis of design share among federal rows is 517 of 1,252, about 41 percent. (From: Method note.)
- Across the 1,252 federal rows, the openness field reads: or equal on 948 rows, proprietary on 160 rows, performance on 75 rows, and unspecified on 69 rows. (From: Method note.)
Federal paper is public, so the federal read is deep
We read the first 250 positions returned for each of six manufacturers and kept the rows that came from federal sourced projects. That bounded read produced about twelve hundred and fifty federal rows across more than six hundred distinct projects.
Federal work shows up at this depth for a simple reason. The government publishes its manuals, so the names inside them can be read, counted, and cited.
The mix is not one agency or one building type. The rows run from a raw water job in Alabama to an Army building renovation in Arizona, and the brands appear because a specifier wrote them into a section, not because a press release mentioned a project.
The basis of design rows carry the door with them
About two in five of the federal rows are basis of design rows, where one brand sets the standard for the section. About three in four of those basis of design rows are written or equal. The rest split between rows written proprietary, rows written to a performance test, and rows where the document does not say.
Put plainly, the named brand is the starting point, not the finish line. A competitor still has to prove the match and win approval, and that work takes time inside a bid window. But the door is written into the document itself, in the same section that names the incumbent.
Two federal sections show the pattern on the page
For the project "Guntersville Electrical Raw Water", the specification states "Eaton E30 120vac push buttons and indicators or government approved equal". The citation is "TSpecs_RTA_Certified_Final_Gunt_Electrical_Rehab_25APR2019.pdf", pages 178 to 187. The product, the maker, and the way in for an equal all sit in one line.
For the project "Building 51450 and 51451 Renovation, Fort Huachuca, AZ", the specification states "PXM2260 series manufactured by Eaton". The citation is "01_FHR_Specifications_IFC.pdf", page 1047 to 1047. This row is also written or equal in the index, and its setting matters: a power monitoring product, named by series, deep inside a renovation manual for an Army base in Arizona.
Neither document hides its brand. Each one names a product a rep can look up, price against, and challenge through the equal route where the section allows it.
Our judgment: federal work is about as open as the rest of the market, not more
The substitution article on this desk, working from the October 14 enumeration, reports about four in five basis of design sections written or equal across the wider corpus. The federal basis of design rows in this read come in at about three in four. That is close, and it is a touch lower.
So the common story fails in both directions. Federal manuals are not the locked rooms some reps assume, because about three in four basis of design rows invite an equal. And federal manuals are not more open than everyone else just because the brand name or equal clause exists in the Federal Acquisition Regulation.
About one in six federal basis of design rows in this read is written proprietary, with no door in the section at all. The clause is on the books. The section in front of you decides whether it applies.
What to do with a federal specification
Read the section before you judge the project. If the row is written or equal, your job is proof: match the named product line by line, file the equal request early in the bid window, and cite the section and page when you do it. If the row is written proprietary, your job starts one project earlier, with the specifier and the standard behind the section, because the bid documents will not save you.
Either way, work from the document. You can [search projects by state, product and stage](/projects/) and read the same manuals we counted here.
Method note
This is a bounded read, not a census of the corpus. On October 16, 2026, we ran find_brand_positions for Trane, Eaton, Siemens, Armstrong, Zurn, and Victaulic, paging at a limit of 10 with offsets from 0 to 240, and read the first 250 rows returned for each brand, 1,500 rows in total. A row counts as federal sourced when its project_id contains "-sam-".
By that rule, 1,252 of the 1,500 rows are federal sourced, covering 642 distinct projects. By brand, the federal rows and distinct federal projects are: Trane, 226 rows and 201 projects; Eaton, 236 rows and 162 projects; Siemens, 230 rows and 171 projects; Armstrong, 215 rows and 176 projects; Zurn, 182 rows and 125 projects; and Victaulic, 163 rows and 107 projects.
Across the 1,252 federal rows, the openness field reads: or equal on 948 rows, proprietary on 160 rows, performance on 75 rows, and unspecified on 69 rows. The role field reads basis of design on 517 rows and approved equal on 735 rows, so the basis of design share among federal rows is 517 of 1,252, about 41 percent. Among the 517 basis of design rows, openness reads or equal on 390 rows, proprietary on 91 rows, performance on 21 rows, and unspecified on 15 rows.
The frame for the wider corpus comes from coverage_report run with no arguments on October 16, 2026, which reports 322,371 documents searched and 62,117 projects with documents. Two limits apply. First, the panel reads only the first 250 rows returned per brand, so the shares describe those rows and not every position in the index.
Second, the SAM marker identifies federal sourced records in the index; federal work that reaches the index through another source is not counted here. The comparison figure, about four in five basis of design sections written or equal, is the desk wide figure from the substitution article on this desk, based on its October 14, 2026 enumeration.