SBIR/STTR Solicitation Portal
Purpose-built procurement system connecting Lockheed Martin subject matter experts with small business innovators across all DoD branches
Solicitation Syndication
Auto-ingest SBIR/STTR solicitations from Navy, Air Force, Army, MDA, NASA, DARPA and more
SME Matching
Connect small businesses with Lockheed Martin subject matter experts by technology and domain
Endorsement Reports
Track proposals across agencies, phases, award years, and funding amounts with exportable reports
Iterative development across multiple contract phases and feature releases
Small businesses and Lockheed Martin personnel actively using the platform
SBIR/STTR solicitations syndicated from government agencies across all DoD branches
Dedicated development team
Role-based access control system
Background
The United States Government allocates certain funds to small businesses through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. These funds target small businesses, but often these companies do not have the engineering capacity to deliver results on their own.
The Lockheed Martin Corporation — the largest defense contractor in the world with exceptional engineering capabilities — contacted us as prime contractor for a special project to help connect their engineers with small businesses interested in particular projects. Under a Time & Materials contract spanning 2012 through 2016, our team of six engineers created a small business-facing web application that syndicates SBIR and STTR solicitations where Lockheed Martin's subject matter experts can help small businesses submit competitive proposals.
The Challenge
Each year, hundreds of solicitations and proposals submitted across all Lockheed Martin Lines of Business were manually entered one at a time. The process of tracking solicitation rounds, matching subject matter experts to small businesses, and generating endorsement reports was tedious and time-consuming.
Lockheed Martin needed a system that could syndicate government solicitations from agencies including Navy, Air Force, Army, MDA, NASA, NOAA, DARPA, SOCOM, and more — automatically linking small business technologies to Lockheed Martin personnel with specific interests in technologies, application domains, and government SBIR/STTR solicitations.
Purpose-Built CRM & Workflow System
The application serves as a purpose-built CRM and workflow management system, capable of producing customized reports and offering data in exportable formats for further business use.
Public-Facing Portal
To the public user, the application maintains a user-friendly frontend that engages small business decision makers into identifying relevant solicitations and then being connected with a Lockheed Martin subject matter expert — all within a single user experience.
Visitors can create user accounts, browse solicitations released by the U.S. Government, and express interest in areas of their expertise. Small businesses can search by keywords or filter results by agency, while user engagement captures contact and business information — allowing guests to browse to attract and retain visitors with SEO.
Internal Administration
Lockheed Martin project managers use the system to seek out and match small business interests with internal subject matter experts. The platform tracks proposals across all Lines of Business, manages endorsement workflows, and generates customized metrics reports.
The system automates solicitation archiving, supports mass data entry through Excel uploads for bulk processing of solicitations and proposals, and tracks award years, funding amounts, and option periods across all government agencies — Navy, Air Force, Army, MDA, NASA, NOAA, DARPA, SOCOM, NSF, NIH, DOE, and more.
External Deployment
Requirements included deploying the application outside of Lockheed Martin's IT ecosystem while maintaining SDLC controls up to the enterprise standard. The responsive interface design follows brand guidelines while adding new elements designed by our UX team. This application was one of our first works that included a user-facing faceted search system.
Platform Capabilities
Solicitation & Proposal Management
New solicitations published to the SBIR/STTR registry are automatically pulled into the database and published on the portal. The system supports automatic batch archiving by year, eliminating manual end-of-round cleanup. Excel spreadsheets can be uploaded and automatically parsed into searchable entries — dramatically reducing the time spent entering hundreds of proposals each round.
Multi-Role Administration
The system supports 12 distinct user types — from small business founders browsing solicitations to LM project managers matching interests with subject matter experts. User management includes account creation, password resets, and tiered access levels ensuring that sensitive proposal data and endorsement workflows are properly secured across all Lines of Business.
Customized Reporting & Metrics
The SBIR Endorsement Report tracks proposals across agencies, phases, award years, LM funding, and SMALL funds — filterable by award year to accurately capture proposals awarded in a given calendar year. Reports export to Excel with comprehensive field coverage: solicitation details, LM POCs, business areas, phase status, award tracking, and funding amounts across all government agency programs.
Lead Management & LinkedIn Integration
Small business account management tracks interests, points of contact, and business-specific data objects — all administrable, editable, and archivable. LinkedIn integration allows small business founders and executives to authenticate and populate their Lockheed Martin partner profiles with data pulled directly from their LinkedIn accounts, streamlining onboarding and ensuring profile accuracy.
Partnership Evolution
Lockheed Martin came to us with the most comprehensive specification we have ever seen. Their project managers took the time to define their requirements down to the smallest detail — leaving the technology, infrastructure and orchestration of the application up to us.
Initial Platform Build
Custom web application built on PHP 5.4 with CodeIgniter framework. Core CRM functionality, solicitation management, user registration, and basic reporting. Deployed outside Lockheed Martin's IT ecosystem while maintaining enterprise SDLC controls.
Feature Expansion
Added LinkedIn integration for profile population, advanced lead management, proposal tracking across all government agencies, and automated solicitation syndication from DoD. Introduced faceted search for solicitation browsing.
SOW3 Major Upgrade
Comprehensive update per Lockheed Martin's detailed specification: automated SMALL Funds calculation by agency, award year tracking, option period management, mass data entry via Excel upload, batch solicitation archiving, and enhanced SBIR Endorsement Reports with cross-LOB metrics.
Architecture Modernization
Upgraded from PHP 5.4 to PHP 7.0, migrated from Apache to NGINX for performance, containerized with Docker for multi-environment development, and maintained Percona MySQL Cluster for high-availability database operations.
Architecture & Stack
Built for reliability and performance within a defense-grade operational environment. Every technology choice was driven by the requirement to deploy outside Lockheed Martin's IT ecosystem while maintaining enterprise SDLC controls.
Application Layer
PHP 5.4 to PHP 7.0 migration on CodeIgniter framework. The application grew from initial CRM functionality into a full workflow management system handling solicitation syndication, proposal tracking, endorsement reports, and mass data entry — all while maintaining backward compatibility across contract phases.
Data Layer
Percona MySQL Cluster for high-availability database operations supporting 530+ solicitations and 394 user accounts with complex relational data across proposals, agencies, funding amounts, and endorsement workflows. Elasticsearch powers the faceted search system for solicitation browsing. Memcached handles session and query caching for responsive user experience.
Infrastructure Layer
Docker containerization enabled consistent multi-environment development and deployment. NGINX replaced Apache for improved performance and SSL termination. The entire stack was deployed outside of Lockheed Martin's internal network while meeting their security and compliance requirements for handling defense contractor data.
The cost of us doing just the security audit internally to receive approval on building this solution internally was more than the entire cost of ownership through UDX.
Results
Total Cost of Ownership
The entire cost of the externally built and operated platform was less than the cost of a single internal security audit at Lockheed Martin. By deploying outside their IT ecosystem, Lockheed Martin bypassed years of internal approval processes while still meeting enterprise SDLC controls.
Small Business Engagement
394 small businesses registered on the platform, connecting their innovations with Lockheed Martin subject matter experts across 530 government solicitations. The system streamlined the SBIR/STTR process across all Lines of Business, turning a manual, tedious process into an automated workflow.
Operational Efficiency
Mass data entry replaced manual one-by-one solicitation input. Automated SMALL Funds calculation eliminated per-agency lookup. Award year tracking and batch archiving reduced administrative overhead across three annual proposal rounds — freeing the SBIR team to focus on matching technologies rather than managing spreadsheets.
Lockheed Martin Corporation · Bethesda, Maryland