Federal obligations in facilities support services (NAICS 561210)

What facilities support services means on a federal award

NAICS 561210 covers establishments that provide operating staff to perform a combination of services that keep a facility running: janitorial, maintenance, trash, guard posts, laundry, and similar bundled base operations. On USAspending.gov the code lands on contract awards when that mix of support is the classified industry. It is not a building-construction code, and it is not a count of square footage managed. A single award can cover an installation, a campus, or a set of sites under one vehicle.

Because the work is labor-heavy and often multi-year, obligation totals can rival manufacturing industries even though no airframe or ship is being built. The $466.5 billion figure reflects how often federal agencies buy bundled facilities operations through contracts tagged 561210. Guard-only work, standalone janitorial, or new construction sit on other NAICS lines and are not inside this rollup.

Reading the $466.5 billion obligation total

USAspending.gov publishes obligations, the amounts agencies bind themselves to pay under an award. Facilities support contracts frequently use options, task orders, and annual operating increments. Each of those actions can add to the $466,507,973,327.99 sum. This packet does not provide a fiscal-year breakout, so the headline is the industry aggregate in the warehouse, not a single-year facilities budget.

Outlays trail obligations. A base-operations contractor may be obligated for a full performance period while invoices are still being paid month by month. Citing $466.5 billion as money already spent is incorrect. Citing it as an appropriation is also incorrect. It is the recorded contract-obligation stock for awards classified as facilities support services.

32,514 awards on a services code

The 32,514 awards are contract records, including orders and modifications, not 32,514 unique bases. Indefinite-delivery vehicles for installation support can spawn many task orders that share the same NAICS tag. The count is high enough to show that this is not a boutique code used on a handful of awards, and low enough, relative to the dollars, to show that individual actions are often large. The industry page is the place to see which awards drive the total.

What 561210 does not include

Construction of new commercial or institutional buildings is a different NAICS. So are standalone security-guard contracts, hazardous-waste treatment, and professional management consulting. Those dollars, if tagged to their own codes, do not sit inside $466,507,973,327.99. Grants and other assistance are also outside the total when they have no NAICS.

The source remains USAspending.gov contract awards as rolled up on SpendingVault. Record corrections and warehouse refreshes can move both dollars and the 32,514 award count. Treat the live industry table as current and this guide as a reading of the packet facts.

Where to go next on SpendingVault

Open the FACILITIES SUPPORT SERVICES industry page for the award-level table that sits under the $466.5 billion headline. Compare the code with neighboring service and construction industries from All industries. Quote obligations, not outlays, and keep the 32,514 award count with the dollar figure so the scale of the contracting activity is visible.

Citing facilities support without mixing trades

Quote $466,507,973,327.99 as USAspending contract obligations on 32,514 awards tagged NAICS 561210. Do not fold in construction, standalone guard posts, or professional consulting unless those awards also carry this code. Bundled base operations are easy to confuse with the trades that appear inside the bundle on a statement of work; the industry table follows the NAICS on the award, not the statement of work’s full task list.

Because facilities support is labor-heavy, readers sometimes treat the total as payroll. It is not. It is a contract-obligation stock. Option years and task orders can inflate the recorded commitment before invoices catch up. Keep outlays out of the sentence unless you have an outlay field, which this packet does not provide.

Facilities support contracts are often written as performance work statements covering a whole installation. That packaging is why $466,507,973,327.99 can rival manufacturing industries: the government is buying years of operations, not a single capital item. Readers still must not convert the total into employment. The 32,514 awards are procurement records. A contractor staffing plan is not published in this packet. If an option year is exercised, the obligation can rise without a new site being added. If a task is later moved to a standalone guard NAICS, dollars can leave 561210. Those movements show up on the live industry page, not in this static guide.

Another recurring error is treating facilities support as construction in disguise. New walls and roofs belong on building-construction codes when tagged that way. 561210 is the operating staff and bundled services that keep a place running after it exists, or in parallel with occupancy. Quote USAspending, quote obligations, quote 32,514 awards, and stop there unless you open the table for recipients.

Questions

How much has been obligated on NAICS 561210 facilities support services?

USAspending.gov shows $466,507,973,327.99 in obligations on 32,514 contract awards coded NAICS 561210, facilities support services. That total is obligations, not outlays. Assistance awards often lack NAICS and are not included. USAspending.gov records the amount as contract obligations, not outlays, on awards tagged NAICS 561210.

Is facilities support the same as federal building construction?

No. NAICS 561210 is a services code for bundled facility operations. New building construction uses other NAICS lines and is not inside the $466,507,973,327.99 total. Mixing the two overstates or mislabels what this industry table measures.

Do the 32,514 awards equal 32,514 federal installations?

No. The 32,514 figure counts contract award records tagged 561210, including task orders and modifications. One installation can generate many awards. The industry page lists the records behind the count. Treat the 32,514 figure as an award-record count, including orders and modifications, not as a physical inventory of products or sites.

Why cite USAspending instead of agency budget justifications?

This page restates USAspending.gov contract obligations coded to NAICS 561210. Budget justifications describe requested or enacted appropriations, which are a different public-record layer. The $466,507,973,327.99 figure is the award-obligation rollup, not a budget request.