Searching for DVBE and SDVOBE firms - How to search the Federal CCR Database
Published on 01/07/2008
Some state DOT agencies require firms to search the Federal CCR Database for Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE) and for Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business Enterprises (SDVOBE) or Disabled Veteran Business Enterprises (DVBE). CCR stands for Central Contractor Registration, and it is the primary registrant database for the U.S. Federal government. All contractors who wish to bid directly on contracts with the Federal Government must register with the CCR. The CCR database also contains DBE and SDVOBE (DVBE) businesses that have registered to do business with the Federal Government.
Under advanced search, you should choose a state to narrow down your results. Choose one of the following Socio-Economic Factors: Self-Certified Small Disadvantaged Business, Service Disabled Veteran Owned, Veteran Owned Business, etc. You may choose up to 3 at a time. When you choose more than one, this will find only companies that are certified under multiple categories, so make sure you select only one Factor at a time. To search under multiple categories, you must perform multiple searches. Make sure you only search Active Vendors so that you get a list of currently certified companies.
Also be sure to narrow down your search results as much as possible to make your work a lot easier. You can search by SIC or NAICS codes, and they have an easy to use keyword search tool to help you to find the proper codes. For instance, I want to find all Veteran Owned Businesses in California under code 7353 which is Heavy Construction Equipment Rental and Leasing. So I plug in SIC/NAICS Code 7353 (which I found by clicking the SIC Code Search and searching by keywords "Heavy Equipment". I choose California from the drop down in the State field and choose the "Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business Enterprises" checkboxes. I found 19 results, and these companies are all certified SDVOBE businesses that are registered with the federal government and meet DVBE criteria in California.
Once the result comes up, you will see a list of query results, each with a Detail button. Click on the Detail button to get more information on the company including a listing of the goods and services that they can provide. This classification will show both NAICS and SIC codes. These are standard codes for identifying the industries that the company has indicated they are operating in. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the results to get their contact information.
You can click the Print Record button at the top of the screen to get a hard copy of the individual record, or you can click on Print Records on the search result page to print all the search results, but it will only provide company name and mailing address. Also you can save the search result to a file on your hard drive to look at later. We have tested this website with both Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers and have found problems with the print function using Firefox. Save the results by clicking on Save Records. You can save to either CSV or XML format. Save to CSV format if you want to be able to bring up the search results on an Excel spreadsheet. Again, the results only show company name and address. If you want the contact information for each company, you must view each individual record and print each record. Unfortunately, there is no other easy way around this that we have found, so make sure you narrow down the results to only the ones that you need.
