Karen Carlisle

Karen Carlisle, doing business as B & K Aerospace, manufactures and supplies aerospace fasteners and hardware components to the Defense Logistics Agency as a women-owned small business prime contractor, holding three active single-award indefinite delivery contracts with DLA Aviation and sustaining over 11,600 purchase orders and delivery orders across all DLA components since 2005. B & K Aerospace is an SBA-certified Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) structured as a sole proprietorship, headquartered in Midlothian, Texas, and operates under primary NAICS 332722 (Bolt, Nut, Screw, Rivet, and Washer Manufacturing) with secondary strength in hardware manufacturing and fabricated wire products. The vendor competes predominantly full-and-open, with no set-aside designation on the majority of task orders; however, its three core IDCs carry Total Small Business set-aside restrictions.

B & K Aerospace' federal work centers on consumable aerospace hardware — socket head cap screws, hexagon head cap screws, self-locking nuts, flat washers, lock washers, spring tension washers, pins, bolts, machine screws, and related fasteners essential for military aircraft and ground vehicle maintenance. Recent representative awards include a $3,219 purchase order from DLA Aviation for hexagon head cap screws (Apr 8, 2026), a $29,827.72 order for lock washers (Feb 5, 2026), a $8,806.80 delivery order for self-locking hexagon nuts under Total Small Business set-aside (Feb 20, 2026), and a $1,310 DLA Aviation order for socket head cap screws under Total Small Business set-aside (Apr 7, 2026). The vendor manufactures and ships products from Midlothian, Texas, to DLA depots throughout the continental United States and overseas locations.

Customer concentration is absolute: DLA accounts for 100% of awards across all recent activity. Within DLA, three subordinate components dominate: DLA Aviation holds 5,262 awards valued at $20.8 million combined potential value (63% of total dollars), DLA Troop Support Hardware holds 5,964 awards valued at $3.6 million (11%), and DLA Land and Maritime holds 354 awards valued at $2.5 million (8%). This concentration reflects a narrow, specialized customer base anchored to a single federal agency and a single procurement organization within it.

The vendor's vehicle posture is built on three core IDCs, all single-award, Total Small Business set-asides established between late February and mid-March 2026, each with a $350,000 ceiling and one-year terms: IDC SPE4A623D60BK for plain hexagon nuts (awarded Mar 13, 2026, expiring Mar 12, 2027), IDC SPE4A623D5927 for hexagon head cap screws (awarded Mar 11, 2026, expiring Mar 11, 2027), and IDC SPE4A622D5925 for straight-headed pins (awarded Feb 27, 2026, expiring Feb 27, 2027). Below these core vehicles sit multiple legacy IDCs — SPE4A622D5557, SPE4A622D5528, and others — carrying task order volume but smaller aggregate value. The vendor sustains zero subcontract footprint; all 11,635 awards are prime.

Activity has declined from 1,193 awards in 2023 to 936 in 2024 and 913 in 2025, with 240 awards recorded through mid-April 2026 — a trajectory suggesting continued volume pressure. Within the next twenty-four months, 45 awards worth $63 thousand face recompete, representing modest near-term recompete exposure relative to the overall base but signaling routine turnover of individual task orders under the IDC framework.

Award magnitude is characteristically low: the median purchase order and delivery order carries ceiling values in the hundreds to low thousands of dollars. The vendor's award velocity — over 200 purchase orders issued since mid-2025 alone, per GovTribe summaries in the source — reflects DLA's reliance on frequent, small replenishment orders for consumable fasteners rather than consolidated buys. B & K Aerospace has supplied DLA for more than two decades, establishing tenure and supply-chain embedding that reinforces its sole-source or near-sole-source position on these specialized IDCs.

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