Challenge Unlimited, Inc.

Challenge Unlimited, Inc., a non-profit AbilityOne organization headquartered in Alton, Illinois, delivers custodial services, grounds maintenance, landscaping, pest control, snow removal, and facility operations support to federal agencies as a prime contractor on 1,113 awards (98% of recent activity) and as a subcontractor on 20 awards. The organization is a tax-exempt entity designated under the AbilityOne program, which certifies it as a non-profit entity employing individuals with disabilities while providing facility support services across military installations and federal buildings primarily in the Midwest and East Coast regions.

Challenge Unlimited's customer concentration is dominated by defense and installation-management agencies. The top five funding agencies account for 74% of recent awards by count and 77% by potential value. The Department of the Air Force Air Mobility Command leads both metrics at 267 awards worth $307.4 million combined potential value, followed by the Department of the Army Installation Management Command Southwest Region (237 awards, $123.1 million), Department of the Army Installation Management Command Northeast Region (161 awards, $87.7 million), Defense Commissary Agency (10 awards, $57.8 million), and Department of the Navy Naval Facilities Engineering Command (17 awards, $54.1 million). General Services Administration Region 5 places fifth by award count (108 awards, $18.6 million) but drops outside the top five by dollars. The concentration is heavily concentrated in Defense Department facility operations—Air Mobility Command and Army IMCOM together account for roughly 70% of combined potential value.

Challenge Unlimited holds sixteen active Indefinite Delivery Contracts with multiple federal agencies, including single-award vehicles valued between $7.2 million and $29.9 million. The largest parent vehicle by task-order count is Indefinite Delivery Contract W911SA04D0002 (177 task orders, $4.2 million combined potential value), followed by W911S717D0013 (65 task orders, $15 million), W911S712D0023 (57 task orders, $11.5 million), W91LV211D0001 (51 task orders, $11.8 million), and F1162302D0004 (46 task orders, $2.4 million). Named IDCs include a $29.9 million Air Mobility Command grounds-maintenance contract at Scott Air Force Base (Illinois, awarded October 2024), a $25 million Air Mobility Command custodial contract at Scott AFB (awarded October 2023), an $18.3 million GSA Region 5 custodial and related services contract across Illinois and Ohio courthouses and federal buildings (awarded December 2022), a $17.7 million Department of Defense Southwest Region custodial contract at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin (awarded March 2026), a $15 million Department of the Army Northeast Region custodial contract at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri (awarded July 2023), a $14 million Department of the Navy custodial contract at Naval Support Activity Crane, Indiana (awarded September 2023), and a $12.9 million GSA Region 6 janitorial contract at the Richard Bolling Federal Building in Kansas City, Missouri (awarded July 2023). Challenge Unlimited also holds a $23.7 million Naval Facilities Engineering Command contract for grounds maintenance, landscaping, and pest control at Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois (awarded October 2025), and a $680 thousand Air Mobility Command BPA for irrigation, tree removal, and snow/ice removal services (awarded October 2024).

Capability framing derives from the award portfolio's concentration: 771 awards (68% of total) fall under NAICS Janitorial Services, 237 awards (21%) under Landscaping Services, and 42 awards (4%) under Food Service Contractors (primarily Defense Commissary Agency shelf-stocking and custodial work at commissaries). PSC coding confirms the pattern: 761 awards coded Housekeeping-Custodial Janitorial, 234 coded Housekeeping-Landscaping/Groundskeeping, and 24 coded Housekeeping-Facilities Operations Support. Representative work includes a $16.4 million Defense Commissary Agency definitive contract for shelf stocking, receiving/storage area operations, and custodial services at Scott Air Force Base Commissary (awarded August 2022, completing July 2027), an $11.7 million Defense Commissary Agency definitive contract for similar services at Fort Hood I Commissary (awarded September 2022, completing August 2027), and a $4.7 million Defense Commissary Agency definitive contract for commissary operations at Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina (awarded June 2022, completing May 2027).

Award activity has remained relatively flat over the past five years—49 awards in 2022, 48 in 2023, 30 in 2024, 31 in 2025, and 9 in 2026 (partial year). Nineteen awards with ultimate completion dates in the next twenty-four months carry combined potential value of $48.3 million and face recompete exposure.

Service Contract Inventory-reported activity reveals a narrow slice of Challenge Unlimited's federal services footprint. SCI captured only four records (three as prime, one as named subcontractor) across FY2022–FY2024, with combined invoiced revenue of $928 thousand. SCI-reported staffing was 3.0 FTEs in FY2022, 2.2 FTEs in FY2023, and 30.9 FTEs in FY2024 (the jump reflects the addition of one sub-reported record). Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable prime contracts ran around $52.55/hr median, with a range from $48.73/hr at the tenth percentile to $65.18/hr at the ninetieth percentile. SCI data covers only contracts above the $150,000 threshold and excludes goods, micro-purchases, and non-federal revenue; the $928 thousand and FTE figures represent a strict subset of Challenge Unlimited's federal services work and do not reflect total enterprise revenue or full workforce deployed to federal customers.

Challenge Unlimited received sub-award funding through the Illinois Department of Human Services under Social Services Block Grant programs (multiple awards in FY2023 and FY2024) and a single paratransit-vehicle sub-award (April 2025). The organization competes predominantly as a prime contractor on full-and-open federal facility services solicitations, with no set-aside designations recorded across its prime footprint. The vendor's AbilityOne designation creates a federal contracting pathway that does not depend on small-business or socioeconomic set-aside categories; instead, Challenge Unlimited competes as a qualified facility-services provider while fulfilling its mission-driven mandate to employ individuals with disabilities.