In the world of federal contracting, successful pricing strategy hinges not just on understanding your own costs, but also on anticipating how your competitors are likely to structure their bids. One of the most influential factors in that equation? The wrap rate or burden rate.
At Richter & Company, we’ve spent two decades supporting Competitive Assessments and Price To Win development across some of the most high-stakes government pursuits. And over that time, one thing has remained constant: the need for credible, data driven insights into your competitors’ cost structures.
That’s exactly where wrapRATER™ comes in.
What Is wrapRATER™?
wrapRATER™ is a targeted, point-in-time assessment product that projects a competitor’s likely wrap rate for a specific business unit or division. Unlike internal pricing tools, wrapRATER™ is not focused on helping you calculate your own burdened costs. Instead, it provides you with insight into how your competitors might be building theirs.
The output is a clean, data driven estimate that captures these four key cost components:
- Fringe
- Overhead
- G&A
- Profit assumptions
This projection is based on open source and publicly available data— all tailored to reflect how a specific business unit is likely to structure its wrap rate under typical circumstances.
When Should You Use wrapRATER™?
wrapRATER™ is best used as information for your general knowledge base — especially when you’re trying to:
- Understand how a known competitor typically prices labor
- Validate internal assumptions about the competitive field
- Inform internal price strategy discussions
- Support your own Price To Win team with credible external input
It’s also an ideal solution for leaner capture teams or smaller companies who don’t yet have the resources for a full PTW engagement but still need to operate with intelligence.
For larger contractors with in-house PTW teams, our products (wrapRATER™, competiRATER™, laborRATER™ – more on those later.) serve as a powerful supplement. Many of our clients use it to quickly validate internal assumptions or provide a second opinion on competitor pricing inputs.
Why wrapRATER™ Matters
Wrap rates can dramatically impact bid competitiveness — particularly in labor-heavy opportunities. But many teams struggle with limited visibility into how competitors actually build their rates. wrapRATER™ helps fill that gap.
By generating a business unit–specific, realistic wrap rate projection for a named competitor, you can begin to see the field more clearly. That insight arms you with the data you need to shape more strategic pricing discussions and prepare your team to be competitive in a specific region or market.
You’re no longer flying blind — you’re leading with data.
Looking Ahead: What About Opportunity-Specific Projections?
Of course, a company’s typical wrap rate isn’t always the rate they’ll use in a bid on a given pursuit. Strategic decisions, customer constraints, and unique solicitation requirements often lead bidders to adjust or tailor their pricing in context.
That’s where our companion product, competiRATER™, comes in — taking the foundation established by wrapRATER™ and layering in opportunity-specific intelligence to project how that competitor is likely to bid this opportunity. We’ll be spotlighting that product in our next article.
