Where Good Procurements Really Begin (Weatherly the RFO - Part 3)
Before I got my first warrant (required to sign contracts), I was a Contract Specialist writing my first acquisition plan. It was for a large Total Environmental Restoration Contract (TERC) that included A-E, Services, and Construction terms and conditions. I was told, "follow FAR Part 7." I thought, "Okay, looks like I'll be doing a lot of these in the coming years. Figure it out." With a few years under my belt, I learned quickly that acquisition planning is the foundation for every successful procurement.
When I moved into leadership roles, we built acquisition planning into our entire program and project lifecycle. We implemented Advanced Acquisition Planning Boards (AAPBs) before writing lengthy acquisition strategy and planning documents. We invited stakeholders like Contracting to attend the budget request preparation meetings for the next FY. We started shaping an understanding and a plan of action months and years in advance of analyses and research.
Anyone who has spent time around acquisitions in the Federal space knows that most procurement problems begin at the beginning, before any procurement forecast goes into Acquisition Gateway or on the agency’s small business page, or any Sources Sought notice is issued in SAM. Long before a solicitation is issued and proposals arrive. And long before anyone files a protest.
You can almost always pin-point where, if you are going to have a problem, it will begin.
When an agency hasn't fully thought through what it's buying, why it's buying it, how the requirement should be structured, who might be capable of performing it, or what risks need to be managed before the acquisition ever reaches the marketplace.
Acquisition planning is preparation. If that’s not what we’re doing, we’re already creating problems for every acquisition phase that follows.
And that's why this topic in federal acquisition and the proposed RFO rules deserves attention, especially now that FAR Part 10, Market Research, has been combined with FAR Part 7, Acquisition Planning. Combining acquisition planning and market research recognizes something practitioners have known for years -- they're inseparable.
But it also means that changes to planning now ripple directly into how agencies understand the marketplace before they ever write a solicitation.
Congress never cared whether agencies produced acquisition plans. Congress cared whether agencies made good acquisition decisions. They care about competition, stewardship of taxpayer dollars, thoughtful use of small businesses, commercial buying, performance-based acquisitions, and risk management.
Those are the objectives.
Acquisition planning has been the primary tool for achieving them. But the plan itself was never the goal. The effort behind the plan was. Acquisition planning is simply one of the first steps in the procurement process. It is the place where the most important decisions have already been made.
Consider the examples I gave above about the discussions in the AAPB and budget request preparation. All of that is well before anything was put into writing. And heck, by the time the RFI was released (if we released one), just about every big question was already answered.
• Will this be a small business set-aside?
• Have commercial solutions been considered?
• Should the requirement be bundled?
• What's the acquisition strategy?
• What contract type makes the most sense?
• How will proposals be evaluated?
• How much performance risk is acceptable?
Those decisions are a product of discussions very early in acquisition planning. By the time industry reads the solicitation, many of the biggest decisions have already been made. The solicitation simply makes those decisions visible. So that begs the question…
…If acquisition planning changes, doesn’t everything downstream change, too?
I have a ton of notes in the margins of my electronic copies of the RFO parts issued so far. Most center around... Where is the acquisition leadership expecting contracting specialists and contracting officers to learn how to think through these decisions? I'm not talking training sessions, listening sessions, leadership briefings, webinars, the FAR Companion, Practitioners' Albums.
We are overwhelmed by data these days -- there is no shortage. Collection of data isn't the issue. it's what to do with it once we have it. What is meaningful and what isn't? That's a legitimate concern from the perspective of a contract specialist working different types of contracts in their cradle-to-grave office set-up. Or the specialist or contracting officer moved as a result of agency realignments and now buying something new, with no training whatsoever.
With the FAR Council is intentionally moving away from detailed procedural direction in favor of shorter regulations supported by guidance outside the FAR, we have to acknowledge that, historically, the FAR didn't just tell contracting officers what it needed to comply with, but often explained how to ensure compliance and answered questions about how to get it done.
From the Contracting Officer's Chair
Let’s start with a discussion about curiosity. Bring me a purchase requestion and I would have a list of questions ready for you. I know from experience that my answers and how this action continues hinges on what those answers are. That includes everything that goes right and wrong, long before I use any AI tool and ask questions.
• What problem(s) are we trying to solve?
• Is there another way to buy this?
• Has it been purchased before?
• Who in industry might already be doing it and how is it procured?
• What risks are we creating and mitigating?
• What opportunities are we overlooking and creating?
• What is it that we don’t know yet but need answers for?
And then the standard "dollar value", "when do you need it", and "do you have money yet" questions.
Every profession has it and the contracting craft is no different. Knowing what questions to ask is part of the craft. Also part of the craft is learning how best to pass information from one experienced professional to the next. The RFO is forcing us to reconsider where and how that institutional knowledge should live going forward. And, how we preserve it in market research and acquisition planning.
Written acquisition plans preserve all discussion and decisions points. It is the ultimate fallback for the building of the solicitation and the justifications of what we are doing and why in the pre-award phase leading to the solicitation. It is never seen by industry but relied upon by acquisition. Making preservation discretionary means documentation practices could vary significantly across agencies, depending on each agency's implementation decisions and tolerance for risk.
What gets lost are rationales, alternatives considered, risk discussions, disagreements, lessons learned, why things changed from the last procurement, and what outside influences impacted current decisions. Acquisition plans in their written form allow that information to be inherited by future acquisition teams. This deserves more attention than it's receiving in the RFO.
The RFO made the changes in FAR Part 7 about the laundry list of what had to go in the plan.
Wrong argument.
It is ALL about careful consideration of facts and circumstances before acting. How much consideration is required to make informed decisions, preserve those decisions so we have them as a guide moving forward, and actually use them to improve and streamline the process. Contracting officers know that their judgment can't be regulated. They stop relying on checklists and start recognizing patterns. They know the questions to ask end users, requiring activities, legal counsel, budget, and small business specialists because seeing the patterns for a poor acquisition form. That's because most know where acquisitions tend to go off track from living through it.
If the FAR is going to become shorter, the acquisition workforce needs a deliberate and consistent strategy across the board for preserving the judgment, rationale, and historical knowledge that good acquisition planning has always provided.
Otherwise, while we simplify the rulebook, it will -- for now -- make the profession harder to master.
What’s Coming Next -- Article Four: Market Research Isn't About Checking a Box
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Author: Shauna Weatherly, President, Federal Subcontract Solutions LLC (dba FedSubK). Shauna is a small business advocate and owner of FedSubK. FedSubK exists to simplify federal contracting, empowering small businesses with practical, understandable resources. We bring first-hand experiences in Federal contracting from multiple perspectives derived from roles held both in and out of Government over almost four decades of Federal service.
Visit us at fedsubk.com to learn more about--
Getting Started in Federal Contracting: fedsubk.com/begin-your-journey-here
Solutions and Our Trusted Support Provider Network: fedsubk.com/solutions-services
Insights from a Contracting Officer: fedsubk.com/insights
Free Webinars and Resources: fedsubk.com/webinars-training
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The FAR is Changing. So Is the Way We Learn (Weathering the RFO - Part 7)
When I first became a contracting officer, there wasn't one place you learned federal acquisition.
You learned a little from the FAR. You learned from your supervisor. You learned from legal counsel after asking what felt like a hundred questions. You learned from experienced contracting officers who had already made the mistakes you were trying to avoid. You learned from GAO decisions, Inspector General reports, policy memoranda, training courses, and occasionally from acquisitions that didn't go quite the way anyone planned.
Over time, those experiences came together to form something that's difficult to define but easy to recognize. Professional judgment.
That's what separates someone who knows the FAR from someone who knows how to apply it.
As I work through reading the proposed rules on the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO), I keep coming back to one thought – which is something I learned as a Team Lead, a Branch Chief, a Chief, and an Acquisition Workforce Training Coordinator –
It’s not about writing a shorter FAR.
Throughout this series I’ve said it’s easy to focus on what has been removed from the FAR. Yes, we see a leaner document. But that’s not the biggest change.
The RFO separated regulatory requirements from implementation knowledge.
Today, acquisition professionals are working within a broader knowledge ecosystem than many of us grew up with.
1) While the FAR establishes the regulatory framework, the FAR Companion now provides the context for implementation of that framework.
2) Practitioner Albums now explain all of the thinking behind the changes and illustrate how the revised framework is intended to work in practice.
3) Agency deviations implement the revised structure while revisions continue and the RFO moves through the formal rulemaking process.
4) Agency supplements, policy memoranda, training resources, and professional education fill in the gaps.
It's a different model for how acquisition professionals access information.
Let Me Tell You A Story…
When I arrived at GSA in 2012, part of my job was training and developing a contracting staff of more than 50 people at different stages of experience and certification. In fact, part of the application process was developing an Acquisition Workforce Training and Development Plan. Apparently, that requirement scared everyone else away. I was the only person who applied.
My first few weeks taught me something else: GSA's acquisition policy and workforce information was scattered EVERYWHERE. Shared drives. Policy sites. Old documents. Poorly labeled documents. Finding what you needed was a nightmare.
About that time, GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini launched the Great Ideas Hunt. I submitted an idea for an Acquisition Portal where GSA could bring workforce, career development, policy, FAR, DOL, small business and other acquisition information together. The idea took off, and I served on the working group that developed the site's hierarchy. The value was pretty simple: people could find the information they needed in one place.
The RFO just took that model and said – naw.
Instead it says, “We believe in you, Acquisition Workforce! While there is less of you and you’ve lost some of your historical knowledge, we know you can read and you will find the information you need no matter where we put it. Happy hunting!”
The Bigger Change Isn’t the FAR
For most of my federal career, if someone asked me where to start researching a procurement issue, my answer was relatively straightforward. "Let's start with the FAR." It didn’t mean that the FAR had the full answer, but it gave everyone a common starting point with enough context and process to get you going quickly. But today, I don't think that's enough.
Today, based on conversations with Contracting Officers I know still on the job, it sounds more like this: "Let's start with the FAR. Then let's see what the Companion says. Let's look at the Practitioner Album. Was there an Executive Order on this? Has OFPP issued guidance? Is there an agency deviation that applies? Has GAO weighed in? Has anyone done this in our group yet?"
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Eventually it could be a better way of supporting an acquisition workforce that has to learn to adapt more quickly than traditional rulemaking allows. But it does change some important things.
It changes how they learn. And it adds time and risk.
From the Contracting Officer’s Chair
Putting information somewhere the workforce can access it is not the same thing as developing the workforce. A Practitioner Album can explain something. A course can teach it. Neither necessarily teaches a GS-11 contract specialist when to question the answer, when discretion is appropriate, when to elevate something, or what downstream consequence a seemingly small acquisition-planning decision may create.
Some of the best contracting officers I've known couldn't quote FAR citations from memory. But they knew the questions to ask. They could see risk in an underdeveloped requirement before it became a solicitation problem. They understood how an acquisition-planning decision could affect competition months later. And they knew when to bring in legal counsel, small business, or technical experts.
That's judgment. And judgment comes from experience, mentorship, continuous learning and professional discussion, not simply knowing where to find the rule.
I do have some optimism about this new knowledge model. It can make acquisition guidance far more responsive than regulation alone ever could. I've seen firsthand how long FAR rulemaking can take. It can take YEARS. Meanwhile, technology changes, commercial practices evolve, GAO issues decisions, agencies act, and new buying techniques emerge. The FAR Companion and Practitioner Albums give the acquisition community a way to capture some of that evolution much faster. That's a positive.
But it also creates a challenge: Knowledge is only valuable if people know where to find it, what authority it carries, and when to rely on it.
One of the strengths of the FAR has always been consistency. Whether you worked at the DHS, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, GSA, or another agency, everyone started from the same regulation. Today, knowledge is intentionally distributed across multiple resources. That means consistency depends less on where information is published and more on how effectively the acquisition workforce understands the relationship among those resources. That's a leadership challenge. And it's a training challenge.
Contractors, consultants, attorneys, and proposal professionals are adapting to the same knowledge ecosystem. Understanding where acquisition thinking now lives is becoming just as important as understanding the regulation itself.
Frankly, understanding the regulation, processes, and people all connect is one reason I’m still active in this field – even if I’m sitting on the industry side now. I could go chase my dream of being a photog, sell my prints, or get back to the art I've set aside for too long. But one of the things I enjoyed most about supervising contracting professionals was watching the moment when someone stopped looking for answers and started asking better questions. That's when I knew they were growing into their craft.
The FAR can teach requirements, but experience teaches judgment. And good supervisors accelerate that process. And if the RFO expects contracting professionals to exercise more judgment and discretion, then supervisors need tools specifically designed to help them develop that judgment in others. Give a developing specialist an acquisition and make them explain not just what they would do, but where they found the authority, what discretion exists, what alternatives they considered, and why they made the recommendation. Build that thought process into acquisitions at the lowest levels.
As I think about the RFO, personally, I don't worry nearly as much about whether a paragraph moved from the FAR to the FAR Companion. What I think about is the next generation of contracting officers.
How do we help them develop judgment in this new environment?
How do we make sure they understand not just what the regulation says, but why it says it?
To me, that's one of the most important leadership questions raised by the RFO. And who will help them. Too often, leadership does what it it has always done – writes the change and tosses it over the fence. That won’t cut it this time if they expect real change and innovation.
Moving so much of that practical knowledge outside of the FAR is a significant shift. How will we know how well the workforce is taking it all in? We need a structured mechanism for practitioners to identify recurring interpretation problems, conflicting implementation, useful practices, or places where the FAR Companion and Practitioner Albums need clarification.
That turns the workforce from passive recipients into part of the learning system.
Handled well, shifting process out of the FAR could create a more agile workforce. But handled poorly, it could create uncertainty, inconsistent implementation, and uneven professional development. At this point, I don't think we've seen enough to know which outcome is more likely. Jaime Gracia has been raising similar concerns about acquisition workforce development, including his recent article, “The Procurement Workforce Problem No One Wants to Fund” at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/copy-procurement-workforce-problem-one-wants-fund-jaime-gracia-vdmke/?trackingId=BVgMVDCyRY6vwzJDfBYkwQ%3D%3D. There still aren’t enough people having this conversation.
It deserves more attention than it's receiving. And the acquisition workforce deserves more training and leadership support than it is getting.
Three Things Leadership Needs to Think About Now
• Create a common learning framework.
• Develop supervisors as the bridge between guidance and judgment.
• Measure whether implementation is actually producing consistent professional practice.
The RFO may have made the FAR leaner. It did not make federal acquisition simpler to learn.
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What’s next? Weathering the RFO will be back as we work through the latest RFO proposed rules covering several “meaty” FAR parts. Watch for more soon on LinkedIn and Substack.
Author: Shauna Weatherly, President, Federal Subcontract Solutions LLC (dba FedSubK). Shauna is a small business advocate and owner of FedSubK. FedSubK exists to simplify federal contracting, empowering small businesses with practical, understandable resources. We bring first-hand experiences in Federal contracting from multiple perspectives derived from roles held both in and out of Government over almost four decades of Federal service.
Visit us at fedsubk.com to learn more about--
Getting Started in Federal Contracting: fedsubk.com/begin-your-journey-here
Solutions and Our Trusted Support Provider Network: fedsubk.com/solutions-services
Insights from a Contracting Officer: fedsubk.com/insights
Free Webinars and Resources: fedsubk.com/webinars-training
When Judgement Carries More Weight (Weathering the RFO - Part 6)
You've probably heard some version of this complaint about federal acquisition: "If they would just let the Contracting Officer use some judgment..."
Okay. I get that. But then what?
I bring this up because the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) is stripping away some of the detailed implementation language that generations of acquisition professionals grew up with.
The idea, at least in part, is to create more room for acquisition professionals to exercise discretion and sound business judgment. I understand the theory. But as a former Chief of Contracting who was responsible for developing this employees with my limited training budget and limited resources but with more work than I could handle, what I can't stop thinking about is what happens when a Contracting Officer actually tries to use that discretion...but maybe doesn't have the experience or training to do so yet. As a Chief and having been responsible for acquisition workforce development, something I've seen is that process has a way of growing back.
Sometimes it comes from regulation. Sometimes it comes from agency policy. Legal counsel wants another review. A policy office creates another template. A contracting office develops a local procedure because something went wrong once five years ago.
And sometimes Contracting Officers do it to ourselves.
We keep doing something because that's how we've always done it. Because the template is already there. Because another approval makes everyone a little more comfortable. Or because trying something different means being the person who has to explain why (and right now, not many want to be THAT person).
That's where I think the "revolution" of the RFO is going to be tested. Having discretion and being COMFORTABLE exercising it are not the same thing. Neither is having discretion and being ALLOWED to exercise it.
A Contracting Officer may look at the RFO and see room for a different approach, but that CO/KO doesn't operate in isolation. There is a supervisor. Legal counsel. Program leadership. Agency policy. Review boards. Local procedures. Templates. Sometimes headquarters. Every one of those layers can influence how much of that theoretical flexibility survives an actual acquisition. That's not bad because checks and balances exist for a reason. I've spent enough time in those types of acquisition reviews to appreciate the value in a respected member of the team and leadership asking, "Have you thought about this?"
But there is a difference between oversight that improves an acquisition and the process that exists simply because it has always existed. And that raises a question I think agencies need to consider as the RFO moves forward: If we remove prescriptive process from the FAR and then recreate it through agency policy, local procedures, mandatory templates and layers of review, what exactly did we accomplish?
We could end up with a shorter FAR and essentially the same acquisition system. Or we could end up with something else entirely. We could have agencies and contracting offices rebuilding different versions of the processes that used to reside in one common regulation. That isn't flexibility. It could simply lead to more fragmentation.
From the Contracting Officer's Chair
What's not getting enough traction in this discussion is that detailed process provides training when no other training sources are available or exist. It gives the CO/KO something besides bureaucracy to hang their hat on. It also provides cover. Being able to say, "The FAR says..." is a pretty comfortable place for a CO/KO to stand when someone challenges an acquisition strategy.
But it's different when the answer becomes, "The FAR gives me discretion, and based on the market research, risk, requirement and facts of this acquisition, this is the approach I determined was appropriate right now." Now the CO's/KO’s judgment carries more weight. So does their signature. And that can freak out some less experienced COs/KOs.
I don't say that as a criticism of Contracting Officers. I've been one with an unlimited warrant for all types and dollar values of contracts. There is a reason experienced COs/KOs sometimes become cautious or risk averse. Acquisition decisions can be reviewed by a supervisor, legal counsel, an Inspector General, GAO, a court, or someone several years later who has the luxury of knowing how everything turned out. The experienced ones know that. That experience teaches you to think about not only whether you can make a decision, but whether you can explain and support it later in a way that the rationale is plainly understood by a "prudent person" at some future point in time. (Don't ask me how many times I still get calls asking if I remember why we wrote a period of performance or Section H term the way we did....it's a steady stream.)
That's why I don't think simply telling the workforce, "You have more flexibility now," will necessarily change acquisition behavior.
The system around the Contracting Officer has to permit that flexibility, too. And leadership has some decisions of its own to make related to that.
If we really want Contracting Officers exercising reasonable discretion, we have to accept something that comes with it: reasonable people will occasionally make different decisions. Two experienced Contracting Officers looking at similar acquisitions may choose different approaches. One may engage industry differently. One may structure the competition differently. One may decide a particular procedural step adds value while another decides it does not. That doesn't automatically mean one of them is wrong. It really comes down to whether the decision was lawful, reasonable, supported by the facts, and documented well enough that someone who wasn't sitting in the room can understand why it was made.
That's a different acquisition culture from one built primarily around procedural uniformity. And I'm not convinced yet that the Government is entirely comfortable with that distinction. Out of one side of its mouth as it touts this new "innovative thinking", procurement leaders and Think-Tanks say, "We trust you. Go forth and do great things." But out of the other is a culture that hasn't made the shift yet. Why? Because it's THE GOVERNMENT.
There is a natural tendency in large organizations to standardize. Something goes wrong, so we add a review. Someone makes a poor decision, so we create a template. An audit finds a weakness, so we establish another procedure. Individually, each response may make perfect sense. Collectively, that's how process grows back. That’s how we ended up with the FAR we had before the RFO. It grew the way it did because the FAR Council literally wanted to fix common mistakes through regulation and purposefully included detailed process and training for the sake of CONSISTENCY -- at the FAR level -- to avoid protests, risk, and a wild west culture in buying.
Five years from now, we could still find ourselves with a much shorter FAR but have it be surrounded by layers and layers of agency policy, local procedures, templates and unwritten rules that recreated much of what was removed.
If that happens, did we really change federal acquisition all that much? Or did we just inject chaos and inconsistency?
Industry should be watching, too. This isn't just an internal Government issue. If the RFO works as intended, industry will definitely encounter more variation among agencies, contracting offices and even individual acquisition teams as they make greater use of the discretion available to them. That makes meaningful market engagement even more important. And industry has already been complaining about the inconsistency in the application of the "old FAR" for decades. Just today we saw a small business set-aside announced on SAM.gov for 14 minutes from issuance to proposal cut-off. I mean, THAT'S WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HERE.
What does it mean for industry? Don't just tell the Government what you sell. You are going to have to help the acquisition team understand the market it is buying from. Explain what drives competition. Explain commercial practices. Explain what happens when requirements are bundled or structured a particular way. Explain where an acquisition strategy may unintentionally create cost, schedule, performance or competition risk for both parties. Give the Contracting Officer useful information on which to exercise judgment. Then let the Government (hopefully) make a good decision.
Industry can (and should) give the Government better information on which to base its acquisition decisions. I believe that will start to endear you to them. Not tell them what to do but what is going on in your world realistically and not just centered around you and your goals. Open their eyes.
As the RFO moves from rewriting regulations to changing actual acquisitions, I'm going to be really curious about what "grows back" and where when it comes to process -- way more than the number of pages the FAR may add down the road. (Oh, and I don't propose that -- or really care if -- every old procedural sentence eventually finds a new home somewhere else, either. That's not the point here.)
But you have to ask yourself--
• Will agencies resist the temptation to recreate deleted process through agency or local policy?
• Will contracting offices allow experienced COs/KOs to use the discretion the revised framework gives them?
• Will supervisors and reviewers support a reasonable decision even when it isn't the decision they personally would have made?
• Will Contracting Officers themselves become comfortable enough with that discretion -- and the accountability that comes with it -- to stop reaching for an old process simply because it feels safer?
Those answers will tell us if the RFO really "revolutionized" federal acquisition. (I still hate that adjective -- "revolutionary". It's so cheesy to use before you actually know; like saying it makes it so.)
And we can't forget how this is closely coupled with what is going on with the workforce in general with recent OPM changes. New organizations, reorganizations, new performance metrics, changed RIF structure, NDAs, and a culture of extreme politics in some organizations. We can't forget how those stressors and rules will weigh in on who steps up and goes first and who wants to be the test case for innovative judgement calls that may not go according to a clean E.O. or leadership vision. I don't see a lot of people raising their hands and where they are, what happens when things don't go "revolutionary" on the first try?
We've spent years saying federal acquisition needs more judgment and less process. Now we may finally get to find out whether the acquisition system -- and the culture -- is willing to or can live with what that actually means.
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What’s next? The RFO isn’t only changing the text of the regulation, it’s changing where knowledge sits. How does that impact learning a complex profession on the inside, and what does it mean to you in industry as you work with the acquisition workforce? Watch for the link to that article soon on LinkedIn.
Author: Shauna Weatherly, President, Federal Subcontract Solutions LLC (dba FedSubK). Shauna is a small business advocate and owner of FedSubK. FedSubK exists to simplify federal contracting, empowering small businesses with practical, understandable resources. We bring first-hand experiences in Federal contracting from multiple perspectives derived from roles held both in and out of Government over almost four decades of Federal service.
Visit us at fedsubk.com to learn more about--
Getting Started in Federal Contracting: fedsubk.com/begin-your-journey-here
Solutions and Our Trusted Support Provider Network: fedsubk.com/solutions-services
Insights from a Contracting Officer: fedsubk.com/insights
Free Webinars and Resources: fedsubk.com/webinars-training
How Early is "Early"? (Weatherly the RFO - Part 5)
"We need to engage the agency early."
It's hard to argue with that.
But what does "early" mean, actually? I mean – in Government terms and from their viewpoint.
Most companies are going to say “early” means before the solicitation is released. A lot of GovCons on LinkedIn talk all about getting in there while acquisition planning is going on. They say that’s the window when key decisions are made about contract types, competition pools, and evaluation factors. Others say it has to be well before acquisition planning.
Listen to those people!
They are the ones in industry that “get it”!
The best market research – and industry’s best opportunity to help inform the discussion – happens before acquisition planning formally begins.
Reading through the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO), and as a former KO/CO, I had hoped it would catch up and understand that “early" is too narrowly defined. Maybe I get it now from being out here in industry for a number of years fully immersed in the talk of capture and pipeline development.
Knowing the federal marketplace should be an ongoing acquisition competency, not an activity tied to a single procurement.
Technically, FAR Part 10 is gone but experienced contracting officers understand that market research and acquisition planning belong together. They influence each other constantly. From that perspective, integrating the regulatory text of FAR Part 10 into Part 7 recognizes that connection.
But putting market research in Part 7 may reinforce another problem; treating it as something that begins when acquisition planning begins. Market knowledge should lead acquisition planning, not begin with it.
A good requirement starts with knowing the market well. It’s when your Program Manager starts talking to you a good six months before the purchase request hits that a project is coming, prepping you for the drop. They give you intel on who the major players are, how commercial buying might fit, and outside influences like economic conditions or materials shortages.
From there, I can start talking to the Small Business Specialist and looking at the likely small business pool. I can talk with the estimator about likely dollar values and start thinking about contract type, pricing structure, clauses, and ways to streamline the procurement.
Right there.
Did you see that?
I’m already thinking about the competition pool, contract type, and pricing structure and there isn’t any talk about a purchase request or acquisition strategy yet. That’s what EARLY is. And when contracting is included in programmatic budget discussions, those wheels turn even earlier. And even with that six-month head start, it’s only useful if I’m not starting from zero.
And one thing the RFO is telling us very clearly now is that there is no requirement to conduct market research using a specific method or set of methods. There is no mandate to issue a Sources Sought or Request for Information (RFI).
The RFO doesn’t prescribe a method. It tells the acquisition team to conduct market research appropriate to the circumstances under certain scenarios, and to engage in responsible and constructive exchanges without creating an unfair competitive advantage or violating procurement integrity requirements. (Proposed rule RFO 7.201(b)).
The method isn’t the point anymore. The quality of the information and the judgment applied to it is.
With that I think a mindset shift needs to take place for the RFO to be successful. And when the FAR prescribes less about how to get that information, what the acquisition team already knows becomes more important, not less.
Look at market research as continuous learning, not a one-time action.
Industry watches markets continuously because it has to. Government acquisition teams tend to examine them one procurement at a time. Hopefully it's not just me that sees how that creates an information gap about the market before acquisition planning ever begins.
The market research contracting personnel are all familiar with is done to support an individual acquisition. It informs the strategy, contract type, commerciality determination, competition pool, pricing approach, and documentation supporting those decisions.
Continuous market learning does something different. It builds knowledge before there is an acquisition that demands it. It means understanding how an industry, its suppliers, technologies, pricing practices, and commercial business models are changing before a requirement forces us to ask.
So let’s get back to that word – “Early”
Earlier and more continuous engagement raises the obvious question about how does the Government keep it fair? The answer hasn’t changed. Engage ethically, document, protect procurement integrity, and don’t give individual firms an unfair competitive advantage.
Continuous market learning should never become continuous market favoritism.
In fact, broader and more continuous market awareness should make acquisition teams less dependent on what they learn from the handful of vendors who happen to show up for a particular procurement.
From the Contracting Officer's Chair
Using continuous market learning would create a focused ongoing procurement effort to understand industries, technologies, suppliers, and commercial business practices, whether or not an active procurement is immediately on the horizon.
Because of lumbering procurement timelines, many believe starting market research two years out is ample time to adjust to the market changes.
Yeah, I’ve fallen into that trap. It doesn’t work like that. Continuous market learning moves some of that discovery upstream, before changing direction becomes an acquisition problem. Or, as we call it in Contracting -- our problem.
Well-seasoned COs and KOs know instinctively continuous market learning is a much-needed best practice, but they aren’t always allowed to go to key industry events (because no travel funds), they don’t have time to meet with vendors (because of an end of fiscal year that goes on for an entire quarter), and they don’t have access to trade publications (because the Government won’t buy them a subscription). They try to pay attention to how markets are changing. But by the time the acquisition team discovers how much the market has changed, changing course can mean rethinking the solicitation, evaluation approach, competition strategy, and/or pricing structure. And anyone who has sat in the CO/KO chair knows the lift required to make those changes on an already compressed schedule.
The RFO’s FAR Companion says that “…acquisition teams should approach market research as an incremental process that builds understanding step-by-step.” That’s still looking at market research tied to an individual acquisition. The RFO writers had an opportunity to take the next step and distinguish procurement specific market research from continuous market learning. And they didn’t.
Ugh – heartbreaking!
But by integrating market research into acquisition planning in the text, and by relying more heavily on professional judgment, it creates space for the acquisition workforce to -- themselves -- think beyond procurement specific research to the possibility of continuous market learning. That gives agencies and programmatic teams within agencies a lot of leeway to create their own best practices.
If / how that happens is something to watch. BUT…
What the RFO Missed
RFO writers put their confidence in the acquisition workforce. Less prescription in process = more reliance on professional judgment. But judgment doesn't develop automatically with a new reg; I’ve been doing this long enough to know and live that. It comes from trusted and experienced leaders across the acquisition workforce – and by workforce I mean Contract Specialists (CS), COs, KOs, Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs), PMs, and Small Business Specialists. Those leaders step up and teach newer team members how to ask better questions, recognize bias, separate market understanding from vendor preference, and remain curious without compromising fairness in their research and engagements.
But the tools the RFO FAR Companion suggests aren’t starting points, not market knowledge. SAM.gov, CPARS.gov, FPDS.gov (which is now SAM Contract Awards and SAM Data Bank Reports), SBS, and other tools and datasets on Acquisition.gov and the GSA Acquisition Gateway don’t fully hit the mark. Talking to counterparts in other agencies, reviewing existing contract databases, reading industry publications, and examining vendor websites or online product literature are sources of information. They aren’t a substitute for market knowledge.
Useful? Absolutely. Enough? Not even close.
Tools provide data. Engagement provides information. Experience turns both into market knowledge.
A couple of things…
The question “Have we conducted market research yet?" isn't the same as "What do we know about the current market?"
The first asks whether an acquisition step has been completed. The second asks whether the acquisition team is informed.
The first is a report. The second can change an acquisition.
See the difference?
One of the unintended consequences of organizing market research as a separate FAR part was that it became easy to think of it as another acquisition milestone. Complete the market research, write it up, and move on and don't think about the market until the next buy.
The RFO has created an opportunity to break that habit. If we do break it, acquisition teams can begin acquisition planning informed by the market instead of using the start of acquisition planning to begin learning about it.
But, will we?
Acquisition Leaders – you have a challenge!
Five years from now, should market research still be something we conduct for an acquisition or will market knowledge finally be treated as a continuous learning acquisition workforce competency?
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Author: Shauna Weatherly, President, Federal Subcontract Solutions LLC(dba FedSubK). Shauna is a small business advocate and owner of FedSubK. FedSubK exists to simplify federal contracting, empowering small businesses with practical, understandable resources. We bring first-hand experiences in Federal contracting from multiple perspectives derived from roles held both in and out of Government over almost four decades of Federal service.
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