The Thinking Part Of The Job

The point of a government contract is to meet the mission of an agency through leveraging the resources from the private sector. Contracts do not exist to exist. They exist to meet a mission. To get a job done. Therefore, to get the mission done, we need to get the contract done so the contractor can help get the agency’s mission done. At the core, it is that simple. Getting the contract in place may or may not be as simple.

• Government contracting is surprisingly simple, sometimes.
• Government contracting is maddeningly complex, sometimes.
• Most times it’s somewhere in between…and the goal is to move it to the “simple” end of the spectrum. That requires thinking and creativity.

What makes it so interesting to me is that it’s the decisions both buyer and seller make along the way that impact whether it’s simple, complex or somewhere in between. Each of those decisions affects the path to contract award. Those decisions require perspective, context, judgement. We make each decision within the context of all the rules, regulations, and processes of GovCon. Sometimes that path is simple, sometimes it is hard. But there is always a path.

Finding that path is the Thinking Part Of The (Job)

The Thinking Part of the Job is the T-POT. The last letter is silent because it changes based on the context…or the Thinking Part Of The (Role), or (Position), or (Process), etc. The Thinking Part Of The —, or T-POT for short. Plus, it’s just funny and memorable to call it the TPOT because then we can refer to it as the “teapot”.

The TPOT is the most important element of government contracting. The TPOT is how buyers and sellers make the important and impactful decisions that lead to meeting the mission through a given contract. Here is just a sliver of the decisions made through the TPOT. I highlighted who is making each decision. Each of The 3 Deciders is represented.

1. The Government Economic Decider decides whether to fund a requirement (in full or partially).
2. The Government Customer decides how flexible the requirement is do we need everything? What can we trade off, if anything?
3. The Contracting Officer decides whether to use an existing contract to fill the requirement or to award a new contract.
4. The Contractor decides which agency(s) to target, and why.
5. The Government Customer decides what evaluation criteria matters the most, and why.
6. The Contracting Officer decides whether and how to compete a contract or award it sole source (through a J&A).
7. The Contracting Officer decides on the contract type.
8. The Contractor decides which opportunities to pursue, and why.
9. The Contracting Officer decides on the acquisition strategy (among hundreds of options).
10. The Contractor decides which companies to team with, and why.
11. The Contractor decides which RFPs to respond to, and why.
12. The Contracting Officer decides whether to amend or cancel a solicitation based on new information.
13. The Government Customer decides whether that new information should change the requirement (see #12).
14. The Contracting Officer decides whether to include an offeror in the competitive range (or not).
15. The Contracting Officer decides whether to execute a Termination or a Stop Work.

And so on.

The challenge has often been that we did not have time to work on TPOT items because we were sucked into a quagmire of administrivia (finding regs, following checklists, organizing CLINs, managing ACRNs, updating clauses, etc.). For years players on both sides (Customer, Contractor, Contracting Officer) had to carve out time to work on the TPOT around all the administrivia of contracting. (One could argue that the current push for FAR 2.0 is based on a desire to shrink the administrivia…but we will see how it turns out).

So then what to do to make time for TPOT activities?

There’s great news on that front: the introduction and adoption of artificial intelligence, or ‘augmented intelligence”, (AI) is now making it much easier to get the administrivia done. This means that GovCon professionals on both sides have more time to focus on the TPOT (the Thinking Part Of The (Job)).

For example, as recent as a few years ago, I would have had to map out a series of FAR references to answer the question: Why and how a contracting officer can set aside a contract for a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business. Even if I Googled it, I would have had to piece it all together into a coherent plan. Now, we only need to ask one of many AI tools, “How does a Contracting Officer set aside a federal contract for an SDVOSB” and we get a nicely organized answer, in some cases along with sources. Sure, we still have to confirm the sources, and we cannot just blindly follow the AI result – but that’s a different point.

The bottom line is that now we don’t need to build the outline of the rules, or the list of steps through different parts of the regulation. Now we can use what AI gives us to augment our own understanding, then decide if it fits the situation, then apply the parts we think apply. We get to focus our efforts on using our judgement to decide if that is the right path, and why. In other words, we get to focus on the thinking part of the job (the TPOT). To do that, we need to bring creativity.

And the TPOT is what makes government contracting so much fun.

The TPOT is also what makes Government contracting a profession done by professionals, and not just another task done by AI. 

NOTE: It’s no coincidence that “creativity” is one the 7 Keys that we use at Skyway Acquisition to keep ourselves focused and delivering at a high level.

If you’re looking for helping building your “plays” from either side of GovCon, you can reach our team at http://AskSkyway.com. We’d love to help you #DoGovConWell.