Learn government contracting the non-boring way

Master the regulatory foundation, tactical guidance, and practical tools behind Guiding Principle #4 of the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO): Award Contracts to Contractors Who Demonstrate a Superior Ability to Perform (FAR 1.102(4)).

This course traces contractor performance management from FASA through the RFO's sharpened framework.

Along the way, it walks through the parts of the FAR that carry this policy: 9, 15, 19, 40, and 42, and what each change means in practice.

By the end, you'll be able to:

• Structure responsibility determinations
• Design source selections that actually differentiate performers
• Manage performance accountability in small business contracting

The course puts the RFO's companion resources to work, too: the FAR Companion Guide and the Practitioner Albums, connecting the regulatory reading to what you do on the job.

Finish equipped to select contractors who perform faster, with more confidence, the way the RFO intended.

Explore the regulatory foundation, tactical guidance, and practical tools behind the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul's (RFO) Guiding Principle #5, Promote Competition and Fair Opportunity — part of our FAR Guiding Principles training series.

This course traces the history of competition law from the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 through the RFO's rebuilt framework.

You'll walk through the specific changes to FAR Parts 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 19 and what each change means in practice.

Build the skills to structure competition strategies across the full acquisition spectrum — from full and open competition to sole source — and apply fair opportunity procedures that are both legally compliant and genuinely competitive.

The course also puts the RFO's companion resources to work, including the FAR Companion Guide and Practitioner Albums, connecting regulatory knowledge to on-the-job execution.

Leave this course equipped to make competition decisions that are faster, more defensible, and built the way the RFO intended.

Choosing the Right Acquisition Path

A practical walkthrough of the pathways a contracting officer can actually reach for: federal supply schedules, IDIQs, letter contracts, CRADAs, SBIR/STTR, and the rest of the tool belt. Learners sort the FAR lane from the non-FAR lane, catch the items on the chart that only look like contract types, and practice matching a pathway to a requirement's mission, market, timeline, and risk.

Spend a beautiful day in the neighborhood with Mr. Roberts, a Contracting Officer (CO) who thinks a post-award debrief should feel less like a legal deposition and more like a conversation.

This video-driven course opens on a number that should bother every CO:

Of 1,658 protests filed in FY2022, only 59 were sustained.

That 13% gap isn't really a legal problem, it's a communication one.

Because the government keeps making defensible award decisions and then explaining them so thinly that industry protests instead of believing them.

Built around four rules of relational debriefing, the course reframes FAR 15.301, Postaward debriefing of offerors, from a box to check into a relationship to build.

It shows the daylight between a traditional debrief written to defend the government's position and a relational one held to actually help the offeror who lost.

Follow Mr. Roberts as he:

• Drops the legalese
• Opens up instead of hiding behind the protest clock
• Shifts the conversation from the award that's already decided to the work still coming
• Finds time for all of it, even when he's short-staffed and desperate to stay protest-free

Leave equipped to:

• Say what you can
• Know what you can't
• Send a losing offeror home ready to compete again for the next solicitation, instead of ready to protest next week