COPS - The Contracting Officer Platform
COPS is The Contracting Officer Platform Podcast is built for the modern contracting officer - professionals who want to move beyond compliance and deliver real mission impact. Brought to you by Mission Contracting Group (MCG), this podcast breaks down acquisition into what actually matters - judgement, risk, and defensible decision-making.
Each episode translates complex FAR concepts, warrant board expectations, and real world acquisition challenges into clear, practical insights. Through scenario-based discussions, decision frameworks, and common pitfalls, COPS helps you think like a contracting officer - not just study like one. Whether you're preparing for a warrant board or sharpening your edge in high-stakes environments, this podcast equips you to analyze situations, weigh risk, and execute with confidence.
Built for the modern Contracting Officer. Designed for mission impact. From requirement to capability-this is contracting, done right.
COPS - The Contracting Officer Platform
Topic 007 - The Competition Compass
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In this episode of COPS – The Contracting Officer Platform, we take a practical — and occasionally painful — journey through the world of federal competition requirements and acquisition exceptions.
Using RFO part 6 and Topic 007: The CO’s Competition Compass as the guides, this episode explores Full & Open Competition, exclusion of sources, sole-source authorities, urgent operational requirements, industrial mobilization, international agreements, and the real-world judgment calls contracting professionals make every day.
Along the way, we tackle scenarios involving cyber attacks, disaster relief, major weapon systems, brand-name pitfalls, and the timeless acquisition phrase:
“…well, it depends.”
This episode is equal parts training, storytelling, and acquisition therapy session — because every contracting professional knows the rules are important, but the mission rarely arrives under perfect conditions.
Imagine it is well, imagine it's two o'clock in the morning on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_01No dreaded two AM call.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. You are the Secretary of Defense. Your phone rings.
SPEAKER_01Never good news at that hour.
SPEAKER_00Never. So a massive globally interconnected U.S. financial institution. I mean, one that holds the payroll for major defense contractors and uh underrates the supply chain for basically the entire aerospace sector. They are in absolute free fall. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01So total panic.
SPEAKER_00Total panic. By the time the Asian markets open in a few hours, the panic spreads. And by Monday morning, this economic contagion could literally cripple the industrial base. Right. So you need to execute a highly specialized, I mean a multibillion dollar bailout contract, and you need to hand it to one specific entity that is capable of absorbing the shock immediately. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Because you just you don't have time. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Right. There is absolutely zero time to run a standard 60-day public competition. If you follow the standard rule book, the economy literally crashes while you are still uh evaluating proposals. So what do you do?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell I mean, it is the ultimate nightmare scenario. You're staring down the barrel of global catastrophe, and standing in your way is the immovable wall of government procurement law.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Exactly. And the wildest part of this whole thing is there is an escape hatch for this exact scenario. Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_01A hidden lever, basically.
SPEAKER_00So welcome to the deep dive. It's going to be a good one. Yeah. Whether you are, say, a brand new copper cap intern, and for anyone listening outside the Air Force, that just means you're a trainee who has been thrown into the absolute deep end of government acquisition.
SPEAKER_01The literal fire hose.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, drinking from the fire hose. Or, you know, maybe you are a seasoned contracting officer with the legal warrant and the magic pen to bind the United States government. We are talking directly to you today.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell It really is a critical conversation because the rules governing how the government spends taxpayer dollars are, well, they're vast, they're complex, and frankly, they are heavily, heavily scrutinized. But they all revolve around this one central gravitational pull.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Right. So today's deep dive is hyper-focused on what we're calling Topic 007, the Competition Compass.
SPEAKER_01I like that. The Competition Compass.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, our mission today is to decode the rule book of government procurement and translate it into modern business strategy. We are going to look at the Competition in Contracting Act.
SPEAKER_01Which uh you will hear everyone pronounce as SICA. SICA.
SPEAKER_00Right, SICA. We're going to break down the three distinct types of competition, and we are going to explore the messy, high-stakes reality of the documentation required when you inevitably have to deviate from that standard path.
SPEAKER_01And to set the baseline here, we really need to understand the overarching philosophy of all this material.
SPEAKER_00Okay, lay it out.
SPEAKER_01That philosophy is simple but unyielding. Competition is the rule, not the exception.
SPEAKER_00Not the exception. Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. The government doesn't mandate competition just to torture its acquisition workforce with red tape. I mean, even though I know firsthand it can absolutely feel that way on a Friday afternoon.
SPEAKER_00Oh, for sure. When you're just trying to get a contract out the door.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But it's about optimizing taxpayer dollars. It's about avoiding vendor lock-in. And crucially, it's about maintaining a healthy, innovative industrial base.
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's unpack this, starting with the history and the foundation of Sika's. Because, you know, if we don't understand why the rules exist, they really just look like bureaucratic roadblocks.
SPEAKER_01They just look like annoyances, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. Before Sika came around in the mid-80s, things were a bit of a wild west, weren't they?
SPEAKER_01They absolutely were. So the Competition and Contracting Act, it passed in 1984, and it it was a massive paradigm shift. You really have to look at the historical context here.
SPEAKER_00What was going on back then?
SPEAKER_01Well, before 1984, government contracting practices were heavily criticized. I mean, by Congress, by the public. Right. You had an incredible inefficiency, you had massive waste, and quite frankly, you had blatant favoritism.
SPEAKER_00Ah, right. This was the era where you started seeing those infamous headlines.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. The government buying $600 toilet seats.
SPEAKER_00And the $400 hammers, the classic outrage stories.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And that happens because, well, if there is no forced competition, there's no price discovery.
SPEAKER_00Right. It's basic economics. If a vendor knows they're the only game in town and they don't have to fight for the contract, they have zero incentive to offer their best price.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus And zero incentive to innovate.
SPEAKER_00Right. There was a widespread perception, backed by plenty of reality, that many contracts were just handed out in, you know, smoke-filled rooms without any meaningful competition. Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Program managers would just go back to the same vendor they used last year. Why? Because it was easy. Or because they had a good relationship with the sales rep.
SPEAKER_00Which is terrible for the taxpayer. So if we translate that into modern business terms, CIC is essentially the ultimate anti-monopoly pro-ROI framework for the government.
SPEAKER_01That is the perfect way to look at it. It forces the world's largest buyer, the U.S. government, to behave like a smart, aggressive capitalist. Aaron Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_00I love that. Okay, so CIC is the law.
SPEAKER_01It is. Now, CI applies to almost every acquisition, but I should say the system isn't entirely blind to administrative reality.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, there are a few very specific structural exceptions where these strict formal SIKA rules don't apply at all. Usually this is because competition is already baked into the process somewhere else, or the action is just too small to warrant a massive administrative burden.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to spend $10,000 worth of a contracting officer's time to buy a $50 box of pens.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. That would be insane.
SPEAKER_00So what are these rare structural exceptions where psycha doesn't apply? And let's translate the jargon as we go for the listener.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Sure. First, we have contracts awarded using simplified acquisition procedures. In the federal rule book, the FAR, this is part 13.
SPEAKER_00Part 13, okay.
SPEAKER_01Think of this as the fast lane for smaller purchases. If you are buying commercial items under a certain dollar threshold, you don't need a massive formal source selection. You can just get a few quotes and buy it.
SPEAKER_00Makes sense. Keep it simple.
SPEAKER_01Right. Second, procedures expressly authorized by other statutes. If Congress writes a specific law overriding C8 for a specific program, the statute wins.
SPEAKER_00Because Congress holds the purse strings, so they make the rules.
SPEAKER_01You got it. Third, and this is a huge one for daily operations in scope contract modifications.
SPEAKER_00In scope, meaning what?
SPEAKER_01If you already competed a contract and you are modifying it within the original scope of that competition, you don't need to recompete it. The classic example is exercising a priced option.
SPEAKER_00Oh right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. If you awarded a contract for one year of IT support with four option years, and those option years were priced and evaluated during the original competition, you just exercise the option.
SPEAKER_00Because you already ran the race. The option was part of the original deal that everybody had a fair shot at winning.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You don't need to run a new race every year. Fourth, orders placed under existing requirements contracts or definite quantity contracts.
SPEAKER_00Basically buying off a menu you already set up.
SPEAKER_01Right. Fifth, specific task or delivery orders under FAIR PAR 16. That means if you have a massive overarching contract vehicle that was already competed, like a giant indefinite delivery indefinite quantity or IDIQ contract.
SPEAKER_00Right, those massive umbrella contracts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the individual task orders placed underneath that umbrella follow their own streamlined rules, not full psyche, because the umbrella itself was competed.
SPEAKER_00So the heavy lifting of the competition was done at the macro level.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Sixth, certain personal services contracts specifically for healthcare. If you need a specialized neurosurgeon at a VA hospital, the rules are understandably different.
SPEAKER_00You're not going to lowest bitter a brain surgeon.
SPEAKER_01Definitely not. And finally, follow-on production contracts for prototypes developed under other transactions authority.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Hold on, let's define that. Other transactions or OTAs? For our interns listening, an OTA is essentially the government's Silicon Valley bypass lane, right?
SPEAKER_01That's a great way to put it.
SPEAKER_00It allows the government to bypass a lot of traditional acquisition regulations to act more like a commercial tech investor, mostly to attract non-traditional defense contractors who would normally run away from government red tape.
SPEAKER_01That is a perfect summary. If a tech startup builds a successful prototype for the government under an OTA, the government can roll right into a production contract without a new full-blown CIK competition.
SPEAKER_00Which is huge.
SPEAKER_01It is a massive modern tool for acquiring cutting-edge technology quickly.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so barring those structural exceptions, CIA is the law of the land. And under CA, we have the three types of competition. Let's start with the gold standard. The first type, full and open competition.
SPEAKER_01Full and open competition means exactly what it sounds like. All responsible sources are permitted to compete. You cast the widest net possible.
SPEAKER_00How do you actually do that mechanically?
SPEAKER_01Well, the methods to achieve this include sealed bids, which is an older, highly structured process. You literally lock bids in a safe, open them all at once, and the lowest priced, technically acceptable bid wins. It focuses almost entirely on price.
SPEAKER_00Like a silent auction where lowest wins.
SPEAKER_01Basically. Then you have competitive proposals, which is much more common for complex buys. Here you might negotiate with the vendors and evaluate factors other than just price.
SPEAKER_00Like their technical approach, right, or their past performance, or how innovative their software architecture is.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It's a best value trade-off. There are also specific procedures for architect engineer selection, where you evaluate qualifications first before even talking about price. You have peer reviews for basic and applied research. And you have the use of GSA multiple award schedules.
SPEAKER_00Let's translate GSA schedules for the listener. The General Services Administration essentially acts as the government's Amazon Prime.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's spot on.
SPEAKER_00They negotiate massive government-wide contracts with thousands of vendors for everything from office furniture to cybersecurity services. Because GSA already negotiated the baseline pricing in terms, an agency can just go to the GSA schedule and run a streamlined competition among the vendors already on it.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And a very modern method of full and open is the commercial solutions opening, or CSO. This is an innovative way to acquire commercial tech through a peer review process of proposals rather than a rigid set of government specifications.
SPEAKER_00Now here's where I want to push back a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Oh, here we go.
SPEAKER_00Well, if full and open is the gold standard and CISC was designed to maximize competition, why wouldn't we use it 100% of the time? I mean, from a purely capitalistic taxpayer ROI standpoint, isn't casting the absolute widest net always the best business practice?
SPEAKER_01It seems like it would be.
SPEAKER_00Right. More competition equals better prices. If we are chasing ROI, why not let the market bleed itself out to give the taxpayer the lowest possible price every single single time?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell This raises an important question, and it is a trap that often catches new contracting professionals who are, you know, only looking at the spreadsheet in front of them.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Because it makes mathematical sense.
SPEAKER_01It does. Yes. Casting a wide net is fantastic for immediate price discovery. But immediate price discovery is not the only metric the government cares about.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What else is there?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Sometimes optimizing for the absolute lowest price today actively harms supply chain resilience or national security tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Oh. Okay, which brings up a fascinating mechanism. The second type of competition, we call it full and open competition after exclusion of sources. Yes. Now, on its face, that sounds like a complete oxymoron. How can a competition be full and open if you are actively excluding people from the table?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Think of it as a strategic exclusion. The business strategy here is all about sustaining a diverse supplier base over the long term. I like to think of it like a controlled forest burn.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell A controlled burn. Walk me through that.
SPEAKER_01So in forestry, if you let the brush build up, eventually you get a catastrophic wildfire that destroys the whole ecosystem. Right. So you intentionally set small controlled fires to clear out the underbrush, you sacrifice a few trees to save the forest. In contracting, sometimes you have a massive dominant player in the market, a giant prime contractor. If you always go strictly full and open, that dominant player might win every single time because they have the economies of scale. They can underbid everyone else.
SPEAKER_00So they just win all the time.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But what happens if that dominant player drives everyone else out of business and then they suddenly go bankrupt? Or they get hit by a catastrophic cyberattack, or a geopolitical event cuts off their raw materials.
SPEAKER_00You're left with nothing, no backup. The entire market is gone.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. The forest buttons down. So to ensure smaller, capable suppliers stay in business and maintain competitive tension for the future, the government might execute a controlled burn. They exclude the dominant player from a specific procurement.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So you are sacrificing a little bit of short-term pricing efficiency to buy long-term market health and supply chain resilience?
SPEAKER_01Yes. You are artificially keeping the backups alive.
SPEAKER_00That is fascinating.
SPEAKER_01This authority is used to ensure we have facilities available for national defense mobilization, to maintain essential research capabilities at universities, or to ensure the continuous availability of critical supplies. It also covers small business set asides.
SPEAKER_00Oh, right. Because when you restrict a competition only to small businesses, you are technically excluding large businesses.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But you do it to foster a vibrant small business industrial base. The same goes for the SBIR program, Small Business Innovation Research, which provides seed money for tech development.
SPEAKER_00I love this because it is pure risk management. Let's make this concrete. Let's really dig into the mechanics of how a contracting officer executes this with a deep dive case study.
SPEAKER_01Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00Let's look at the ACME Corp cryptographic chip scenario.
SPEAKER_01Oh, this is a great one. The stakes are high here.
SPEAKER_00Okay, here is the scenario for you listening. The Department of Defense relies solely on a company we'll call ACME Corp for a highly specialized, incredibly secure communication chip used in tactical radios.
SPEAKER_01Essential gear.
SPEAKER_00Right. ACME has been the sole supplier for 10 years. They are fantastic. They have a flawless track record, deliveries are always on time, and their prices are reasonable. But the contracting officer, let's call her Sarah, starts doing her market research and realizes that ACME's manufacturing infrastructure is aging.
SPEAKER_01That's a red flag.
SPEAKER_00And more concerning, they rely heavily on overseas suppliers for some of the rare earth minerals required to make the chip.
SPEAKER_01So Sarah has identified a classic single point of failure in a critical defense system.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. If ACME goes down, or if an adversary nation suddenly embarks on an embargo of those rare earth minerals, DOD secure communications go down, the tactical radios stop working. That is an unacceptable risk.
SPEAKER_01Totally unacceptable.
SPEAKER_00Now, the program manager, Colonel Davis, loves ACME. He says, just keep buying from them, they never miss a deadline. But Sarah, acting as the business advisor, decides the government must establish an alternative source. We need a backup factory.
SPEAKER_01Now Sarah cannot just casually decide to hand a multimillion dollar contract to a random competitor to build a new factory. Bypassing the dominant player requires rigorous, legally bulletproof documentation.
SPEAKER_00Because she's excluding acme.
SPEAKER_01Right. Specifically, Sarah has to write a determination and findings or a DNF. And this isn't a quick two-page memo. A DNF for exclusion of sources is a massive analytical document.
SPEAKER_00Because you have to prove why you are actively manipulating the market.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Sarah has to meticulously document the acquisition history. She has to lay out the past ten years of contracts with ACME, the prices, the quantities, the delivery timelines. She has to explain the technical complexity of the cryptographic chip, why it is so difficult to manufacture, and why only ACME has been able to do it successfully so far.
SPEAKER_00And she can't just look at today, right? She has to project the government's needs five to ten years out based on anticipated system upgrades. She has to prove that the future demand justifies the cost of standing up a second source.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And here is a critical mechanical nuance in this scenario: total versus partial exclusion.
SPEAKER_00Okay, what's the difference?
SPEAKER_01Sarah isn't doing a total exclusion to eliminate acme entirely. We still desperately need ACME's chips today. Instead, Sarah executes a partial exclusion. She excludes ACME from a portion of the upcoming requirement, say 30% of the total volume, in order to award that specific 30% to a new source. She is essentially paying to incubate a backup supplier while ACME handles the bulk of the immediate need.
SPEAKER_00But she has to be incredibly careful here, right? She has to calculate the potential effect on ACME. If Sarah takes 30% of their business away to give to a new guy, will that 30% drop in revenue bankrupt ACME?
SPEAKER_01That is the exact risk.
SPEAKER_00Because if we bankrupt our main reliable supplier just to build a backup, we've entirely defeated the purpose. We just created the crisis we were trying to avoid.
SPEAKER_01That is the exact impact assessment required in the DNF. It requires deep financial market research and potentially even direct engagement with ACME's leadership through request for information or RFIs. Sarah has to calculate the ROI, the return on investment.
SPEAKER_00What's the formula there?
SPEAKER_01She has to compare the long-term overall cost to the taxpayer of starting up a new facility, certifying a new production line, and managing a second source against the existential strategic cost of a supply chain disruption.
SPEAKER_00It's an insurance policy. It might cost the government $10 million more over the next five years to stand up that second factory, but if the lack of secure comms could compromise a major military operation, that $10 million is a massive bargain.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It is high-level strategic business forecasting.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that is the second type of competition. Now we need to pivot to the third type, which is where things get really intense. This is where we truly deviate from the standard path. We are talking about other than full and open competition.
SPEAKER_01This is the most complex category. It is the one that gets the most scrutiny from the Inspector General, from auditors, from Congress, and from the public. When you operate in this space, your paperwork has to be flawless.
SPEAKER_00Before we get into the specific reasons you can use this, we need to establish the golden rule of exceptions, the absolute unbending hard line in federal contracting.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes. The hard line is this you can never justify bypassing competition due to a lack of advanced planning by the requiring activity or due to concerns about expiring funds.
SPEAKER_00Oh man. We have to talk about the classic end of year, use it or lose it, spending panic. Anyone who has spent 10 minutes in government knows about September.
SPEAKER_01It is a massive cultural phenomenon in government. It's pure chaos.
SPEAKER_00Let's set the scene for the listener. It is September 25th. The federal fiscal year ends at midnight on September 30th. A commander realizes they have two million dollars left in their budget. If they don't spend it, it goes back to the Treasury. And worse, Congress might cut their budget next year because they quote unquote didn't need the money.
SPEAKER_01Which happens all the time.
SPEAKER_00So the commander runs down to the contracting officer's desk, slams a requirement for a massive software upgrade down, and says, quick, we have five days. Just sole source this to Vendor X so the money doesn't expire. What happens?
SPEAKER_01The contracting officer has to look at a furious commander and say, no, and that is incredibly difficult to do.
SPEAKER_00I can imagine.
SPEAKER_01But the law is clear. Poor planning by the program office does not constitute an emergency. Expiring funds do not give you the right to bypass SICA. The FEO cannot write a justification that says we had to sole source this because we forgot to start the paperwork in March.
SPEAKER_00The pressure on the COs during September is immense. They are accused of holding up the mission, of being bureaucratic roadblocks, but they are literally protecting the commander from committing a federal procurement violation.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Exactly. They're keeping them out of jail, basically. To use any of the legitimate exceptions, the CO has to write a JA, a justification, and approval document. And even when you use a legitimate exception, the rule book says you must still solicit offers from as many potential sources as is practicable under the circumstances.
SPEAKER_00I want to highlight that. Because when people hear other than full and open, they automatically assume it means a sole source contract handed to a pre-selected vendor in a dark room.
SPEAKER_01That is a very common misconception. Other than full and open does not automatically mean sole source. It means you are limiting competition, but you still must try to get as much competitive tension as the situation allows. If you can't get 50 bids, try to get three. If you can't get three, try to get two.
SPEAKER_00Here's where it gets really interesting. There are seven specific statutory exceptions under CSEA where you can legally use other than full and open. In the contracting world, these are the famous big seven.
SPEAKER_01The big seven.
SPEAKER_00Now we aren't just going to read a list. We are going to look at these as solutions to specific narrative problems that CEOs face every day. Let's start with the first grouping. The practical realities. What happens when there is literally only one option? Exception one.
SPEAKER_01Exception one is formally titled Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements.
SPEAKER_00The concept is conceptually simple. There is only one vendor on Earth who can meet the agency's needs, but proving that is incredibly difficult.
SPEAKER_01Because minimum needs is the operative phrase. Let's look at a scenario. We will call it SpectroTech. A government research lab at the Department of Energy is doing groundbreaking work on advanced nuclear reactors.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01The lead scientist comes to the CO and says, I need a highly specialized mass spectrometer for a unique type of isotopic. Analysis. And I want the Spectrotech 5000.
SPEAKER_00So the CEO can't just take the scientists' word for it. They can't just say, okay, you're the scientist, Spectrotech it is.
SPEAKER_01No. The CEO has to conduct market research. They might post a sources sought notice on the government point of entry website, essentially asking industry, hey, we need a machine that can do X, Y, and Z, who can build this.
SPEAKER_00Just putting feelers out there.
SPEAKER_01Right. If thorough market research reveals that only one company, Spectrotech Inc., holds the patents and manufactures an instrument capable of this specific baseline analysis, then you have grounds for exception one.
SPEAKER_00So the documentation for this JA has to be scientifically bulletproof. You have to prove that no other machine works. You can't just say SpectroTech has the best customer service or SpectroTech is the fastest.
SPEAKER_01No, absolutely not. You have to say SpectroTech is the only instrument that meets the minimum scientific requirements to execute the mission.
SPEAKER_00And you also have to assess their responsibility, meaning they have the financial resources, the integrity, and the physical capability to actually deliver the machine. Okay, but what about a situation where it's not a single scientific instrument, but a massive multi-billion dollar ongoing program? Let's talk about the F-35 radar scenario.
SPEAKER_01This is a perfect example of how Exception One scales. Say the Air Force needs a follow-on contract to upgrade the sophisticated radar system on a fleet of fighter jets. Let's say Radar Systems Corps, or RSC, spent the last 10 years developing and manufacturing the original radar.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so they're entrenched.
SPEAKER_01Deeply entrenched. Technically, if you gave another massive aerospace company five years and a billion dollars, they could probably figure out how to build a replacement radar.
SPEAKER_00Right. It's not that RSC is the only company with smart engineers, but giving it to a new vendor would require a massive redesign, complete retesting of the aircraft's avionics, and total integration overhaul.
SPEAKER_01The Fieline E rulebook accounts for this reality. You can use exception one if switching vendors for a highly specialized piece of equipment would cause substantial duplication of cost to the government that is not expected to be recovered through competition. Or if it would cause unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency's requirements.
SPEAKER_00How does a CEO physically adjudicate that? How do you prove substantial duplication of cost?
SPEAKER_01It requires intense math. The CEO, working with the engineers, has to calculate the exact sunk costs. How many engineering hours would a new vendor need just to catch up to RSC's baseline knowledge? What is the cost of renting testing facilities for two years to recertify the new radar?
SPEAKER_00That sounds incredibly expensive.
SPEAKER_01It is. If you run a competition, maybe the new vendor's unit price is 10% cheaper. But if the upfront redesign cost is $500 million, you will never recover that savings.
SPEAKER_00And you certainly can't ground a fleet of fire jets for five years while you wait for a new vendor to figure it out. That covers the unacceptable delay portion.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You quantify those specific costs and delays in the JNA to legally justify staying with RSC. But we have to talk about the classic pitfall of exception one.
SPEAKER_00Oh, brand name bias. I will play the devil's advocate here because this happens in the corporate world every day, and it definitely happens in government. Let's say I am an executive at a federal agency. I call you, the CEO, into my office. I say, listen, we need a thousand new laptops for the field agents. I really, really like the user interface of Brand X laptops. My whole team uses Brand X at home. It syncs with my phone. The design is sleek. I want you to buy us brand X. Just use exception one.
SPEAKER_01And as the CEO, I have to take a deep breath. Look at the executive and strictly shut that down. A preference for a brand or being familiar with the user interface is flatly illegal under CO as a justification for restricting competition.
SPEAKER_00Even if the executive insists it will make the team more productive.
SPEAKER_01Even then. Unless you can prove that Brand X has unique, mission-critical technical features that are demonstrably unavailable on any other laptop in the entire global market, and that those specific features are absolutely essential to the agency's core mission, not just a nice-to-have convenience, you cannot use exception one.
SPEAKER_00So no luxury laptops just because the boss likes them.
SPEAKER_01Right. Now, if you want to use brand name or equal in your solicitation, that is fine because it allows competitors who make similar laptops to bid. But saying brand name only requires a rigorous JNA proving absolute technical necessity.
SPEAKER_00It is the difference between wanting a luxury car and needing a tractor.
SPEAKER_01Good analogy.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that is the only one reality. But what happens when the problem isn't a lack of vendors, but a lack of time. Let's move to exception two: unusual and compelling urgency. I call this the loss of life or limb exception.
SPEAKER_01That is the perfect mental model. The statute specifically says you can use this exception when the government would be seriously injured, financially or otherwise, if you took the time to run a normal, formal competition.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell We are talking about true emergencies. A category five hurricane devastates a coastal base. The roof is ripped off the hospital. You need emergency generators, potable water, and structural bracing right now. You literally cannot post a 30-day public solicitation while the hospital is flooding.
SPEAKER_01That is the textbook use case. Or consider a cyber context. An agency detects an imminent, highly targeted cyberattack from a nation-state actor on critical infrastructure. The network is going to collapse in hours. You have to hire a specialized incident response firm immediately.
SPEAKER_00But earlier you said that even with an exception, you have to get as much competition as practicable. How does that work in a hurricane?
SPEAKER_01Practicable scales to the emergency. In a hurricane, the CEO might literally be standing in a flooded parking lot with a satellite phone. They might call three local heavy equipment companies they know of, ask who has generators ready to load on a truck today, and give the contract to the first one who says yes. You don't just call your buddy's company and hand them a blank check. You still make the effort to find the best immediate option.
SPEAKER_00Now, let me throw a wrench in this. Let's say a critical IT system at a major agency crashes on a Tuesday morning. The whole agency is locked out. Nobody can work. It is an absolute crisis. But upon investigation, the root cause is that the IT department simply forgot to renew a critical database software license despite getting automated warning emails for the last six months. Can the CEO use Exception 2 to buy the license immediately because the system is down today?
SPEAKER_01No. That goes right back to the golden rule we discussed earlier. That is a lack of advanced planning. The emergency is entirely self-inflicted by negligence.
SPEAKER_00But wait, the agency's paralyzed. The government is losing millions of dollars in lost productivity every hour. Doesn't that count as being seriously injured?
SPEAKER_01The injury is real, but the authority to bypass CIA is invalidated by the cause. Now, realistically, the CO has to do something to get the lights back on. They might have to execute an emergency action, but they're going to have a brutal time getting an exception to JNA approved through legal review if the root cause was simple negligence. They might have to elevate it to the head of the contracting activity. And the IT director is going to have to explain to a very angry general or executive director why they caused a federal procurement crisis. You have to distinguish between genuine, unpredictable emergencies and administrative incompetence.
SPEAKER_00And there is a strict time limit on these urgency contracts to prevent abuse, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Because you are bypassing normal competitive rules in a state of panic, contracts awarded under Exception 2 are strictly limited to the minimum time needed to fix the immediate emergency and buy you enough time to run a proper, full competition for a long-term solution.
SPEAKER_00So no permanent fixes under an emergency action.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. By law, the period of performance for an urgency contract, including all options, cannot exceed one year unless the head of the agency officially determines that exceptional circumstances apply. You cannot use a hurricane as an excuse to sign a five-year sole source contract for facility maintenance. That makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's pivot to the third grouping. This is about strategic preservation. Exception three. Industrial mobilization, engineering, developmental, or research capability, or expert services. That is a massive mouthful. I like to think of this as a strategic subsidy.
SPEAKER_01If we connect this to the bigger picture, this exception exists because Congress recognizes that free market forces do not always align with long-term national security needs. Sometimes the invisible hand of the market wants to crush a capability that the military desperately needs to keep alive.
SPEAKER_00Let's use a scenario. They are a small family-owned manufacturing plant in Ohio. Due to globalization, they happen to be the absolute sole remaining domestic producer of a highly specific forged titanium aircraft part used in legacy bombers.
SPEAKER_01Okay, critical part.
SPEAKER_00Right. Now, if the government ran a full and open competition for these parts, a massive, heavily subsidized foreign supplier could easily underbid them. Precision Partsco would lose the contract and go bankrupt.
SPEAKER_01And in a purely capitalist system, you would let them go bankrupt. But the government needs them to stay alive. If we enter a major global conflict and our international supply chains are severed, where shipping lanes are blockaded, we absolutely must have that domestic forging capability. We cannot fight a war without those titanium parts.
SPEAKER_00So under exception three, we can intentionally restrict competition and award a sole source contract to Precision Parts Company, specifically to maintain them for industrial mobilization.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It is a strategic calculation. It is vastly cheaper to keep that Ohio factory afloat with targeted continuous contracts over 20 years than it is to let them die, lose all that specialized workforce knowledge, and then try to rebuild an entire domestic titanium forging base from scratch in the middle of World War III.
SPEAKER_00Wow, it completely flips the normal ROI calculation on its head. And this applies to research capabilities too, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Imagine preserving a highly specialized university laboratory that studies chemical weapons defense. If their primary grant funding is expiring, the research team is going to disperse to the private sector. You lose a decade of irreplaceable institutional knowledge overnight.
SPEAKER_00That's terrifying.
SPEAKER_01It is. The government can use exception three to award a targeted contract just to keep the lights on, the centrifuges spinning, and that specific team of scientists together, because their capability is essential to national defense.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned expert services in that mouthful of a title. How does that fit in?
SPEAKER_01That covers hiring highly specialized expert witnesses or neutral evaluators for litigation. Let's say the government is embroiled in a massive multi-billion dollar intellectual property dispute with a major tech conglomerate. The government needs the absolute best expert witness in the world on microchip architecture. Let's call him Dr. X.
SPEAKER_00Okay, Dr. X.
SPEAKER_01You do not go to a government website and run a lowest price technically acceptable competition for your star witness. You use exception three to hire Dr. X directly, because securing his specific expertise is vital for the litigation.
SPEAKER_00Okay, that covers the practical, the urgent, and the strategic. Let's move into our fourth grouping: sovereignty and statutes. These are exceptions four and five. Exception four is international agreement. Simply put, this is when foreign money or foreign laws dictate the rules.
SPEAKER_01This happens frequently in foreign military sales, or FMS. A foreign allied government wants to buy U.S. military equipment, and they are routing their money through the U.S. acquisition system to handle the purchase. But in their official diplomatic letter of offer and acceptance, they explicitly demand that the contract must go to a specific firm in their own country, or a specific U.S. firm they prefer.
SPEAKER_00It is their money, so they get to call the shots.
SPEAKER_01Precisely. Or consider a situation where a U.S. acquisition is taking place physically within the sovereign territory of another country, and an international treaty explicitly dictates who can be hired or what companies must be used.
SPEAKER_00Now, from a paperwork perspective, for the con CEO, this one is entirely unique. There's a major workflow difference here compared to the other exceptions.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and CEOs love this. For exception four, no justification and approval is required. Think about it logically. A JNA is designed for a U.S. official to justify why they made a decision to restrict competition. But under exception four, the U.S. government isn't making the restrictive decision. The international treaty or the foreign government's money is.
SPEAKER_00So what paperwork do they do instead? Do they just do nothing?
SPEAKER_01It instead of a JNA, the CO writes an international agreement competitive restriction document, or an IACR. It's a much more streamlined document. It simply states the facts. We are restricting competition because this sovereign treaty or this letter of offer and acceptance legally forces us to. The CO signs it, physically attaches the treaty or the diplomatic letter as proof, and puts it in the contract file. It is a statement of fact, not a justification of strategy.
SPEAKER_00That makes total sense. You don't need to justify a decision that was made by a foreign head of state. All right, exception five. Authorized or required by statute. This is when the U.S. Congress literally wrote a law saying you have to buy from someone specific.
SPEAKER_01To understand this, we need to split it into two distinct buckets, mandatory and authorized. Let's start with mandatory. This means the statute says the agency shall purchase from a specific source. The biggest example is 18 USC 4124, which requires federal agencies to purchase certain items from Unicor, which is the trade name for federal prison industries.
SPEAKER_00So if an agency needs office furniture and Unicor manufactures it and it meets the agency's needs, they have to buy it from the prison system.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It is a statutory mandate to support that specific federal program. No JNA is needed because Congress already made the decision.
SPEAKER_00The other bucket is authorized. This means the statute allows the agency to sole source, but doesn't force them to. And the business application here is incredible. If a CEO has a requirement and they find an 8 firm that is perfectly capable of doing the work, they can just award it. It cuts months off the procurement timeline and actively injects capital into disadvantaged businesses. But there is a massive legal nuance to the 8A rule based on the dollar value of the contract.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there is a threshold. If you are soul sourcing an 8A contract, up to $20 million, you rely entirely on that statutory authority. You do not need a formal JNA. It is fully authorized.
SPEAKER_00But what if it's bigger?
SPEAKER_01Well, if that 8A sole source contract is huge, specifically, if it crosses $100 million, the rules shift. At that point, Congress decided that the dollar value is simply too high to bypass competition without scrutiny. So a formal JNA is suddenly required. Even though it's an 8A firm, you have to formally justify why an award of that magnitude shouldn't be competed among all 8A firms.
SPEAKER_00That's a good safeguard. And there is one more fun, very relatable example under exception five. It is the commissary resale exception.
SPEAKER_01Right. The military runs commissaries, which are essentially giant grocery stores on base for service members and their families. They operate like commercial supermarkets. Now, if the customers demand Coca-Cola, the commissary needs to buy Coca-Cola to put on the shelves.
SPEAKER_00You can't run a full and open competition for brown carbonated high fructose corn syrup water and end up stocking the shelves with generic government cola that no one wants to buy.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. The commissary would go out of business. So the statute explicitly authorizes the sole source purchasing of brand name commercial products specifically for resale, based entirely on customer preference and market demand. You don't need a JA to buy Coke or Pepsi for the commissary.
SPEAKER_00I love that. The Coca-Cola exception. It proves the system isn't totally devoid of common sense. Okay, let's bring it home with our final grouping: the shadows and the god mode. Exceptions six and seven. Let's start with exception six, national security. Now, my immediate assumption as a layman is that this simply means the contract itself is classified. If you are building a secret spy satellite, you use exception six.
SPEAKER_01And that is a very common, very dangerous misconception that I have to sharply correct whenever I train new COs. Exception six is not simply about the contract being classified. In fact, a huge percentage of classified contracts are competed using full and open procedures among a pool of cleared vendors. Exception six is solely and explicitly used when the act of disclosing the agency's needs would compromise national security.
SPEAKER_00Ah, I see. It is the difference between keeping the project a secret and keeping the requirement a secret.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Let's look at a scenario. Say a federal intelligence agency needs a highly specialized piece of covert audio surveillance technology for a specific ongoing counter-espionage operation.
SPEAKER_00Like real spy stuff.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. If the COE publicly posts a solicitation on a government website saying, we are looking to buy 12 highly miniaturized listening devices capable of transmitting through three feet of solid concrete. You have just told foreign intelligence agencies exactly what your capabilities are or your technical limitations are, and potentially tipped off the target that you are coming for them.
SPEAKER_00Or think about cyber warfare. If the government advertises that they want to buy a tool to fight a very specific newly discovered malware variant, the creators of the malware will just read the solicitation and immediately rewrite their virus to evade whatever tool you buy.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. In those cases, the mere act of disclosing the need compromises the security of the United States. That is when exception six applies. You restrict the competition to a handful of highly trusted vendors, or even just one, without public disclosure. And on the flip side, conversely, consider a routine IT security upgrade inside a top secret classified building. Let's say you are buying new secure servers for a CIF. Yes, the work is classified. The technicians need top secret clearances. But publicly stating the government needs to buy secure computer servers does not compromise national security. You must still solicit bids from a pool of pre-approved, cleared vendors and run a competition. You cannot use exception six just because the servers are going into a secret room.
SPEAKER_00Okay, that distinction is incredibly clear. Which brings us to the final exception. Exception seven, public interest, the absolute rarest exception in the book. This is what we referenced at the very beginning of the show. The God mode of contracting.
SPEAKER_01It truly is God mode. Exception seven is the ultimate safety valve. It is for when full and open competition is simply not in the public interest. But the situation doesn't cleanly fit into any of the other six specific exceptions. Because it is so incredibly broad, the legal restrictions on using it are the most severe in the entire FAR.
SPEAKER_00We are talking highest levels of government authority.
SPEAKER_01The authority cannot be delegated down the chain of command. The written determination and finding must be personally signed by the head of the agency. For the Department of Defense, that means the Secretary of Defense personally signs the document. For the Department of Homeland Security, the Secretary of DHS signs it. Furthermore, you must notify the United States Congress in writing 30 days before you award the contract.
SPEAKER_00You do not use this to buy office supplies or a new radar. Give me a scenario where a cabinet secretary steps in and uses God mode.
SPEAKER_01They are usually highly theoretical, world-altering scenarios. It goes back to your intro. Imagine an imminent cascading collapse of a major U.S. financial institution that underwrites critical defense infrastructure. To prevent a catastrophic depression, the Secretary of Defense or the Treasury Secretary determines that a swift, targeted, multi-billion dollar bailout or restructuring contract with the specific financial entity is required immediately. Running a normal competition would take six months, and the economy would be in ashes in six days.
SPEAKER_00Or a catastrophic global pandemic. Let's say a novel, highly lethal virus is shutting down the globe. A specific pharmaceutical company develops the absolute only viable FDA-approved vaccine. You do not spend three months running a source selection for alternative generic treatments while thousands of people are dying every day. The secretary could invoke Exception 7 to sole source a massive $50 billion production and distribution contract instantly, citing the supreme public interest of global public health. So, what does this all mean? When you look at exception seven, it really proves something fundamental about the system. We spend all this time talking about how rigid Psyche is, but Exception 7 proves that the ultimate overriding goal of the US government is to protect the nation and the public above all else. The rules are there to serve the public interest. The public interest is not there to serve the rules.
SPEAKER_01That is exactly right. When the system faces an existential threat, the compass points entirely to the public good.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we have covered the baseline of SAGE, the strategic exclusions, and the deep dive into the big seven exceptions. Let's move to our final section. Covering your assets. This is the messy reality of paperwork, oversight, and what happens when things go wrong. We've mentioned the JNA, the justification and approval a lot. Walk a new intern through the actual mechanical life cycle of a JNA. How does this thing actually get approved?
SPEAKER_01A JA is not just a form you fill out on a Friday afternoon and file away. It is a rigorous, highly scrutinized, legally binding document. First, the contracting officer does not do it alone. The law requires certification of accuracy and completeness by the technical and requirements personnel.
SPEAKER_00So the engineers have to put their money where their mouth is.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. If the program manager or the lead scientist insists only Spectre Tech makes this machine, they have to sign their name to that statement under penalty of federal law. They own the technical justification. The CO owns the contracting methodology and the market research.
SPEAKER_00Then what? Does the CO just sign it an award?
SPEAKER_01Heavens no. It requires formal legal review, typically for any action exceeding the CO's individual warrant limit. The agency's legal counsel will scrub the JNA word for word to ensure the statutory authority is cited correctly, that the technical logic holds up to scrutiny, and that there are no contradictions. They are looking for holes that a protesting competitor could exploit in court.
SPEAKER_00And what happens if the project changes? Let's say you get a JNA approved by legal and your boss to sole source a $5 million software upgrade, but halfway through negotiations with the vendor, the program manager comes in and says, Oh, we also need them to build a new database. Suddenly the requirements creep and it is a $15 million upgrade.
SPEAKER_01You cannot just ride the original JNA. A JNA is bound by scope and dollar value. If the fundamental scope of the work changes, or if the dollar value jumps significantly, specifically if it exceeds the approval authority of the person who originally signed it, or if it increases by more than 25%, the GO must stop everything. You must write and submit an amended JNA or an entirely new JNA and run it through the entire approval process again. You have to re-justify why the new scope still requires restricted competition.
SPEAKER_00Now, here is an irony I want to highlight. We spend all this time talking about exceptions to competition, which effectively means we are hiding these contracts from the open market. But there is a massive public transparency requirement on the back end of all this, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Yes. The government wants the public, and specifically industry, to know exactly why we didn't compete something. With few obvious exceptions for classified national security, approved GNAs must be made publicly available online on the government-wide point of entry. Usually this must happen within 14 days after the contract is awarded.
SPEAKER_00So you award the sole source contract, and then two weeks later, you post your homework on the internet for everyone to see.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. If you use the urgency exception, you get 30 days to post it because they assume you're busy fighting a fire. But once posted, the JNA must stay up for a minimum of 30 days for anyone angry competitors, journalists, congressional watchdog groups to read.
SPEAKER_00Talk about the ultimate deterrent for lazy paperwork. You know your logical justification is going to be posted on the internet for the exact competitors you excluded to read. If your logic is weak, they will protest the award and you will be dragged into the government accountability office to defend it.
SPEAKER_01It absolutely enforces discipline. Knowing your document will be public changes how you write it. Now, we also need to talk about what happens when the system fails, specifically when poor planning does occur, usually with service contracts.
SPEAKER_00Ah, yes, the dreaded bridge action.
SPEAKER_01Right. Let's look at a very common, highly stressful reality. Let's say you have a contract for physical security guards at a major military base. The contract expires at midnight on December 31st. It is November 15th, and the program office hasn't even given you the finalized requirements package to start competing the new five-year contract.
SPEAKER_00A competition takes months. You are out of time. But you can't just let the base go unguarded on New Year's Day. You have a gap.
SPEAKER_01You have a critical gap. So the KeO is forced to do a bridge action to keep the lights on. A bridge action is a short-term, non-competitive extension to the current incumbent vendor just to buy enough time to run the real competition. But the acquisition system absolutely hates this.
SPEAKER_00The system despises it because it is inherently anti-competitive. It usually rewards the incumbent vendor with more money without them having to fight for it, and it is almost always the result of bureaucratic sluggishness.
SPEAKER_01So to combat this, the Department of Defense created a tracking system. When a CEO is forced to execute a bridge action due to inadequate planning, it must be officially logged into a specific database called the DAF Bridge Action Reporting Tool, or BART.
SPEAKER_00BART. It sounds like a punishment. Go log your failure in BART.
SPEAKER_01It kind of is. BART tracks these bridge actions to essentially shame and highlight poor planning at the organizational level. It gives senior leadership in Congress direct visibility into which units or commands are chronically failing to plan, constantly running out of time, and forcing their COs into non-competitive bridge contracts. It is an accountability tool.
SPEAKER_00And who is looking at BART? Who are the internal watchdogs making sure we don't abuse these exceptions and bridge actions?
SPEAKER_01That would be the competition and commercial advocates, or CCAs. By law, every executive agency and procuring activity must designate a high-level advocate for competition.
SPEAKER_00These are the internal champions of SECA. They are the defenders of the compass.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Their entire job description is to promote commercial products, enforce full and open competition, and challenge barriers. Let me tell you how they mechanically operate. A program manager might write a highly detailed specification for a new fleet of government trucks. The spec says the truck must have a very specific wheelbase, a highly unique payload capacity, and a proprietary towing package.
SPEAKER_00And magically, when you look at the market, only a Ford F-150 meets that exact, oddly specific set of criteria.
SPEAKER_01Right. It is a backdoor sole source. The CCA's job is to read that specification, recognize the trap, and go into a meeting with the program manager, often a high-ranking officer, and say, Why is this specification so unnecessarily restrictive? Does the truck absolutely need a 142.5-inch wheelbase to carry boxes, or would a Chevy or a Dodge work just as well? Rewrite your specs to focus on the performance you need, not the design you want. They actively fight internal bureaucracy to keep the market open.
SPEAKER_00They are the vital counterbalance to the program office that just wants to hit the easy button and buy what they bought last time.
SPEAKER_01Precisely. They ensure the compass stays pointed toward competition, even when the wind is blowing hard the other way.
SPEAKER_00Okay, we have covered a massive amount of ground today. Let's do an executive summary for our learner out there, but let's look at the narrative arc.
SPEAKER_01Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00We started with the bedrock. CAK is the rule, it is our anti-monopoly framework. Full and open is the baseline gold standard. But we learn that sometimes full and open after exclusion is a necessary tactical maneuver, a controlled forest burn to protect our long-term supplier diversity and keep backup factories alive.
SPEAKER_01That's a great recap of the first half.
SPEAKER_00And when we truly have to deviate into the shadows, we have the big seven exceptions. But they aren't just checkboxes. They are solutions to intense real-world problems. Whether you are dealing with the scientific reality of only one responsible source, the terrifying pressure of unusual and compelling urgency, the need for industrial mobilization, the rigid demands of international agreements or statutes, the quiet necessity of national security, or the absolute god mode of the public interest, each scenario requires massive, flawless documentation.
SPEAKER_01And if there is one final call to action for you, the listener, whether you are that copper cap intern trying to make sense of your first FR part, or that seasoned CEO staring down an angry commander in September, it is this. Know your why. Do not just hunt through the regulations to pick a statutory exception that seems convenient to get the work off your desk. You have to prioritize the long-term health of the industrial base. You have to do the grueling market research, and you must document your logical reasoning flawlessly because your name and the integrity of the U.S. procurement system is permanently stamped on that JNA.
SPEAKER_00Here is a final unscripted thought to ponder as we wrap up. We have spent an hour talking about how we've built this massive, incredibly rigorous, highly documented framework in SECA to ensure fairness, to prevent favoritism, and to protect the taxpayer. Right. But as we move into this era of hyper-fast technological evolution where private sector monopolies and artificial intelligence and commercial aerospace and quantum computing are moving infinitely faster than government bureaucracy, will the rigid rules of CISA be able to adapt? When a tech startup can invent a new capability in three months and the government takes two years just to run a full and open competition, will we find ourselves constantly relying on the unusual and compelling urgency exception just to keep pace with the future?
SPEAKER_01That is the defining tension of modern government acquisition. We are trying to regulate the future with a rule book written in 1984.
SPEAKER_00It really is. You know, we started this deep drive talking about how contracting isn't a clean x-ray. You don't just point to a broken bone, it's murky, it's muddy waters. But hopefully, after walking through the mechanics of the competition compass, the topography of that mud makes a little more sense. The bones of the system are there, you just have to know how to read the shadows and defend your decisions. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. And take these nuggets of insight and a whole lot of confidence into your next contracting strategy meeting.