Learn government contracting the non-boring way

Sit down at the table, keep both hands where everyone can see them.

Let a wise contracting mentor known as the Farfather walk you through what to do when contractor performance starts to slip, in this video-driven course on managing bad contractor performance.

Built around the family of FAR clauses that protect taxpayer dollars, the course follows a young learner named Michael through every tool a COR or CO needs:

• CPARS ratings under FAR 42.11
• The excusable delays clause when the government is at fault
• Invoice rejection for non-conforming work
• Cure and show cause notices
• The four termination paths — convenience, default, no-cost settlement, and commercial cause

Learn:

• Why some performance problems are actually the government's responsibility
• How to escalate fairly when the fault sits with the contractor
• Which termination clause fits which situation

Leave equipped to:

• Document performance honestly
• Apply the right FAR clause at the right moment
• Run a kickoff meeting that prevents these problems from arising in the first place

All while keeping:

• Your awards clean
• Your taxpayers protected
• (Figuratively, of course) no one sleeping with the fishes

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

Two hosts, one new pathway, and a running argument over whether it's pronounced "swoop" or "swap."

This video-based course explains the Software Acquisition Pathway (DoDI 5000.87), the lane the DoD built in 2020 to buy and build software before the technology it's chasing goes obsolete.

It starts with the distinction most contracting talk skips:

• Little-a acquisition is making the deal
• Big-A acquisition is the whole life cycle around it

From there it shows why the old milestone process — the infamous spaghetti chart with its JCIDS boards and milestones A through C — can't field AI at the speed AI actually moves.

The hosts keep it plain.

Planning is meant to be short, so you:

• Kick the software out of the nest early
• Get a first iteration in front of the end user
• Keep going if it works, or pivot if it doesn't

You'll see how a Commercial Solutions Opening and an Other Transaction fit together to prototype, produce, and sustain.

And why good AI never reaches a finish line: a model that stops learning starts dying.

By the end, you'll be able to:

• Tell big-A work from little-a
• Judge when the Software Acquisition Pathway fits and when it doesn't
• Design a software or AI effort that delivers early, iterates, and keeps the exits open

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.