For Program Offices & Requirers

Customer Education

Interactive tools and plain-language guides to help customers build better requirements before they reach the contracting officer.

Why This Exists

Better Requirements In, Better Contracts Out

Most delays and rework in contracting trace back to the requirements package. These tools meet customers where they are — walking them through what a good package looks like, what the CO needs, and why.

Requirement Package Academy

Short customer-facing lessons that map directly to the gaps Preflight finds. Live cards reuse KTHQ tools and CO trainings where they already fit.

Live
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Start Here · Package Basics
Requirements Package 101

What the CO needs before the acquisition can move. Could be a little, could be a lot — depends on what you're buying. Covers the spectrum from micro-purchases to major systems and lists everything that could go in the file.

Live
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Start Here · Better Requirements
Describe the Need, Not the Solution

Helps customers separate outcomes, constraints, minimum requirements, preferences, and accidental brand-name lock-in.

Live
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Start Here · Schedule
Need Date vs. Acquisition Timeline

Three different dates that look the same, what you can do to compress the timeline, when the schedule genuinely flexes for real emergencies, and how to track your own contracts so the next buy isn't a panic.

Live
Define · Inspection
Acceptance Criteria: What Does Done Mean?

How to define measurable "done" for products, services, and construction. Covers inspection vs. acceptance, the delayed-install trap, how acceptance gets documented (including WAWF for DoD), and what happens when something fails.

Live
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Define · Deliverables
Deliverables That Do Not Create Chaos

How to define reports, meetings, data, and closeout artifacts so they survive contact with reality. Includes a deeper dive on CDRLs — codes you'll actually see, common DIDs, distribution statements, and the data-rights clauses that decide what the Government can do with the data later.

Live
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Define · Services
Services Package 101: PWS, QASP, COR

Use the PWS training as the deeper dive on outcomes, tasks, standards, surveillance, and why services packages need an administration plan before award.

Live
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Define · Evaluation
Evaluation Factors for Customers

How to turn "best value" into specific questions, useful evidence, and fair ways to compare contractors. Includes a menu of common factors, the evaluator vocabulary you'll hear if you serve on a team, and the source-selection-sensitivity rules that come with the seat.

Live
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Define · Brand Name
Brand Name & Salient Characteristics

Explains how to support brand-name or brand-name-or-equal needs with minimum characteristics, market facts, and a justification story that survives review.

Live
💰
Research · Estimate
IGCE 101 for Requiring Activities

An estimate is just market research with a number on it. Covers what the FAR actually requires (less than you think), why the IGE matters more when competition is weak, and the bad-optics trap of writing one after the proposals come back.

Live
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Research · Customer Inputs
Market Research: The Customer's Half

Use the existing market research training to gather prior buys, known vendors, quotes, capability statements, constraints, and incumbent context.

Live
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Research · Funding
Funding Basics for Customers

A plain-language entry point for fund type, fiscal year posture, bona fide need, crossing fiscal years, and why funding timing changes acquisition timing.

Live
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Research · Restricted Source
Only One Vendor Can Do It: Evidence Kit

Shows what evidence helps a single-source or brand-name claim and what statements collapse when the CO, legal, or competition advocate reads the file.

Live
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Research · Recompete
Recompetes Are Not Copy/Paste

The old file is a map, not a template. Covers what probably changed, how to use incumbent performance as evidence, the package sections that need fresh review, the customer's side of transition, and the bridge-contract trap.

Live
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Risk · Services
Personal vs. Non-Personal Services

A customer-friendly way to spot supervision, tasking, workspace, and control patterns that can turn a services contract into a legal problem.

Live
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Risk · COR
COR Nomination Before Award

Use contract-specific COR training to help customers understand who will inspect performance, what the COR owns, and why "we will name someone later" is a package risk.

Live
Post-Award · Changes
Contract Changes Are Not Emails

Shows customers why scope, funding, schedule, and contract language have to flow through the CO instead of informal direction to the contractor.

Live
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Post-Award · Performance
When Performance Goes Bad

Use the cure notice training as the CO-side deep dive, with a customer focus on documenting facts, notifying the COR/CO, and avoiding informal direction.

Who this is for

Anyone in a program office, requiring activity, or resource shop who has to hand a requirement to a contracting officer — whether that is a shiny new purchase request or a complex services recompete.

No contracting background assumed. No acronyms that aren't defined. The tools ask what you actually know and translate it into something the CO can act on.