Contract Foundational Skills and Acquisition Planning
What the exam tests
Acquisition planning (FAR Part 7) begins with a validated requirement and an integrated acquisition team: the requiring activity, the contracting officer, legal counsel, the small business specialist, finance, and often the COR. Every later decision flows from the requirement's characteristics, so candidates must see the chain from requirement to contract type to competition strategy to administration burden.
Core concepts
- Competition: full and open competition is the default (FAR 6.101). Any other approach requires a written justification tied to one of the statutory exceptions, approved at the level set in FAR 6.304.
- Contract type (FAR 16): firm-fixed-price assigns performance risk to the contractor and is preferred when the requirement is well defined and competition exists. Cost-reimbursement shifts cost risk to the government and demands adequate accounting systems and heavier surveillance. Incentive and time-and-materials arrangements sit in between. FAR 16.104 lists the selection factors: price competition, price analysis, type and complexity of requirement, urgency, period of performance, contractor accounting system, adequacy of cost data, and administrative cost.
- Bona fide need and funds: obligate funds only for a need arising in the period of availability. Distinguish severable services (which may cross fiscal years only under limited authority) from non-severable efforts.
- Options (FAR 17.2): unilateral rights, priced or priced at exercise, evaluated as part of the competition, and included only when a future need is foreseeable.
- Independent Government Estimate: an internal planning tool; it is not a price ceiling, is not shared with offerors, and is not by itself grounds for rejecting all proposals.
Traps questions exploit
Assuming options are automatically exercised; treating cost-type contracts as prohibited rather than as requiring added controls; confusing a multi-year contract (annually funded with a cancellation ceiling) with a contract containing options; forgetting that acquisition plan content and approval thresholds vary by agency supplement.
Rule of thumb
Match contract type to risk: if you can describe the work precisely and real competition exists, use firm-fixed-price; if scope is genuinely unknowable, use cost-reimbursement and budget for more surveillance.