The Army wants to reduce the contract awarding process from the nearly two-year cycle — a notorious bottleneck for deploying technology to the field — to less than six months, said an Army contracting official.

One of the ways the service is trying to achieve this is by moving away from overly prescriptive contract requirements to a more flexible approach that focuses on providing “characteristics of need” early during its experimentation phases under Army Futures Command and allowing contractors to propose innovative solutions in return. Officials said the characteristics of need won’t replace the Army’s formal requirements process, but would help inform it.

“One of the things that we want to start doing in Army Contracting is when we have a problem, we want to take that problem and give it to industry and not over prescribe contracts,” Danielle Moyer, who leads the Army’s Digital Capabilities Contracting Center of Excellence at Aberdeen Proving Ground, said during the Association of the United States Army conference on Oct.16.

“Right now, what we do is we give you guys a [request for proposal], we show you all the clauses, we tell you the contract type. Wouldn’t the world be so much better if I just told you the problem, you propose back a solution and then we determine the contract type based on your solution, instead of me predetermining everything. We’re going to start piloting that because that could go faster, and maybe our award decision is based on your solution.”

By adopting a “characteristics of need” approach, the procurement process shifts its focus to identifying and understanding the problem rather than describing a solution the service thinks it needs, said Tara Murphy Dougherty, CEO of Govini.

“We all know that’s not a new idea. We all know that’s the right direction to move. To see it come to life in multiple instances with the characteristics of need statements has been really powerful.”

“The challenge then becomes: industry has provided a number of different potential solutions. You’re going to choose one. You might experiment with it, you might prototype it, and then, ultimately, you have to write a contract for it. That transition, I think, there are still some growing pains.”

Another bottleneck in the process the Army wants to address is using incentives and disincentives more effectively to prevent the “race to the bottom” mindset, with contractors competing by offering the lowest possible cost, which often compromises quality.

Moyer said the service has recently incorporated performance-based incentives under the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army (IPPS-A) contract.

“What we don’t do very well is we don’t put a lot of incentives and disincentives in contracts.  We want affordable contracts, but sometimes we want the best thing, and then how do we incentivize you with the best thing once you prove it,” said Moyer.

And the Army tends to have a reactive approach to contracting, rather than identifying and mitigating issues early in the process.

“When obsolescence is an issue, I’ll get calls to say, “Hey, this product went obsolete and it doesn’t exist anymore.  How are we going to figure out how to reverse engineer this, or organically make it, or what are we going to do?’” said Moyer. “Why didn’t we think about that up front in the contracts?”

“Why, in the [Army Futures Command] stage, I am looking at what we are testing out — why then when it goes to ASA(ALT) and I award that contract, why isn’t there a factor in there that considers your entire supply chain and the risk of your supply chain.”

Moyer said the Army also wants to move away from lengthy proposals to focusing more on hands-on demonstrations with real-time feedback. 

“What do you really do? Show me. There should be real constant feedback in some tech demonstrations versus did you write it really well that you probably used some AI to write the proposal anyway, and then we kicked you out because your margins were too small,” said Moyer. 

“Those are all things that we’re going to do to get things awarded quicker.”

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