The Contracting Officer Is the Most Important Person on Your Job

By Sean & Doug Reitmeyer — GCExperts. Written from real contractor conversations, calls, and workshops.

Every federal job has one person who matters more than everyone else, and it's not the project manager, not the engineer, not the inspector. It's the contracting officer. They're the only person on the job who's trained and authorized to spend public funds. When you understand that, everything about federal work gets easier. When you don't, it gets expensive.

Let me tell you how expensive it can get, because I lived it. Nineteen eighty-two. I get two letters the same day, both signed by the same contracting officer. Letter one: you are to proceed in accordance with the contract and be completed on time. Letter two: a modification letter, please give a price to replace the panel and put new breakers in. I'd just been through litigation with the FAA, so I called my attorney and said, what is this? He laughed, in the way lawyers do. He said it's a trick. On one hand, they want your price so they can judge whether it's reasonable. On the other hand, they're hoping that by not telling you what to do, you'll just go ahead and do it — and then they'll claim you volunteered the work to the government for free.

So I wrote a letter asking for a modification. I waited until the last minute. They never sent it. I gave them a price anyway, 2,738 dollars, went ahead and did the work, and told them in writing I was not volunteering anything. By the end of that job I had six claims, and the contracting officer finally agreed to sit down with me.

Now here's the flip side, because the contracting officer is also the solution to most of your problems. They want to get awards off their desk. They have a budget to spend and a schedule to keep. When I know the contracting officer, and I've built that relationship, they'll send me the solicitation directly and say, give me your price. That relationship is worth more than any marketing budget, and it's built one job at a time: show up, perform, finish clean, make their paperwork easy.

A few rules that never fail. One: everything in writing. If it's not in writing to the contracting officer, it didn't happen. Two: when they stall, make stalling uncomfortable — document, follow up, escalate politely and on the record. Three: understand the difference between the contracting officer and the contracting officer's representative, the COR. The COR watches the work. The CO pays for the work. You can be friendly with both, but money questions go to the CO. Four: never let a sub go around you to the government, and never let the government go around you to your subs. I walked into a pre-construction conference once and found two guys from Honeywell at the table, brought by the government, on a job where Honeywell was just a supplier. I said, if you want to meet with Honeywell, that's fine, I'll wait outside — but I came here for the pre-construction conference between my company and the Veterans Administration. The meeting got real normal, real fast. You control the contract, or the contract controls you.

The contracting officer isn't your enemy and isn't your friend. They're the person on the other side of the rulebook, and the rulebook says they have to be fair. Your job is to know the rules well enough to make fairness automatic.