Learn government contracting the non-boring way

Explore the inner workings of artificial intelligence in Basics of AI – What's Under the Hood, the second course in the BuyAI learning program.

This course provides federal acquisition professionals with a clear understanding of the science behind AI, the key technological features of AI systems, and how acquisition decisions can directly influence AI projects.

Build the knowledge to make informed, strategic choices in AI-enabled environments.

Build the foundation for successful AI projects in AI Acquisition Team Dynamics and Planning, the fourth course in the BuyAI learning program. Learn to craft and communicate a clear AI project vision, create balanced acquisition teams, and convey plans effectively using the Lean Canvas. Explore the components of a Simplified Acquisition Management Plan (SAMP) and apply agile acquisition principles to drive AI project success.

Explore the technology powering AI in AI Storage and Compute for Acquisition Professionals, the sixth course in the BuyAI learning program. Learn about compute hardware, cloud, on-prem, and edge storage options, and the different types of cloud services. Gain practical skills to develop a compute and storage strategy that supports your AI acquisition planning and decision-making.

Navigate the complexities of intellectual property in Intellectual Property and AI, the eighth course in the BuyAI learning program. Learn the foundations of IP in AI acquisitions, explore ownership versus licensing decisions, and balance innovation with vendor independence. Gain practical insights to identify and address intellectual property considerations in AI acquisition projects.

Ensure AI delivers on its mission in Testing and Evaluating AI for Mission Success, the tenth course in the BuyAI learning program. Learn AI testing and evaluation protocols, set clear delivery expectations, and engage stakeholders to facilitate adoption. Gain strategies for lifecycle management and ongoing evaluation to maximize the effectiveness and reliability of AI systems post-delivery.

Explore the transformative role of AI in AI's Impact on the Acquisition Workforce, the final course in the BuyAI learning program. Understand how AI will shape the acquisition workforce, discover real use cases for improving processes and efficiency, and learn strategies to continue building AI acquisition literacy, expanding your knowledge, skills, and proficiency for the future.

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

Master the Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) source selection process and build the skills to apply it with confidence across federal contracting scenarios.

This course unpacks the regulatory framework governing LPTA.

It walks through the specific conditions that make it an appropriate — and inappropriate — source selection approach, and examines the evaluation criteria and documentation requirements that keep awards defensible.

Learners will also explore the most common pitfalls that lead to protest vulnerability and compliance risk, and develop practical strategies to avoid them.

Leave this course equipped to make LPTA decisions that are well-reasoned, regulation-backed, and built to hold up to scrutiny.

Get back to the core principles in this conversational, no-frills primer on the foundations of federal contracting.

Follow along with Will, Alex, and Miss Loretta from a one-room schoolhouse on the edge of a Wild West tour attraction.

They unpack what a contract actually is, how one forms, and why a government contract exists for an entirely different customer than its commercial cousin.

Trace federal procurement back to Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

Walk the constitutional relay race that puts Contracting Officers (CO) at the intersection of all three branches of government.

See how the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) reorganized the rulebook around the acquisition lifecycle.

Move through pre-award, award, and post-award to understand where mission success actually happens.

Leave this course equipped to:

• Define a contract under the FAR
• Identify offer, acceptance, and consideration in any solicitation
• Tell a Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Quote (RFQ), Invitation for Bid (IFB), Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), Commercial Solutions Offering (CSO), and Indefinite-Delivery Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract apart
• Ground every decision in the principles of transparency, fairness, integrity, mission, and merit

Build the tools, judgment, and confidence needed to determine, document, and defend fair and reasonable pricing decisions.

This course blends regulatory precision with real-world scenarios, GAO case lessons, and practical tips — going beyond compliance checklists to build genuine pricing expertise.

Explore the FAR framework, practice applying price analysis techniques, and learn to recognize common pitfalls like price realism missteps and unbalanced bids.

Strengthen documentation skills to stay audit-ready.

Develop both the "science" of FAR requirements and the "art" of sound business judgment.

Leave this course equipped to tackle complex pricing challenges with confidence — and the practical skills to back every decision.

Take a seat in the chair and let a suspiciously enthusiastic barber walk you through one of fiscal law's most misunderstood concepts in this video-driven course on severable and non-severable services.

Built around the Bona Fide Needs Rule, this course untangles why the difference between a recurring service and a single unified undertaking matters enormously.

This matters especially when the fiscal year clock is ticking and your agency is sitting on a pile of late-arriving funds.

Follow the logic from basic appropriations principles through real-world examples.

Learn why cutting some contracts in half leaves value on the table, while others fall apart entirely without that final culminating event.

Leave this course equipped to classify your contracted services correctly, apply the one-year exception for severable services spanning fiscal years, and tell the kind of story that keeps your awards clean, compliant, and — unlike some barbers — not a crime scene.

Demystify one of federal acquisition's most flexible — and most misunderstood — tools in the world of Other Transaction Authority.

This course traces the statutory foundations of OTA authority from Congressional grant to agency application.

It walks acquisition professionals through what OTAs are, why they exist, and how they differ from FAR-based contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements.

Build the skills to structure an OT effectively — from competition and funding to price reasonableness, format, and terms — and learn how to apply each consideration with the judgment and flexibility OTAs demand.

The course also puts the OTA mindset front and center, connecting statutory knowledge to the leadership, soft skills, and cross-functional collaboration required to make OTAs work in practice.

Leave this course equipped to serve as a capable Agreements Officer.

You will be ready to engage nontraditional partners, drive mission innovation, and use OTA authority responsibly, without turning it into the bureaucracy it was designed to replace.

Put down the seven-pump caramel Frappuccino and step away from the Statement of Work (SOW).

In this video-driven course built around a husband's catastrophic food run, it reveals one of digital services contracting's most powerful but underused tools: the Statement of Objectives (SOO).

Follow Will as he commits every requirement-owner sin in the book, from boxing his End User into a predetermined solution to writing a SOW so specific it still misses the point entirely.

Learn how a simple shift in approach could have gotten Sarah what she really wanted — and gotten your program office a solution that actually works.

Learn why chasing symptoms instead of causes leads to over-specified, under-informed solicitations.

Focusing on problem statements, user objectives, and constraints opens the door to competition that surfaces solutions you never would have prescribed yourself.

Leave this course equipped to draft a lean, effective SOO, give offerors the right constraints without over-directing their proposals, and evaluate responses with confidence.

So your next acquisition ends with the contracting equivalent of the Mumbles coming over to a happy household.

Explore the regulatory foundation, tactical guidance, and practical tools behind the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul's (RFO) Guiding Principle #3, Maximize Buying Commercial Products and Services, as part of our FAR Guiding Principles training series.

This course traces the statutory history of commercial buying through the RFO's commercial-first reorientation of the acquisition framework.

[It walks] acquisition professionals through the specific changes to FAR Parts 1, 7, 10, 11, 12, and 13 and what each change means in practice.

Build the skills to make defensible commerciality determinations, navigate the now-clear relationship between Parts 12 and 13, structure solicitations that invite commercial competition, and execute from planning through award using the full range of flexibilities the RFO provides.

The course also puts the RFO's companion resources to work:

• the FAR Companion Guide
• Practitioner Albums
• Smart Accelerators
• the Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovations

These connect regulatory knowledge to on-the-job execution.

Leave this course equipped to execute commercial acquisitions that are faster, more competitive, and built the way the RFO intended.

Navigate the most significant transformation to federal acquisition in decades — the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) — and emerge equipped to thrive in the post-RFO environment.

This course cuts through the confusion surrounding the RFO to deliver practical guidance on what has changed, why it matters, and how to apply these changes in your daily work.

Discover how the RFO shifts the acquisition workforce from compliance-driven rule-followers to empowered business advisors.

Explore the Strategic Acquisition Guidance (SAG) ecosystem, the RFO's new guiding principles, and restructured ordering procedures.

Build confidence in exercising the professional discretion the RFO was designed to grant — whether you're a Contracting Officer transitioning from the old FAR framework or a practitioner ready to lead the way forward.

Follow a Contracting Officer through one long night with three ghosts.

This video-based course uses a Christmas Carol structure to teach five tenets of employee experience:

• Listen
• Recognize
• Support
• Grow
• Empower

The ghosts show the Contracting Officer what happens when an office treats every idea as a distraction and every employee as replaceable.

It loses both, once the paperwork outweighs the mission it's supposed to serve.

The story starts at a break room fire and moves through a boardroom pitching "agile, innovation, scale."

Along the way you see two kinds of departures: the employee who leaves quietly after years of being unheard, and the one who might have stayed if someone had just asked "tell me more."

By the end, you'll be able to:

• Spot the early signs of a workforce in trouble
• Apply the five tenets before your own Amanda hands you a resignation letter
• Build a culture that produces critical thinking and mission results, not an office replaced by robots that only say "order complete"