DL 303 — Government Contracts & Subcontracting
The vehicles and teams course. You will learn the shapes a government contract takes, how a firm enters them alone or with partners, and how delivery — the post-award world — becomes the past performance that wins the next pursuit.
Course number: DL 303 · Credit hours: 3 · Term: 14 weeks, one 75-minute session per week (plus independent reading and assignments) · Audience: junior undergraduates · Prerequisites: DL 210 · Tier: upper-division elective (Year 3) · Texts: this repository — the doctrine, the literacy maps, and the Ravonics case · Tools: none required beyond a web browser for SAM.gov. Stack-agnostic by design (doctrine/08).
Doctrine spine
doctrine/01 (the vehicles and the small-business universe), doctrine/03 (the delivery stage), and doctrine/07 (the lifecycle and the post-award world) form the spine. The course teaches the discipline of teaming and contract structure — prime/sub postures, capability-gap analysis, partner selection, the limits on subcontracting, and contract administration — at concept altitude, the way a professional capture organization encodes it.
Where this course sits in the program
This is the structure elective: how a pursuit becomes a contract and how a firm enters it alone or with partners. It is the natural companion to DL 302 (Proposal Production & Compliance) and the capstone, where teaming and vehicle reasoning appear in the ORBITAL's transport and logistics axes.
Ladder: DL 210. Recommended pairing: DL 302. Feeds the capstone.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, a student can:
- Name the shapes of a government contract — firm-fixed-price, time-and-materials, cost-plus — and the risk each carries.
- Explain the standing vehicles: GSA Schedules, IDIQ contracts, task orders, BPAs — and when each is the right doorway.
- Decide a teaming posture for a pursuit: prime solo, prime with subcontractors, subcontractor, joint venture, or mentor-protégé — with the reasoning.
- Run a capability-gap analysis and score a prospective partner against a rubric.
- Explain the limits on subcontracting and the small-business subcontracting plan — the statutory floors that shape every team.
- Describe the post-award world: contract administration, deliverables, invoicing, and compliance.
- Explain how delivery creates the past-performance asset that wins the next pursuit — the lifecycle in action.
How the course works
The course reads the market through the Ravonics case and real, published, closed solicitations. Each week adds a layer of the contract-and-team story: the shapes, the vehicles, the teaming decision, the post-award world. The midterm is a teaming plan; the final is a full teaming-and-delivery plan for a real solicitation.
Weekly schedule
| Week | Theme | In-session (75 min) | Reading (doctrine / literacy) | Assignment due next week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What a contract is | The agreement shape: price, scope, performance, and the risk of each. | doctrine/01 | One-page "what a contract is" with three real contract shapes |
| 2 | The shapes and the risk | Firm-fixed-price, time-and-materials, cost-plus. Who carries the risk, and what that means for pricing. | doctrine/01; doctrine/05 | A one-page risk table: contract type, risk bearer, pricing implications |
| 3 | The standing vehicles | GSA Schedules, IDIQ, task orders, BPAs. Winning the doorway once, then competing for the orders. | doctrine/01; literacy/glossary | A one-page vehicle map: which vehicles Ravonics could hold, and why |
| 4 | Primes and subs | The teaming postures. Why no pursuit is an island. | doctrine/03 | A one-page posture chart: five postures, when each fits |
| 5 | The teaming decision | Capability gaps, partner selection, and the rubric that scores a partner. | doctrine/03 | Score a prospective partner for Ravonics against a partner rubric |
| 6 | Joint ventures and mentor-protégé | The formal team shapes: JVs and mentor-protégé agreements. When size and risk force them. | doctrine/01 | A one-page brief on JVs and mentor-protégé, with a real example |
| 7 | Midterm | In class: present a teaming plan for a real pursuit — posture, partner, reasoning. | (review week) | Midterm submission |
| 8 | The limits on subcontracting | The statutory floors: who must do the work, and how much. Set-aside rules for teams. | doctrine/01 | A one-page compliance brief: the floors a team must respect |
| 9 | Small-business subcontracting plans | The other-than-small prime's obligation. Participation goals as a legal design. | doctrine/01 | Draft a small-business participation plan for a fictional prime |
| 10 | Contract administration | The post-award world: deliverables, invoicing, compliance, and the file that proves the work. | doctrine/07 | A one-page post-award plan for a delivered contract |
| 11 | Past performance as an asset | Delivery as the seed of the next pursuit. The published record as the proof. | doctrine/07; doctrine/03 | A one-page past-performance map: what a firm's delivered work would prove |
| 12 | Disputes, terminations, and the learning loop | When delivery goes wrong: disputes, terminations, and the honest retrospective. | doctrine/04; doctrine/07 | A one-page case analysis of a terminated or troubled contract (public record) |
| 13 | From prime to world | Growing through delivery: how a firm becomes a trusted supplier, one contract at a time. | doctrine/07 | A one-page lifecycle map for Ravonics: its next three contracts and what each would prove |
| 14 | Final: teaming-and-delivery plan | Present a full teaming-and-delivery plan for a real solicitation — posture, partners, floors, post-award plan. | (review week) | Final submission |
Assessment summary
- Weekly assignments — 30% (each a concrete artifact: a map, a rubric score, a plan).
- Midterm — 25% (teaming plan, presented and defended).
- Final teaming-and-delivery plan — 30%.
- Participation and peer review — 15%.
Rubric per course/assessments-and-rubric.md. The additional standard in this course is the reasoning must survive: a teaming decision is judged on the reasoning, not the posture — a well-argued "subcontractor" beats an unjustified "prime."
The midterm
In class, present a teaming plan for a real pursuit: the posture chosen, the capability-gap analysis, the partner scored against a rubric, and the floors respected. The panel's job: "Why this posture? What does the partner actually bring? What happens if the partner falls through?" The gap between a justified team and a hopeful team is the whole grade.
The final
The full teaming-and-delivery plan for a real solicitation: posture, partners, set-aside floors, vehicle fit, post-award plan, and the past-performance narrative the delivery would create. Presented and defended.
Policies worth stating plainly
- The doctrine is the course. Every assignment tests the concept, never a tool. If an assignment ever seems to require knowledge of a specific product or system, that is a bug in the assignment — flag it.
- Real documents, safe exercises. We work real, published, closed solicitations and the public award record. You never submit anything live in this course.
- Late work. The pipeline has deadlines; so does the course. The one professional grace: an honest early warning beats a silent late submission.
- Academic integrity. Teaming runs on commitments. Do not fabricate a partner's capability or a firm's past performance; the market checks, and so does this course.
The course in one sentence
By Week 14 you will be able to look at any pursuit and answer the structural questions — what shape of contract, what vehicle, what team, what floors, what post-award plan — and you will have seen how delivery turns a winning pursuit into the evidence that wins the next one.