Fourteen construction jobs are moving outside the FAR

Six construction notices posted last week ask industry about building under other transaction authority rather than a FAR contract: a KC-46 hangar complex at Selfridge, a taxiway and runway extension at Niagara Falls, four Space Force operations centers, a weapons generation facility and a flight simulator facility at Dyess, and a crisis action center repair at Barksdale. Add the ones already open and there are 14 construction actions using the authority with responses due by October 15 — among them West Point’s Thayer Hall, a 600,000-square-foot cyber and intelligence center at Lackland, and the $1.4–2.0B Sentinel utility corridor at Malmstrom.

The notices spell out what changes. These agreements sit outside the FAR, so FAR small business rules do not govern them — the Selfridge notice says so directly. Selection runs on qualifications and collaborative sessions before price. The builder joins during design, under progressive design-build or construction manager at risk, and works through cost with the government and the designer before the construction price is set. And the protest route a FAR award offers is far narrower.

What to do this week: treat the sources-sought response as the first page of the proposal. It is what the government uses to pick the delivery method and decide who gets invited to the next step. If you have a design-build team, preconstruction cost work you can show, and a record of working alongside a designer of record, put that in writing by the dates above. If you are a small business, do not count on a set-aside to reserve a seat — the practical route in is as a named partner on a qualified team.