Acquisition Lab

What is a Facilitated Engagement through The Center?

The Center provides facilitation to help agencies shift from buying activities and bodies to buying results which drive mission outcomes.

Read about each type of facilitation below, or complete the COE Intake Form [DOCX - 537 KB] to get started today.

Facilitated Requirements Development Workshops: 

Our flagship offering, this workshop is built around a specific acquisition and your multi-functional integrated project team, or IPT. 

• For DoD, these are known as Service Acquisition Workshops (SAW)
• For Civilian agencies they are Civilian Service Acquisition Workshops (CSAW)

The primary focus of the facilitated workshop is to get all members of the acquisition team or IPT contributing and working together to accomplish the necessary work. 

Workshops focus on: 

• Establishing clarity and consensus,
• Getting actual work product started,
• Provide high-impact tools to get the work done
• Building a team commitment to achieving the mission together

Check out this Frequently Asked Questions document [PDF - 219 KB] to learn more. 

Customized Facilitation Engagement: 

• Our expert facilitators are ready to build a custom tailored facilitated agenda and session for your acquisition team to help reach consensus on decisions, get unstuck, determine strategy, overcome obstacles, develop solutions and more.
• Here are some examples of how you might use this service:
  • Determine the best contract solution for your requirement (aka MAS vs OASIS+)
  • Establish a pathway to move from T&M/LH to a more FFP approach
  • Gain senior leadership consensus on acquisition strategy
  • Conduct a post-award hotwash to identify lessons learned and best practices
  • Jam session to explore source selection innovations
  • Identify most effective evaluation factors for award
• These engagements are flexible and can meet almost any timeline and scope.
• Complete the COE Intake Form [DOCX - 537 KB] to the best of your ability and we’ll initiate an intake meeting to explore the best facilitated approach for your team!

Outcome-Based Acquisition Support: 

• This targeted coaching and advising support addresses any stage of acquisition planning to drive higher levels of performance, achieve mission-level outcomes, and reduce costs through better written requirements and clear performance expectations.
• It will generally start with an intake meeting to identify your pain points and where you’re seeking focused support
• We then typically review either your existing requirements document and/or your draft documents
• Our team will provide document markups and/or questions and written feedback, and schedule a session to go through our comments together
• However, we are also glad to schedule a call to discuss a specific topic and engage in targeted acquisition coaching to equip you for success
• We encourage you to complete a COE Intake Form [DOCX - 537 KB], but if it doesn’t fit your situation, you can send an email request to csaw@gsa.gov and we’ll start the conversation

Still not sure which of these is right for your team?

Complete the COE Intake Form [DOCX - 537 KB]. Completing this form will give The Center a picture of where you are in the service acquisition process, so we can start our engagement and recommend a path forward.