Government RFPs differ from commercial RFPs because they follow formal procurement rules, strict proposal instructions, fixed evaluation criteria, and compliance requirements that determine whether a response is even reviewed. While commercial experience is helpful, federal proposals require a rigid approach to pricing, past performance, and administrative documentation.
Winning a small business set-aside contract feels like crossing a finish line. The award letter comes in, the team celebrates, and then someone on the operations side starts asking a question that should have been asked weeks earlier: how much of this work can we actually subcontract out?
That question has a real answer, and the answer matters. Get it wrong and you're not just risking a contract. You're risking a finding that you operated as a pass-through, which is one of the more serious problems a small business contractor can have.
This is the rule that catches more newer contractors than almost any other compliance trap. Here's what's actually going on.
