This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in government contracting, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
Indirect rates under-recovered because the provisional rate was set conservatively and never revisited against actual.
Timekeeping practice that would not survive an audit, which is the single most common adverse finding and the easiest to fix in advance.
Flow-down clauses accepted from the prime and never passed to subcontractors, leaving the obligation without the protection.
Unallowable cost mixed into pools and stripped only at year end, if at all.
CUI handled on systems never assessed against NIST SP 800-171, discovered during a supplier assessment rather than before one.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation6 requests written for government contracting, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery contract in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
2 core requests written for government contracting, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Contract vehicles and task orders — With type: firm fixed price, cost plus, T&M.
Approved indirect rates and provisional billing rates
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
A DCAA audit notice, or a questioned cost carried over from the last one
An incurred cost submission returned as inadequate, which stops closeout
A CMMC or supplier assessment date attached to a re-compete
A re-compete lost on price with no cost model that explains why
A novation, an acquisition or a protest, where the rate structure is read by someone whose job is to find fault with it
An unbillable arising because a person's labor category did not match the contract
Who needs to be in the room
Signs it: President or CFO
Will resist it: Program managers, whose labor charging and rate assumptions become visible — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: The contracts manager and the controller, who have been reconciling by exception
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.