Acquisition Plan
The document explaining the strategy everyone agreed to before the requirement, funding, schedule, and market changed.
Reference desk
CMCoE Glossary
Humorous but recognizable definitions for people who have learned that "award" is both a noun, a verb, and a blood pressure event.
Award
The moment when the record becomes real, the emails become survivable, and someone immediately asks about the next option year.
Bona Fide Need
The fiscal law question hiding inside "we need to buy this before the money goes away."
CICA
The competition statute reminding everyone that "I know a vendor" is not an acquisition strategy.
CLIN
Contract Line Item Number. A small box where scope, money, and performance expectations attempt to become legible.
Color Team
A review ritual in which a draft receives comments, scars, and sometimes a new personality.
Competitive Range
The offeror subset invited deeper into the source selection process, also known as the place where documentation matters.
CON-IT
A system that detects optimism and schedules an outage accordingly.
COR
Contracting Officer's Representative. The surveillance ally who can save the file, if named, trained, engaged, and not replaced three weeks into performance.
CPARS
The past performance record everyone remembers shortly before it becomes overdue.
Debriefing
A structured explanation of the award decision and a mirror held up to the documentation.
Determination and Findings
A formal written conclusion that says the file has reasons, not just vibes.
FAR
The Federal Acquisition Regulation. A survival manual written as a regulatory framework and read at 2147 during EOFY.
Fiscal Law
The discipline explaining why the money cannot simply do what leadership wants it to do.
J&A
Justification and Approval. The confession booth for not competing something the way competition normally expects.
LPTA
Lowest Price Technically Acceptable. A method that works when "technically acceptable" is defined with enough care to survive reality.
Market Research
The disciplined act of finding out what the market can actually provide before the requirement becomes a monument to hope.
Option Year
The future you thought you planned for, now arriving with a funding question and a performance discussion.
Past Performance
Evidence that a contractor has done relevant work before, plus a reminder that CPARS eventually matters.
POP
Period of Performance. The sacred date range during which the requirement must be performed, usually beginning tomorrow.
Price Realism
The analysis asking whether a low price is efficient, miraculous, or a future performance problem wearing a discount hat.
Protest
A formal challenge that turns every note, email, rating, and evaluation sentence into a possible exhibit.
Q&A
The part of a solicitation where industry asks what the government meant, and the government discovers what it meant.
Requirement
A mission need attempting to become sufficiently specific to buy without summoning the acquisition void.
Requirements Package
The collection of documents proving that the requirement is real, funded, clear, reviewable, and not simply a wish with attachments.
Responsibility Determination
The finding that the apparent awardee can actually perform, which is different from everyone hoping they can.
Section L
Instructions to offerors. The part that tells industry how to submit the thing the government will later evaluate.
Section M
Evaluation factors. The part everyone should have loved enough before proposals arrived.
Source Selection
The structured process of choosing an awardee while building a record that can survive debriefing and weather.
Technical Acceptability
The threshold where a proposal meets the stated requirements, not the unstated dream requirement someone remembered during evaluation.
Undefinitized Contract Action
A way to authorize work before all terms are finalized, also known as "we will make future us very busy."
Uniform Contract Format
The structure that organizes solicitations and contracts, and occasionally haunts PCOpossum in dreams.
Warrant
The written authority to bind the government. A sacred instrument, not a personality trait, despite evidence to the contrary.