Federal agencies are asking contracting officers to move faster and use more judgment at a moment when many of the most experienced acquisition professionals are nearing retirement. Patrick Hughes, senior director and industry adviser for public sector at Icertis, said that combination is putting more pressure on the people responsible for turning mission needs into contracts.

Hughes said the acquisition workforce could lose about 35% of its most experienced employees over the next three to five years, even as agencies continue pushing for faster, more adaptive procurement. That leaves the remaining contracting officers trying to absorb policy changes, keep existing contracts on track and make new awards without losing focus on the mission.

For Hughes, the strain is tangible. It shows up in the daily work of trying to keep programs moving while the rules around them continue to change.

More of the job happens before the contract exists

Hughes argues that the biggest shift is happening at the front end. As policy changes and contracting officers are expected to use more discretion, more of the mission risk sits in how requirements are written and how solicitations are structured.

“Execution starts with developing the requirement and a warranted contracting officer putting that requirement into a document that enables the best and brightest in industry to go ahead and fulfill that interpretation and then putting it on paper and actually executing a solicitation and a then a contract. That is where the mission execution begins,” Hughes said.

That interpretation does not stay inside the contracting office. It affects how industry reads the requirement, how companies price the work and what agencies ultimately get back from the contract.

In Hughes’ view, that is why acquisition work can no longer be treated as a back-end compliance function. The choices made in drafting and structuring a requirement shape competition, cost and performance before execution ever reaches the field.

Differences in approach have impact across boundaries

That creates another problem: similar requirements can still be handled very differently from one acquisition office to another. Hughes said those differences can change how vendors compete for the same kind of work.

“That’s going to influence potential bidders, pricing strategies, how they’re going to go about fulfilling any given requirement, and we’re going to achieve generally very different results,” he said.

When agencies approach similar buys in different ways, companies adjust their pricing, proposals and execution strategies accordingly. Hughes said that can produce different results for what may be essentially the same requirement.

Beyond award, Hughes said that inconsistency can surface later in reviews and audits, where agencies are judged not only on compliance, but on whether they followed the approach they set for themselves.

The demands are in the details

Alongside those judgment calls is a steady volume of administrative work tied to every contract. Contracting officers often manage portfolios that include dozens of active efforts, each with their own documentation, modifications, reporting demands and oversight requirements.

Hughes said the demands of that workload cannot be met simply by working longer hours, noting that “an eight-hour workday is probably a fantasy for most anyway at this point in time.”

Much of the day goes to tracking requirements, managing documentation, processing changes and keeping the contract file ready for review. Hughes said that workload cannot be solved simply by asking people to work longer hours.

Training remains important, Hughes said, but it does not solve the scale problem by itself. Once people leave the classroom, they still have to work inside whatever processes, workflows and systems the agency gives them.

That leaves less time for the parts of the job that require judgment, even as those decisions are carrying more weight earlier in the process.

Systems begin to take over the repetitive work

That is one reason agencies are looking for ways to take some of the repetitive work off contracting officers’ desks.

Hughes pointed to contract lifecycle management systems as one way to reduce fragmentation in acquisition work. In his description, the value is less about a single tool and more about keeping contract activity, obligations and related data in one environment instead of scattered across separate steps and systems.

He also described a role for AI in handling the most repetitive, high-volume tasks tied to contract administration.

“AI in a CLM should be expected to add speed and accuracy to the huge administrative workload. If you can tame that chaos of high volume and high time consumption and give that contracting professional some relief, they can now focus on making sure that we really have the smartest contracts in place,” Hughes said.

The judgment does not go away. Hughes was explicit that contracting officers still have to make the award decisions and obligate the government. The technology, in his view, is there to reduce the administrative drag around that work, not replace the person responsible for it

What Hughes describes is a workforce still expected to deliver without pause, even as the rules shift and experience thins out. In that environment, the challenge goes beyond just keeping up with paperwork to whether agencies can give contracting officers enough consistency, support and time to make the decisions that shape cost, performance and mission execution from the start.

Copyright © 2026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.