Jun 13, 2024
Articles
Reporting For Duty: The Capture Engineer
Elliot Tu
Turning Defense Contract Procurement into a Scalable, Data-driven Function.
The defense industry, and by extent the safety of the U.S., relies heavily on the expertise of the private sector – the Department of Defense is scheduled to allocate $849.8 billion to the private sector for the next fiscal year. In fact, somewhere north of $2.8 billion was awarded in defense contracts today alone. While the private sector has helped propel military innovation, and by extension broader technological innovation, forward over the years, the process behind the scenes has stayed effectively stagnant.
Over the last two decades, the DoD has sourced contracts totaling in the trillions of dollars. And for all of those contracts, defense contractors have competed for them in the exact same way: by combing through thousands of listings stored in government portals like sam.gov, DLA dibbs, Vulcan, etc. to find a contract that fits their capabilities. It’s an arduous, manual process. A capture analyst, contract specialist, or someone else in charge of sourcing contracts, will log onto sam.gov and type in “Air Force,” resulting in over 300,000 contract opportunities. If they get more specific and type in something like “night vision,” they might get 6,000. At least there’s an option to view 100 results per page.
This process is the first step, and thus the first blocker, in defense contractors securing funding. In addition, by nature of this approach, as defense companies grow their capabilities to take on more and more contracts, they must also hire more and more people to source them. But times have changed, technology has improved drastically, and the industry standard for the past twenty years is ready for a massive overhaul.
Today we have an arsenal of tools that can automate workflows that took teams of people days to complete. This kind of speed allows millions of people to use products built by only a handful of software engineers. Leveraging this technology-driven approach not only changes how fast people can work, it also changes the way they work.
Similar to how software engineers operate, we envision capture engineers to become technical problem-solvers who:
Build and maintain automated workflows
Scale workflows across new capabilities as they grow
Work on complex tasks while automation manages the repetitive ones
Collaborate cross-functionally and share successful approaches
The Current Standard
The steps to win government contracts is, on the surface, are straightforward:
The government will put out a RFP or RFQ on a government portal
Capture analysts or contract specialists will find contracts that are winnable based on the contractors capabilities
Contractors submit a proposal and await a decision by the DoD
While this process seems simple at a high level, getting to step 3 usually involves hours of repetitive work. Government portals are unintuitive and contain thousands upon thousands of open contract opportunities, meaning capture analysts have to manually comb through them to find opportunities that fit their contractor’s capabilities. Oftentimes, because of the aforementioned time sink as well as a lack of available industry information, by the time a contractor sees an RFP or RFQ, it’s already too late. What’s more is that this process is heavily reliant on brute force and individual effort, rather than scalable systems.
At Usul, we’re striving to make a scalable technology-driven-approach the new standard.
Enter the Capture Engineer
If you search up “capture engineer” on LinkedIn, you probably won’t find anything that’s relevant to this article. Here at Usul, we’re hoping that changes.
The Capture Engineers that use Usul today are able to automate processes that capture analysts would’ve done manually.
For example:
The old way: Capture analysts manually sort through contract opportunities in government portals to find contracts that match their capabilities
The new way: Capture Engineers upload their capabilities to Usul and it automatically sends contracts that match their capabilities each morning
The old way: Capture analysts hunt the internet for information on key POCs, industry competitors, and contract renewal dates
The new way: Capture Engineers use Usul to access verified contact information, view competitor market share, and track winnable recompeting contracts from incumbents, all with just a few clicks
As you can imagine, the benefits of this kind of automation has the potential to completely change the pace of innovation. Defense companies can get down to building faster, meaning faster funding, and more opportunities down the line. As they grow their capabilities, instead of having to increase their headcount, their contract engineers can scale their sourcing capacity at the same rate. More transparency across the defense landscape, thanks to AI’s ability to process data, will breed healthier competition that fuels innovation instead of bogging it down with manual processes. With Usul, you win faster so you can build faster.
Turning Defense Contract Procurement into a Scalable, Data-driven Function.
The defense industry, and by extent the safety of the U.S., relies heavily on the expertise of the private sector – the Department of Defense is scheduled to allocate $849.8 billion to the private sector for the next fiscal year. In fact, somewhere north of $2.8 billion was awarded in defense contracts today alone. While the private sector has helped propel military innovation, and by extension broader technological innovation, forward over the years, the process behind the scenes has stayed effectively stagnant.
Over the last two decades, the DoD has sourced contracts totaling in the trillions of dollars. And for all of those contracts, defense contractors have competed for them in the exact same way: by combing through thousands of listings stored in government portals like sam.gov, DLA dibbs, Vulcan, etc. to find a contract that fits their capabilities. It’s an arduous, manual process. A capture analyst, contract specialist, or someone else in charge of sourcing contracts, will log onto sam.gov and type in “Air Force,” resulting in over 300,000 contract opportunities. If they get more specific and type in something like “night vision,” they might get 6,000. At least there’s an option to view 100 results per page.
This process is the first step, and thus the first blocker, in defense contractors securing funding. In addition, by nature of this approach, as defense companies grow their capabilities to take on more and more contracts, they must also hire more and more people to source them. But times have changed, technology has improved drastically, and the industry standard for the past twenty years is ready for a massive overhaul.
Today we have an arsenal of tools that can automate workflows that took teams of people days to complete. This kind of speed allows millions of people to use products built by only a handful of software engineers. Leveraging this technology-driven approach not only changes how fast people can work, it also changes the way they work.
Similar to how software engineers operate, we envision capture engineers to become technical problem-solvers who:
Build and maintain automated workflows
Scale workflows across new capabilities as they grow
Work on complex tasks while automation manages the repetitive ones
Collaborate cross-functionally and share successful approaches
The Current Standard
The steps to win government contracts is, on the surface, are straightforward:
The government will put out a RFP or RFQ on a government portal
Capture analysts or contract specialists will find contracts that are winnable based on the contractors capabilities
Contractors submit a proposal and await a decision by the DoD
While this process seems simple at a high level, getting to step 3 usually involves hours of repetitive work. Government portals are unintuitive and contain thousands upon thousands of open contract opportunities, meaning capture analysts have to manually comb through them to find opportunities that fit their contractor’s capabilities. Oftentimes, because of the aforementioned time sink as well as a lack of available industry information, by the time a contractor sees an RFP or RFQ, it’s already too late. What’s more is that this process is heavily reliant on brute force and individual effort, rather than scalable systems.
At Usul, we’re striving to make a scalable technology-driven-approach the new standard.
Enter the Capture Engineer
If you search up “capture engineer” on LinkedIn, you probably won’t find anything that’s relevant to this article. Here at Usul, we’re hoping that changes.
The Capture Engineers that use Usul today are able to automate processes that capture analysts would’ve done manually.
For example:
The old way: Capture analysts manually sort through contract opportunities in government portals to find contracts that match their capabilities
The new way: Capture Engineers upload their capabilities to Usul and it automatically sends contracts that match their capabilities each morning
The old way: Capture analysts hunt the internet for information on key POCs, industry competitors, and contract renewal dates
The new way: Capture Engineers use Usul to access verified contact information, view competitor market share, and track winnable recompeting contracts from incumbents, all with just a few clicks
As you can imagine, the benefits of this kind of automation has the potential to completely change the pace of innovation. Defense companies can get down to building faster, meaning faster funding, and more opportunities down the line. As they grow their capabilities, instead of having to increase their headcount, their contract engineers can scale their sourcing capacity at the same rate. More transparency across the defense landscape, thanks to AI’s ability to process data, will breed healthier competition that fuels innovation instead of bogging it down with manual processes. With Usul, you win faster so you can build faster.
Turning Defense Contract Procurement into a Scalable, Data-driven Function.
The defense industry, and by extent the safety of the U.S., relies heavily on the expertise of the private sector – the Department of Defense is scheduled to allocate $849.8 billion to the private sector for the next fiscal year. In fact, somewhere north of $2.8 billion was awarded in defense contracts today alone. While the private sector has helped propel military innovation, and by extension broader technological innovation, forward over the years, the process behind the scenes has stayed effectively stagnant.
Over the last two decades, the DoD has sourced contracts totaling in the trillions of dollars. And for all of those contracts, defense contractors have competed for them in the exact same way: by combing through thousands of listings stored in government portals like sam.gov, DLA dibbs, Vulcan, etc. to find a contract that fits their capabilities. It’s an arduous, manual process. A capture analyst, contract specialist, or someone else in charge of sourcing contracts, will log onto sam.gov and type in “Air Force,” resulting in over 300,000 contract opportunities. If they get more specific and type in something like “night vision,” they might get 6,000. At least there’s an option to view 100 results per page.
This process is the first step, and thus the first blocker, in defense contractors securing funding. In addition, by nature of this approach, as defense companies grow their capabilities to take on more and more contracts, they must also hire more and more people to source them. But times have changed, technology has improved drastically, and the industry standard for the past twenty years is ready for a massive overhaul.
Today we have an arsenal of tools that can automate workflows that took teams of people days to complete. This kind of speed allows millions of people to use products built by only a handful of software engineers. Leveraging this technology-driven approach not only changes how fast people can work, it also changes the way they work.
Similar to how software engineers operate, we envision capture engineers to become technical problem-solvers who:
Build and maintain automated workflows
Scale workflows across new capabilities as they grow
Work on complex tasks while automation manages the repetitive ones
Collaborate cross-functionally and share successful approaches
The Current Standard
The steps to win government contracts is, on the surface, are straightforward:
The government will put out a RFP or RFQ on a government portal
Capture analysts or contract specialists will find contracts that are winnable based on the contractors capabilities
Contractors submit a proposal and await a decision by the DoD
While this process seems simple at a high level, getting to step 3 usually involves hours of repetitive work. Government portals are unintuitive and contain thousands upon thousands of open contract opportunities, meaning capture analysts have to manually comb through them to find opportunities that fit their contractor’s capabilities. Oftentimes, because of the aforementioned time sink as well as a lack of available industry information, by the time a contractor sees an RFP or RFQ, it’s already too late. What’s more is that this process is heavily reliant on brute force and individual effort, rather than scalable systems.
At Usul, we’re striving to make a scalable technology-driven-approach the new standard.
Enter the Capture Engineer
If you search up “capture engineer” on LinkedIn, you probably won’t find anything that’s relevant to this article. Here at Usul, we’re hoping that changes.
The Capture Engineers that use Usul today are able to automate processes that capture analysts would’ve done manually.
For example:
The old way: Capture analysts manually sort through contract opportunities in government portals to find contracts that match their capabilities
The new way: Capture Engineers upload their capabilities to Usul and it automatically sends contracts that match their capabilities each morning
The old way: Capture analysts hunt the internet for information on key POCs, industry competitors, and contract renewal dates
The new way: Capture Engineers use Usul to access verified contact information, view competitor market share, and track winnable recompeting contracts from incumbents, all with just a few clicks
As you can imagine, the benefits of this kind of automation has the potential to completely change the pace of innovation. Defense companies can get down to building faster, meaning faster funding, and more opportunities down the line. As they grow their capabilities, instead of having to increase their headcount, their contract engineers can scale their sourcing capacity at the same rate. More transparency across the defense landscape, thanks to AI’s ability to process data, will breed healthier competition that fuels innovation instead of bogging it down with manual processes. With Usul, you win faster so you can build faster.