How to Win Challenge-Based Procurements Now

Challenge-based procurements are exposing a hard truth in GovCon: strong proposals are no longer enough. Agencies are no longer satisfied with polished narratives, well-crafted past performance sections, or carefully worded technical approaches. Additionally, they want contractors to demonstrate their capabilities—not just describe them. Through self-scoring matrices, multi-phase down-selects, live technical exercises, and demonstrations, federal buyers are increasingly using challenge-based procurements.

A case in point is the Federal Aviation Administration’s Challenge-Based Acquisition (ChBA) for the Accelerated Transformation of Legacy Applications and Systems (ATLAS), released on Feb. 17, 2026, which divided the competition into four phases:

• Phase 1: Offerors must submit a detailed self-scoring worksheet, provide validated corporate experience examples, and submit a 15-page concept paper.
• Phase 2: Selected firms participate in an Industry Day and submit approaches detailing how they would rationalize and consolidate the FAA’s portfolio.
• Phase 3: Offerors demonstrate execution capability, including a scalable “Factory Model.” The FAA will evaluate the offerors’ tools, workflows, and capabilities.
• Phase 4: The FAA may issue a formal RFP to the remaining offerors for pricing and award one or more offerors.

Tips for Winning Competitive Procurements

Here are five tips to consider when competing in a challenge-based procurement:

#1: Preparation Must Start Before the RFP. Winning organizations prepare well in advance of the RFP drop. They inventory relevant contracts, align experience to NAICS codes and GWAC vehicles, and proactively strengthen teaming agreements to close capability gaps. In challenge-based environments, readiness is a competitive advantage.

#2: Self-Scoring Is Strategy, Not Administration. A self-scoring phase may look procedural, but it is anything but routine. Agencies use scoring matrices to efficiently narrow the field, particularly for large, complex modernization efforts. These models often emphasize annual contract value thresholds, portfolio breadth, and transformation experience. Missing even a few high-value criteria can dramatically alter competitive positioning.

Smart capture teams reverse-engineer the scoring model. They map corporate experience against each evaluation factor to identify weaknesses early, and, when necessary, they adjust team composition to ensure maximum competitiveness.

#3: Demonstration Capability is the New Differentiator. Agencies are increasingly requiring vendors to explain howthey rationalize portfolios, modernize legacy systems, or execute complex transformations, and in later phases demonstrate that capability through structured exercises. Demonstrations must be purposeful, aligned to evaluation criteria, and accessible to evaluators who are scoring against defined factors. A brilliant technical solution that fails to clearly reduce risk, improve uptime, or lower long-term costs will not score well.

Winning teams rehearse. They conduct multiple mock evaluation panels and refine how subject matter experts communicate complex solutions, reinforcing Strength-Based Winning® principles.

#4: Tie Performance to the Evaluation Criteria. A challenge-based procurement does not eliminate structured evaluation; it intensifies it. Agencies still assess technical capability, risk mitigation, scalability, cybersecurity, and cost realism. The difference is that they are now watching vendors perform against those factors.

If uptime, long-term cost reduction, or continuous cybersecurity monitoring are priorities, your demonstration must explicitly show how your approach achieves those outcomes. Evaluators should not infer your value—they should see it. Too often, vendors over-engineer demonstrations and under-communicate relevance, but the most successful teams anchor every explanation, visual, and live example to what matters most in the source selection plan.

#5: Operational Readiness Matters More Than Ever. In many cases, federal buyers are signaling a shift away from time-and-material staffing approaches toward more automated, productized, outcome-oriented delivery models, and contractors must show they can operate at that level. This requires internal alignment across capture, business development, and proposal teams, as well as executive involvement early in the pursuit lifecycle. Challenge-based procurements blur the lines between capture strategy and proposal execution, and organizations that treat them as separate disciplines risk falling behind.

The Bottom Line: Proof Is the New Persuasion

Challenge-based procurements reflect a broader evolution in federal acquisition. Agencies want confidence that vendors can execute, not just describe. Offerors that prepare early, align demonstrations to evaluation criteria, and treat self-scoring as a competitive strategy will seize the advantage. Contact Lohfeld Consulting for help strengthening your positioning, aligning your strategy, and improving your win probability.

Relevant Information

• How to Eliminate Proposal Weaknesses Before Submission

• How to Build Proposals that Win and Wow

• How to Fix the Proposal Processes Holding You Back

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By Brenda Crist, Vice President at Lohfeld Consulting Group, MPA, CPP APMP Fellow

Lohfeld Consulting Group has proven results specializing in helping companies create winning captures and proposals. As the premier capture and proposal services consulting firm focused exclusively on government markets, we provide expert assistance to government contractors in Capture Planning and Strategy, Proposal Management and Writing, Capture and Proposal Process and Infrastructure, and Training. In the last 3 years, we’ve supported over 550 proposals winning more than $170B for our clients—including the Top 10 government contractors. Lohfeld Consulting Group is your “go-to” capture and proposal source! Start winning by contacting us at www.lohfeldconsulting.com and join us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube^(TM).