Carl once dropped a bit of wisdom on me that I’ve never forgotten: “In government contracting, either nothing happens for weeks, or it all happens at once.”
The "nothing happens" phase—quietly managing the portfolio before the storm.
Those words rang painfully true yesterday. It was 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. We had spent the last few weeks in the "nothing happens" phase. Then, the pendulum swung hard. The prime contractor moved our meeting up to 3:00 p.m.
We needed a fully realized technical approach, a delivery schedule, a staffing model, and a deck that proved we understood the client's unique constraints. In 2023, this would have been a "War Room" event. But this is 2026.
The Architect’s View: Killing the Ego
as an architect, I’ve learned that to operate at this speed, you have to kill your ego. You don't need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to know how to spin it.
I opened an agentic IDE and pointed it toward a repository of a previous product. I prompted context, asking the AI to strip proprietary data and re-contextualize the architecture for our new Smart Grid prospect. It gets you 80% there in seconds. The skill lies in taking that raw suggestion and "spinning" it—adjusting tone and constraints until it's a legitimate strategy.
The Business Lead’s View: Data-Driven Staffing
While I wrestled with architecture, Carl tackled staffing—the historically tedious part. He didn't start from zero. He pulled data from our ten most successful project builds and fed it into an LLM to synthesize a new model for this specific opportunity.
Carl vs. The Data Monster—Turning three hours of Excel into twenty minutes of refinement.
Instead of three hours in Excel, he spent twenty minutes refining the AI’s output. He used the tool to bypass the drudgery so he could focus on the strategy.
The 3:00 P.M. Handoff
At 2:55 p.m., I sent the final deck to Carl—a true photo-finish. Carl pitched the framework and delivery lifecycle we had finalized hours ago. The result? The partner was all in. They are now taking us directly to the government client.
The Handoff—Delivering high-level strategy without dropping a single ball on other projects.
The Takeaway
The most impressive part wasn't building a winning pitch in six hours. It was doing it without dropping a single ball on our other active projects. We delivered a week’s worth of strategy in a morning by refusing to do things the "hard way."
In GovCon, when it "all happens at once," this is the only way to survive.
By Collin Schreyer, architect