The GovCon world isn’t easy. Procurement processes are incredibly complex, and it takes many months for a prospective contract to turn into actual paying work.
We caught up with Mehdi Cherqaoui, president of integrated mission operations and program management solutions at ACT1 Federal, to learn how he navigates this rough terrain, and how ACT1 Federal adds value for its government customers.
What are the common challenges your government clients face?
Our customers have challenges attracting and retaining talented people fast enough to meet their mission and operational requirements. That’s the biggest challenge that the United States government is facing right now. The processes to hire people are cumbersome and very regulated.
How does ACT1 help, and how do you differentiate yourself from other GovCons?
We start by listening intently to our customers’ requirements and challenges so that we can deeply understand them and design solutions that meet their needs and advance their missions.
Oftentimes, our mission and operational support comes by providing the right level of talent faster and cheaper. Sometimes, we support the mission in indirect ways, by helping our customers navigate how to add tasking to existing contracts and being creative in how we provide the talented experts that support our customers’ missions.
Overall, we focus on four things: growth, customer delight, people and value creation. Why “growth”? Because when we grow, we generate resources needed to invest in our people and our customers.
“Customer delight” means being focused on exceeding our customers’ expectations. In terms of “people”: if we take care of our people, our people are going to take care of our customers.
And “value creation” is intended for all stakeholders — our customers, our people, the communities we serve and our industry partners.
What differentiates ACT1 Federal is our focus on these four strategies.
That all starts with growth. What’s your growth strategy?
Following the law of adjacency, our growth strategy is to “land and expand” in our business lines of defense/aviation, space/intel, and international security cooperation.
The first growth vector is what we call internally “the tip of the spear.” That’s being at the forefront of our warfighter customers’ missions — being right there with the customer at the tip of the spear. We provide systems engineering services and mission operations support right there, hands on keyboard, supporting critical customer missions and operations.
Another growth vector is space and intel. We have a strong foothold within U.S. Space Command and the Space Force, and we will continue to expand our support of that community over the next few years.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Government procurement shops are undermanned and stressed. This problem is compounded when customers want to add new requirements to an existing contract, which requires a contract modification and sign-off by the procurement contracting officer or legal. That is a cumbersome process.
Typically, there is separation between the technical or mission/operations customer, and the PCO. That’s how federal acquisition works. So, we must build relationships with our technical customers and PCOs. We provide tailored and unique solutions to win new contracts and/or help our customers through the steps necessary to modify an existing contract.
The GovCon sales cycle continues to be a challenge: from the time we identify an opportunity to the time that opportunity generates revenue, it can be 12-36 months depending on size and complexity. So, we must diversify the opportunities we are chasing, open the aperture and prosecute a bigger pipeline such that we have a constant rolling thunder of opportunities.
It’s a game of numbers. To win one new contract, we must bid three opportunities. And to bid three, we must evaluate 10. Opportunities get canceled, delayed or combined with other opportunities and we end up not bidding some. We really need to look at 10 opportunities or more to bid three and eventually win one.
On a personal note, what makes this work meaningful for you?
I started my career in Toulouse in the south of France, which is the European capital of aerospace and defense. When my wife and I moved to the U.S. back in 2005, I naturally gravitated toward government contracting.
I think the mission of the United States government is noble: We are supporting this nation’s missions by supporting the warfighters, and we are keeping our children and families safe. We support those who make this country what it is today. That is the most gratifying aspect of working as a contractor for the federal government.
At the end of the day, despite the challenges that we face day in and day out, I think government contracting is a wonderful, professional industry. Our missions are very exciting. There are tremendous growth opportunities both personally and for businesses. I love doing what we’re doing at ACT1 Federal.