If your HVAC, plumbing, or electrical business does work for a federal agency — a military base, a VA facility, a GSA building — or you’re trying to get in that door, paying attention to the recent federal contracting regulations is key. Not in a general “small business awareness” way. In a “this changes how you register, how you find work, and what happens if a contract gets cut short” way.
What Is the FAR, and Why Should a Trades Contractor Care?
For context, since most trades contractors never had a reason to learn this: the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulation) is the massive rulebook that governs how every federal agency buys anything — including the facilities maintenance, construction, and repair contracts you’d bid on. It’s why federal solicitations look the way they do, why your contract has the clauses it does, and why federal work runs differently than a residential or commercial job. It hasn’t been rewritten top-to-bottom in over 40 years. It’s being rewritten right now.
The Executive Order Behind the Rewrite
On April 15, 2025, the President signed Executive Order 14275, “Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement,” ordering the FAR Council to strip the rulebook down to only what’s legally required. The result is the “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul” (RFO) — 12 rules total, rolling out in 30-day windows inviting public comment. The first four rules dropped June 23rd, 2026. Comments close tomorrow. Expect at least two more 30-day comment windows before this is finished.
SAM.gov registration changes 2026
For the small business contractors, here’s what’s actually relevant to folks in your position:
𝗙𝗔𝗥 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲-𝟬𝟬𝟭: SAM.gov registration and the Rule of Two
Rewrites the FAR’s foundation, including how you register and certify as a federal contractor in SAM.gov, and adds a “sunset clock” to any rule not required by actual law.
✅ Pro: The SAM.gov registration (the website to find government contracts) gets genuinely simpler — one clean set of business-level info instead of the sprawling annual paperwork refresh.
⚠️ Con: The “Rule of Two” — a rule that pushes a federal contracting officer to “set-aside” a job for small businesses when two or more can do the work — is only guaranteed by law up to the Simplified Acquisition Threshold, which is $350k in contract awards as of October 1st, 2025. Above that threshold, it’s the FAR Council’s own policy choice, not a law (i.e., it’s considered regulatory, not statutory). That version now expires every four years unless the Council actively renews it. If you’re registered in the SBA as an 8(a), HUBZone, or other designated socioeconomic category, and you’re just competing as a general small business, that’s the exact mechanism your access to bigger set-aside jobs depends on.
𝗙𝗔𝗥 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲-𝟬𝟬𝟮: GSA Schedules and Market Research Changes
Tells federal contracting officers to buy through existing GSA Schedules (think “Government Amazon”) and similar contract vehicles first, before opening up a new competition, and stops requiring specific outreach steps when agencies research the market for a job.
✅ Pro: If you hold a GSA Schedule (or you’re working toward one), you’re now first in line ahead of open-market competitions.
⚠️ Con: If you don’t hold a Schedule, the outreach step that used to be your best shot at hearing about upcoming work — a required “sources sought” posting — is no longer mandatory at all.
𝗙𝗔𝗥 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲-𝟬𝟬𝟱: Contract Awards Announcements
Raises several dollar thresholds for how opportunities get posted publicly, and makes it optional — not required — for an agency to announce a contract award over $5.5 million.
✅ Pro: Less low-dollar noise to sift through when you’re scanning for smaller jobs.
⚠️ Con: If a general contractor just won a large base-wide facilities award you’d want to sub under, the agency no longer has to tell anyone.
𝗙𝗔𝗥 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲-𝟬𝟬𝟳: Termination Settlement Timelines
If your federal contract ever gets terminated for the government’s convenience, this cuts your deadline to submit a settlement claim from one year down to 90 days, and makes the independent audit of that claim optional instead of automatic.
✅ Pro: Faster closeout, in theory faster payment.
⚠️ Con: 90 days to assemble a full claim — materials, labor, subs, unbilled work — is a tight window if you’re running the shop yourself without a back-office accounting team. And the independent check on the government’s math is no longer guaranteed.
How To Submit a Public Comment
If any of this touches how you work with the federal government now or hope to soon, you have a chance to weigh in on considerations for updating the rules. Start here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/23/2026-12559/federal-acquisition-regulation-revolutionary-federal-acquisition-regulation-overhaul-parts-1-2-4-33 — the “ADDRESSES” section tells you exactly how to file: submit through regulations.gov and cite the FAR Case number in your comment.
What This Means for Your Federal Contracting Strategy
None of the four rules above should change whether you pursue federal work. But together, they change how carefully you should be building the foundation underneath it — and that’s worth sitting with before you scale up federal exposure, not after.
Don’t build your federal strategy on a single set-aside. If you’re competing as a general small business rather than through a certified program like SDVOSB or HUBZone, the above-threshold Rule of Two is now the mechanism your bigger opportunities depend on — and it’s the one item in this rulemaking sitting on a renewable clock instead of permanent statutory footing. If you qualify for a statutory-tier certification and haven’t pursued it, this is a reasonable moment to evaluate that, not because the Rule of Two is going away, but because relying on one non-statutory mechanism for market access is a concentration risk worth diversifying against regardless of how this particular rule shakes out.
Get your SAM.gov profile clean now, before the new structure finalizes. The simplification is a genuine improvement, but transitions are exactly when registrations lapse or get flagged for mismatched information. A clean, current profile costs you an afternoon. A lapsed one costs you a bid.
Treat a GSA Schedule as a real capital decision, not a reflex. The new preference for existing contract vehicles makes holding a Schedule more valuable — but pursuing one is a meaningful time and cost investment, and it only pays off if your pricing, past performance, and capacity can actually support the volume a Schedule is meant to generate. Chasing a Schedule before your operational and financial systems can support the federal workload it might bring in is how “growth” quietly becomes “chaos.” Evaluate it against your actual capacity, not against the fact that it’s newly advantageous.
Build termination risk into your cash-flow planning, not just your contract file.
A 90-day settlement window is workable — if you know it’s coming and have your job costing and documentation practices ready to move fast. It’s a genuine problem if a termination is the first time you’re organizing that information. This is worth a conversation with whoever handles your books, before you’re in the middle of an unplanned termination.
Stop waiting for the government to tell you about opportunities. With award announcements now optional, passive discovery gets less reliable every year. Direct relationships with primes on your target bases and facilities matter more than they used to.
This isn’t over. Two more comment rounds are coming behind these four rules, covering the rest of the FAR. Whatever your position on July 23rd’s rules, treat this as the first of several checkpoints, not a one-time event.
None of this is legal advice, and specific situations vary — if federal work is a meaningful part of your business, it’s worth reviewing your own risk exposure against the actual rule text, not just a summary like this one. If you want a second set of eyes on where your business stands against any of this, that’s a conversation I’m glad to have.