Visitors and readers may have noticed that the blog article output has fallen off recently. We’ve published nine articles year-to-date, which annualizes to an output of less than 40. Not good! But in my defense, I’ve been busy.

In my spare time, I edit two texts for LexisNexis. One addresses accounting aspects of the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the other covers the Cost Accounting Standards. This is the third year I’ve edited those books, having taken over from Darrell Oyer in 2019. Darrell edited those same two books for many years, having taken over from the original author, Lane K. Anderson. You’d think editing the texts would be relatively painless. (At least, I thought so when I agreed to become the editor.) All you do is update the text for regulatory revisions and significant court cases. Et voila! Easy peasy.

But it turns out that each book is about 1,000 pages long, and the editor needs to review every word on every page, because over time things change. Footnotes that reference obsolete citations need to be updated. Paragraphs written in the present tense when they were new now need to be rewritten in the past tense. And yes, recent court cases and regulatory revisions need to be addressed as well.

Plus, in 2020 there was this whole COVID-19 pandemic thing. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? In any case, many chapters (of both books) needed to be updated to discuss the implications of the CARES Act and the Payroll Protection Program loans (and forgiveness thereof) and Section 3610 “paid leave” cost allocations (and recoveries thereof). This led to quite a bit of new text being added.

To sum up this rather wordy mea culpa, I just spent about 300 hours editing those two texts, and so I really didn’t have much time to spend on writing blog articles for this site. (Plus, you know, Apogee Consulting, Inc., had some client work that needed tending to as well.)

All that being said, I did find some time to try something new. I joined a podcast along with two other people. It’s called the “Acquivore.” (Don’s idea, not mine.) Every two weeks we spend an hour discussing some aspect of government contracting. The other two participants are long-time government contracting experts, having working in the DOD’s “Fourth Estate” as well as being (past) instructors at the Defense Acquisition University, teaching up-and-coming contracting officers the ropes. I am honored that Don “Acquisition” Mansfield and Jennifer Townsend asked me to join them; and I hope that I don’t come off as the newbie in comparison.

In my opinion, the podcasts are kind of rough. None of us is a polished talking head, and I don’t think Don spends a lot of time editing the product. So it is maybe not the easiest hour to spend, unless you are interesting in the topic(s) we are discussing.

If you are interested in the podcasts, here are some links to Don’s YouTube channel:

Acquivore Podcast #1 Why Won’t Contracting Officers Settle Questioned Direct Costs?

Acquivore Podcast #2 Prescribing "Statement of Work Language"

Acquivore Podcast #3 Contracting in the time of COVID-19

We will continue doing these podcasts every two weeks until we run out of things to say.

At this point, the end of March, 2021, the editing job is complete. (I finished early!) The client work has settled down a bit. (The termination settlement proposal was submitted, among other client milestones.) And therefore, unless something unexpectedly drops in, I will be returning to writing these blog articles. I will aim for writing two per week, but we’ll have to see how it goes. If there is nothing that comes to my attention that calls for an article, then I don’t write one. (But there usually is something nearly every week that needs to be written about….)

Until then, take care of yourselves.