Four practice areas. Drawn from operating experience, not theory.
Compliance and ethics, defense and logistics strategy, executive coaching, and business turnaround. Each draws on more than two decades inside the federal contracting market, more than $92 million in awarded work stateside and internationally, and the years that taught what these programs actually have to do under operating pressure.
Government contracting compliance & ethics
For firms scaling fast enough that controls cannot stay informal.
Real compliance does not live in a binder on a shelf. It lives in how an operator behaves when no one is looking, when a relationship is at stake, when revenue depends on a judgment call about a gift, a meal, an introduction, a side deal. The programs that hold up under audit are the ones built around those moments, not around the FAR clauses alone.
We design and stress-test the program, with particular attention to the spaces most consultants treat as "soft": relationship management, gifts and hospitality, BD-to-procurement handoffs, and the human dynamics that real compliance has to govern. The goal is not paper. The goal is judgment, and the structure that protects judgment under pressure.
What we deliver
- Compliance program design or rebuild, calibrated to actual operating pressure
- Code of Conduct, conflicts policy, gifts-and-hospitality controls drafted for your environment
- BD-to-procurement handoff protocols and approval routing
- Relationship management framework: clients, agencies, partners, intermediaries
- Ethics training, scenario-based, for executives and front-line BD
- Internal investigation playbook and stakeholder communication framework
- Compliance officer coaching, or stand-in compliance officer for interim periods
- Stress-test of the existing program under specific risk scenarios
Typical engagement
Eight to sixteen weeks for design or rebuild.
Each engagement closes with documented controls, named owners, and a calendar for ongoing review. Longer embedded engagements are available for firms operating without an internal compliance officer.
See engagement options →Defense & logistics strategy
For firms competing in DoD, DHS, and federal civilian markets.
Defense, DHS, and federal civilian procurement reward firms that pick the right battles. Bid strategy is not a list of opportunities to chase. It is a sequence: which vehicles to be on, which primes to team with, where to lead, where to sub, when to walk away, and when to commit the firm to a pursuit that defines a year.
We work that sequence with you. The advisory draws on Paragon Government Solutions' day-to-day operating experience in strategic procurement, contract execution, and logistics services, and on more than twenty years of pattern recognition from the contracting market itself.
What we deliver
- Bid strategy: portfolio review, pursuit prioritization, no-bid discipline
- Prime and sub positioning analysis per pursuit
- Teaming structure: agreements, JVs, Mentor-Protégé, prime-sub allocation
- Vehicle selection and access strategy (GSA, IDIQs, set-asides, OASIS, SEWP)
- Operational planning for execution: staffing, subcontracting, performance management
- Defense and DHS market intelligence, with named-account focus
- Pursuit-level capture support for the few opportunities that define the year
- Post-award strategy: option-year positioning, follow-on capture, recompete preparation
Typical engagement
Retainer or pursuit-based.
Strategy work is typically six to twelve months of embedded engagement, with monthly portfolio review and live capture support on prioritized pursuits. Specific high-stakes pursuits can be scoped individually.
See engagement options →Executive coaching
For founders and senior leaders running companies through hard quarters.
The personal cost of running a company is rarely the subject of a consulting engagement. It should be. Founders carry decisions nobody else in the building can carry for them: layoffs, succession, fraught negotiations with co-founders or board members, the slow accumulation of compromises that erode the culture they wanted to build.
The coaching practice is private, structured, and direct. It draws on operating experience, not theory. Conversations happen on a regular cadence, in confidence, and the work is judged by whether the executive makes the next decision more cleanly than the last one.
What we deliver
- Confidential one-on-one engagement, structured around the executive's calendar and pressure points
- Decision-quality framework for uncertainty, time pressure, and stakeholder noise
- Succession planning, for the executive and for key reports
- Co-founder or board-member relationship coaching, where relevant
- Crisis-mode coaching for executives facing personal or firm-level reckoning
- Long-arc career planning: when to sell, when to scale, when to step back
- Optional 360-style feedback collection from peers, reports, and board members
Typical engagement
Six-month minimum, often twelve to twenty-four months.
Sessions are biweekly or monthly, with ad-hoc availability between for live pressure moments. The coaching engagement is private. No deliverables leave the engagement without the executive's review.
See engagement options →Business turnaround
For firms in distress, mid-event, or recovering from one.
A firm in distress does not have time for a fifty-page strategy deck. It has weeks, sometimes days, to triage. The first job is honest diagnosis: what is broken, what is salvageable, who needs to be in the room, who needs to be out of it. The second job is to stabilize. The third is to rebuild.
Turnaround work is the hardest engagement we take. We take it because we have lived inside a version of it. The framework is not academic. It is what we wish someone had handed us in the years that defined this practice.
What we deliver
- Honest diagnostic: financial, contractual, regulatory, reputational, cultural
- Stabilization plan: cash, contracts, key personnel, customer communication
- Leadership transitions: who stays, who goes, who acts in interim, in what order
- Stakeholder repair: agencies, primes, lenders, employees, board members
- Post-event recovery work: rebuilding the program that broke
- Operating support, hands-on, during the stabilization phase
- Long-term rebuild plan with named milestones and named owners
Typical engagement
Triage in two to four weeks, then custom scope.
Operating support follows on a custom scope, often ninety days minimum. Some turnaround work runs eighteen months or longer, depending on the depth of the rebuild.
See engagement options →Not sure which practice area applies? Start with a diagnostic.
Forty-five minutes. We map the situation to the right practice area, the right scope, and the right engagement model. Written diagnostic follows whether or not we work together.