If you hold federal construction contracts, the clause that requires you to perform a minimum share of the work with your own forces is proposed for deletion.
The FAR Council published a proposed rule on Sept. 18 rewriting FAR Part 36, Construction and Architect-Engineering Contracts, alongside Part 14 on sealed bidding and Part 28 on bonds and insurance. It is one of twelve rules under what the Council calls the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, and it is the first serious rewrite of the federal construction contracting rules in a long time. Comments close Oct. 19, 2026.
What comes out of Part 36
Four removals matter to contractors.
Clause 52.236-1, Performance of Work by the Contractor, is the self-performance floor. The Council says it’s believed to restrict competition on fixed-price contracts and proposes striking it. That clause is the reason a prime on a federal job has to keep a meaningful share of the work in house rather than brokering the whole thing to subs.
FAR 36.212 and clause 52.236-26, the Preconstruction Conference, would go, with the requirement pushed down to the solicitation stage instead of sitting in the regulation. FAR 36.519 and clause 52.236-19, Organization and Direction of the Work, would be removed outright; the Council describes the full-time resident-direction mandate as a nonstatutory overreach. And 52.236-4, Physical Data, would be struck as duplicative of 52.236-3, Site Investigation.
The rule would also separate construction from architect-engineer regulation for the first time since the part traces back to 1946.
The claim worth pressure-testing
The Council states that the Part 36 changes are “not expected to create measurable direct cost savings for the Government or contractors as these proposed changes to FAR part 36 are primarily internal Government procedures.” That’s a self-limiting assertion inside the preamble, and it’s the line trade associations are most likely to contest.
Deleting a self-performance floor is not an internal procedure. It changes who can bid, how a prime structures its team and what a broker-model contractor can plausibly propose. Whether that’s good or bad depends on where you sit, but it is not neutral, and no association comment exists yet.
The physical data and site investigation overlap
Striking 52.236-4 as duplicative of 52.236-3 deserves a closer read than it will probably get. Site Investigation and Physical Data do overlap, but they allocate differential-site-condition risk from slightly different angles, and claims lawyers have spent decades on the gap between them. Consolidating to one clause moves that line. Contractors who price geotechnical risk should read the redline rather than the summary.
Federal construction under the current rules is still being let daily. The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden revitalization, with Grunley as general contractor, is running design-bid-build to a 31 October 2026 reopening under exactly the framework this rule would change.
Oct. 19 is the date. The comment docket is where this gets decided.