FAR Council Proposes Overhaul of Parts 14, 28, 36, and 52
The proposed rule is the latest tranche in the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, but the Federal Register notice is light on clause-level line-out, contractors need the full text to know what actually changes.
TL;DR
The FAR Council proposed amendments to FAR parts 14 (Sealed Bidding), 28 (Bonds and Insurance), 36 (Construction and Architect-Engineer Contracts), and 52 (Solicitation Provisions and Contract Clauses) on September 18, implementing Executive Order 14275's mandate to strip non-statutory content from the FAR. The Part 14 rewrite has been in motion since at least September 2025, when the Council released model deviation text preserving only statutory requirements, agencies including DoD and the Udall Foundation adopted class deviations shortly after. The proposed rule extends that pruning approach to the other three parts. Specific clause retentions and deletions aren't surfaced in the notice; contractors will need to review the full proposed text to assess the impact on their existing compliance structures.
The FAR Council published its proposed rule for FAR parts 14, 28, 36, and 52 on September 18, the latest installment in the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) launched under Executive Order 14275. The order, signed April 15, 2025, directs the FAR Council to remove all provisions not required by statute and to rewrite the remainder in plain language. OMB Memorandum M-25-26, issued May 2, 2025, instructed agencies to adopt model deviation text within 30 days of its release.
Part 14 (Sealed Bidding) is the most advanced of the four. The FAR Council released model deviation text for Part 14 on September 25, 2025, and opened informal feedback through November 3, 2025. The revised Part 14 preserves only statutory requirements: full and open competition (10 U.S.C. § 3201), planning and solicitation (10 U.S.C. § 3206), basis of award and rejection (10 U.S.C. § 3301), and sealed bid procedures (10 U.S.C. § 3302), among others. The OPM class deviation memorandum dated April 13, 2026, confirms that the rewrite is organized around "structural reorganization for logical flow," "streamlining through consolidation and plain language," and "modernization for current practices." DoD issued its own DFARS Part 214 class deviation effective February 1, 2026, and the Udall Foundation followed with its deviation in November 2025.
What's still unknown is how deeply the scalpel cuts in Parts 28, 36, and 52. The Federal Register notice proposes revisions to all four parts but doesn't enumerate which clauses in Part 52 (a sprawling catalog of solicitation provisions and contract clauses) are marked for deletion. Contractors who've built compliance programs around specific clauses will need to cross-reference the proposed text directly against their current obligations. The research record confirms that the acquisition.gov FAR Overhaul page catalogs rewritten parts but doesn't yet provide line-out versions for Parts 28, 36, or 52 in the same manner as Part 14.
For practitioners, the operational question is whether existing contracts under class deviations will be disturbed by the final rule, and whether the comment period yields meaningful changes to the Part 52 pruning before the rule is finalized.
Published ·Deep Fathom