[ Redline Tactix, LLC · Contract, Cost & Margin Protection ]
Redline Tactix takes hard-won federal and commercial contract discipline and makes it work for small and medium businesses serving commercial clients. We find where margin is leaking across terms, costs, and pricing — then design the architecture to stop it before signature, during performance, and when a dispute threatens the work.
Federal-grade discipline, in plain business terms: we review your agreements, costs, and pricing together, find where margin is exposed, and build protections sized for your company — starting with a diagnostic conversation.
We map your agreements, pricing, and obligations as one structure, and mark where margin is exposed before anyone signs anything new.
Watch for: pricing models that don’t capture the full cost of the work.
Where Leaks Hide
A diagnosis looks across the whole commercial structure — customer and vendor agreements, cost and pricing models, change control, and open exposure — not at a single document in isolation. These are the places leaks can hide.
Pricing models that don’t capture the full cost of the work — labor, materials, overhead, scope, risk, and effort priced on habit instead of structure.
Customer, supplier, and partner agreements executed on the other side’s paper and timeline, before one-sided terms are surfaced and negotiated.
Change orders carried out without proper enforcement — the work is real, but the right to be paid for it isn’t secured.
Risk that only becomes visible once a dispute begins, when the contract — not the memory of the deal — decides the outcome.
The Architect
Most contract problems aren’t a drafting problem — they’re an architecture problem. Terms, pricing, change orders, and dispute posture are load-bearing parts of one structure, and they fail together.
Kristie Ford’s experience spans federal and commercial work — as buyer, seller, administrator, executive, manager, and integrated Cost and Price Analyst. She has worked from the bottom to the top, so she has seen where the leaks, weak points, and problems form across the full architecture, and she reads the financials alongside the contract language.
Why Kristie Ford
This isn’t theory learned from a template. It’s a 36-year record across government and commercial work: signing and administering agreements, pricing the work, and seeing how each decision performs after signature. Redline translates that depth into clear systems a small or medium business can actually run — not government bureaucracy, but the same clarity around cost, price, risk, and performance. Her FAC-C Level III certification is part of that record; for civilian readers, it sits above the CPCM, the industry’s exam-based reference point.
Signed for the government. Worked the commercial side. As a warranted Air Force contracting officer with $150M+ authority and a commercial contracts and pricing leader, Kristie knows how each side evaluates, awards, performs, and enforces.
The financials are part of the architecture. Integrated Cost and Price Analyst expertise spanning forward pricing rate agreements and cost / price analysis — including implementing ProPricer, a professional pricing tool, into companies so their pricing is structured and defensible — plus a $100M+ annual commercial aerospace portfolio at Collins Aerospace.
Programs measured in billions. Prime contract administrator on the B-2 Bomber and Global Hawk programs, an $8B Missile Defense Agency joint R&D portfolio at Northrop Grumman / TASC, the $15B+ National Security Space Launch program, and a $4B+ VA national support mission led as a senior acquisition professional.
Principles that apply, systems that fit. FAR and DFARS are federal regulations — they don’t govern commercial deals. But the principles inside them do apply: clear scope, documented changes, defensible pricing, and accountability for performance. Redline brings that discipline to commercial agreements in systems sized for your pace and resources — the same rigor Kristie has used to help companies strengthen their processes and achieve ISO certification.
Multiple awards and commendations across her federal and commercial career — recognition for contracting excellence, pricing leadership, and results delivered for the programs and companies she served.
How We Work
The same sequence, whether the engagement is a single agreement or an entire portfolio — practical, proportionate, and scaled to the problem the diagnosis finds and the resources of a small or medium business.
Find the leak and understand the risk — across customer and vendor agreements, cost structures, pricing, and open exposure.
Design the contract and pricing structure around the problem, not around a template or a government process copied wholesale.
Put the protections into practice — redlines, playbooks, and enforcement habits a lean team actually uses.
Watch for drift, disputes, and new exposure as the work performs.
It starts with a conversation, not a checkout. Every engagement begins with a diagnostic appointment — a chance to talk through your structure together and understand what your company actually needs. That’s where the architecture starts, and because every company is different, the work is shaped around you from there.
Book the diagnosticWorkshops & Fireside Chats
Working sessions for commercial teams, where guest subject-matter experts teach individual parts of the contracts architecture — the clauses, costs, pricing decisions, and enforcement moves your team uses every week.
Hands-on sessions built around real customer and vendor agreement structures — read a clause, price the risk, and see where the margin moves.
Dates & topics · to be announced
Conversations with guest experts and commercial operators on the parts of the system they know best — negotiation, costing, disputes, and enforcement.
Guest speakers · to be announced
A session scoped to your company’s agreements and leak points, run for the people who quote, sign, price, and perform the work.
By appointment
Schedule a diagnostic appointment. We’ll look at your customer and vendor agreements, cost and pricing structure, and open exposure together — then identify where margin is at risk and what to build first.
Operations and contract-strategy consulting only — not legal advice or legal representation.
