Prime contractor
The prime contractor holds the contract directly with the buyer and bears full responsibility for performance — including every subcontractor's share. The prime signs the proposal, fronts the compliance burden, and owns the customer relationship.
Priming is a risk-and-relationship position: the buyer has one throat to choke, and it belongs to the prime. In proposals, the prime owns overall solution coherence, integrates subcontractor content into one voice, and answers for team qualifications as if they were its own — evaluators score the team through the prime's accountability story. Public-sector primes additionally carry flow-down obligations (clauses that must propagate into subcontracts) and, in small-business set-asides, limitations on how much work may flow to subs. The strategic calculus of prime versus sub is exposure versus economics: primes capture relationship equity and margin control; subs buy revenue with less risk and less say.
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