Supplier readiness programs for primes and mid-tier contractors who are responsible for their supply chain's CMMC status. We survey your supplier base, tier it by risk, move at-risk suppliers through standardized readiness tracks, and report progress to you quarterly. Your flow-down exposure becomes a program with a number on it.
On November 10, 2026, CMMC Phase 2 begins. Level 2 certification by a C3PAO becomes a condition of award for applicable CUI contracts, and flow-down makes you responsible for the status of your subcontractors. Certification assessments already carry months of backlog, and a supplier who has not started remediation today will likely not hold certification when your next proposal needs them.
The exposure is structural. A non-compliant critical supplier can disqualify a team, stall a delivery order, or force a late redesign of your supply base. You cannot deliver compliance to your suppliers yourself; that is cost, liability, and headcount outside your mission. But you cannot ignore it either, because the deadline is fixed and the liability is yours.
Most primes know their own status. Very few can defend their suppliers'. That gap is the program.
The program converts an open-ended liability into a bounded, reportable engagement. Every stage has a defined scope, a stated fee, and a deliverable you can put in front of leadership.
The program shapes to how you want to fund it, from fully sponsored to zero-cost endorsement. Every model delivers the same standardized readiness work and the same quarterly reporting.
You purchase the Snapshot and quarterly reporting. Suppliers fund their own remediation at pre-negotiated program rates. You get visibility; they get a path; nobody negotiates pricing twice.
You subsidize a portion of remediation for critical or sole-source suppliers, the ones whose readiness you cannot afford to leave to chance. Everyone else pays program rates.
Where a DoD Mentor-Protégé agreement exists, CMMC compliance assistance qualifies as developmental assistance. You fund the protégé's readiness; DoD reimburses the cost.
Zero cost to you. You distribute the program to your supplier base at pre-negotiated rates and receive aggregate readiness reporting. The lightest lift, and often where programs start.
A supplier program lives or dies on consistency. Thirty suppliers prepared thirty different ways produces thirty different outcomes, and a dashboard nobody trusts. Stehrling delivers every supplier through the same standardized tracks, documented the same way, evidenced the same way, and measured against the same bar: what an assessor will actually accept.
Every engagement is led by a CCA or CCP credentialed practitioner. Our CCAs have conducted formal CMMC assessments, and our team has spent 15+ years inside the DIB, including assessments for top-five defense primes. We know what evidence holds up, what documentation gets challenged, and where suppliers consistently stall. That experience is what makes the quarterly numbers you brief upward defensible.
Your suppliers' enclave vendors and MSPs stay in the picture. We complete what they deploy. A compliant solution is not a compliant organization, and the organizational half is where supplier readiness programs are won.
"We build the program. We bring the expertise. You own the result."
Talk to a practitioner about your supplier population, your program dates, and what a Snapshot would cover. We'll tell you honestly whether a program fits your situation. No sales pitch, response within 24 hours.
Talk to a Practitioner →
An independent firm focused exclusively on CMMC compliance for defense contractors and the DIB.