Am I ready for
a facility clearance?

Companies chase a facility clearance at the wrong point in the story.

A facility clearance is not a credential you earn and then go shopping with. It is a determination made against classified work that already exists, requested by the organization that has that work. So the sequence runs the opposite way to how most companies imagine it: the requirement comes first, the sponsor comes second, and the clearance comes last.

That inversion is why the question feels unanswerable from the inside. A capable company with a strong past-performance story and no classified requirement is not close to a facility clearance, and a small company with one classified subcontract in hand is. Neither fact is about merit. Both are about whether there is a specific piece of classified work that someone needs you to perform.

Pursuing it too early is expensive in a quiet way. It consumes months of leadership attention, produces legal and consulting spend against a package no one will submit, and displaces the work that would actually move you toward the cleared market: positioning, teaming, and the security posture you can build without a clearance at all.

The same six things, in roughly this order.

• No classified requirement behind the ambition. A company decides it wants to work in the cleared market and starts preparing paperwork. There is no contract, no named pursuit, and no program office that needs its access, so there is nothing for anyone to submit.
• A sponsor was assumed rather than confirmed. A prime says the relationship is promising, or a program manager is encouraging, and that gets treated as sponsorship. Sponsorship is a formal request made by an organization that has a classified requirement for your access.
• Ownership was never mapped to the top. Investors, holding companies, trusts, a foreign parent, or a convertible note from an overseas fund. None of these are automatically fatal, and all of them are documentation work that takes far longer than expected when it starts late.
• Nobody owns security. No Facility Security Officer, no written procedures, nobody responsible for the insider threat program, and no recordkeeping habit. This is the part companies can fix on their own before anyone asks, and rarely do.
• Key management personnel were not thought through. Which senior officials genuinely need access, which ones can be formally excluded by board resolution, and whether the people in those roles can hold eligibility. Deciding this late reshuffles the governance documents.
• The facility question got tangled with the clearance question. Companies assume a clearance means building a SCIF, price a construction project they may not need, and stall. Storing classified information is a separate determination from being eligible to access it.

Seven answers worth having before you spend anything.

Answer what you know. Mark the rest not sure.

Twenty-eight planning-level questions across seven areas. There is no score and no verdict at the end, because nothing on this page can produce one. What you get is a picture of where you stand and what to do next, and it builds as you answer.

Your FCL readiness picture

Preparation, not determination.

• Sponsorship path. Salian helps you identify and prepare for the sponsorship path: who would have the classified requirement, what they need from you, and what has to be true before they can act.
• Facility clearance readiness and process support. Working through the entity, ownership, personnel, and security questions in the order they actually matter, and preparing what the sponsor and the government will ask for.
• Ownership and personnel preparation. Mapping ownership and control to the top of the structure, assembling the supporting corporate records, and working through which officials need access and which can be excluded by board resolution.
• Security program stand-up. The Facility Security Officer function, written procedures, insider threat responsibility, training, and recordkeeping that a cleared company has to run continuously.
• Secure facility delivery. When the work does require classified storage, a closed area, or a SCIF: scoping, design coordination, construction management, accreditation package preparation, and coordination with the AO/CSA.
• Advisory. Scoping, capture and acquisition support, and a plain answer when a pursuit is not winnable yet.

The decisions belong to the government.

• The facility clearance itself. DCSA, or the applicable Cognizant Security Agency, determines facility clearances. No consultant, and no tool, changes that.
• Whether anyone sponsors you. Sponsorship comes from a Government Contracting Activity or a cleared prime with a classified subcontract requirement, and it follows their requirement, not your readiness.
• Foreign interest outcomes. The government reviews the disclosed facts and decides whether a mitigation arrangement applies and which one fits.
• Facility accreditation. The applicable Accrediting Official or Cognizant Security Authority accredits a secure facility. Authorizing Officials authorize systems.
• Personnel eligibility. Individual clearance eligibility is a government determination about that person, made on that person's facts.

If you want a second read on your picture.

Send it, or do not. The picture above is complete on its own and the page does not hold anything back behind an email address. If you do send it, a person at Salian reads the summary, checks whether the sequence you are on makes sense, and replies with what they would do first. If the honest answer is that a facility clearance is not your next problem, you will be told that.

When there is a real classified requirement and a sponsorship path, the practical work is the same every time: confirm the requirement, determine who would sponsor and what they need, map ownership and control with the documents behind it, settle key management personnel and exclusions, appoint and equip a Facility Security Officer, and prepare the SF-328, the DD Form 441, and the supporting corporate records so the sponsor is never waiting on you. The sponsor initiates the request with DCSA.

If the work also needs classified storage or a secure facility of your own, that runs on a separate track. Start with what a secure facility costs or a scoping conversation. To work through the forms in more detail once a sponsorship path exists, the FCL Navigator is the longer tool.

Where the requirements on this page come from.

Regulatory statements above trace to the sources below, all retrieved 2026-09-02. Regulations change and specific facts govern. Confirm anything you intend to act on against the current text, and with counsel where it matters.

• 32 CFR Part 117 (NISPOM), section 117.9, Entity eligibility determination. DoD / DCSA. Sponsorship by a Government Contracting Activity or a currently cleared contractor at 117.9(a)(10); entity eligibility separate from safeguarding capability at 117.9(a)(3); eligibility criteria and key management personnel at 117.9(c). ecfr.gov/current/title-32/.../section-117.9
• 32 CFR 117.7, Procedures. Security officials and key management personnel, exclusion resolutions at 117.7(c)(2), and the insider threat program at 117.7(d). ecfr.gov/current/title-32/.../section-117.7
• 32 CFR 117.11, Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence (FOCI). The FOCI standard at 117.11(a)(1), the SF-328 submission requirement at 117.11(c), and the mitigation instruments at 117.11(d)(2). ecfr.gov/current/title-32/.../section-117.11
• SF-328, Certificate Pertaining to Foreign Interests. Revised 2025-05-12. gsa.gov/reference/forms/certificate-pertaining-to-foreign-interests
• DD Form 441, Department of Defense Security Agreement. Executed between the government and the cleared entity. esd.whs.mil/.../dd0441.pdf
• DCSA, 32 CFR Part 117 NISPOM Rule and the facility clearance process. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. dcsa.mil/Industrial-Security/.../32-CFR-Part-117-NISPOM-Rule/
• SAM.gov entity registration and CAGE code. GSA and DLA. sam.gov

Tell us what you need to accomplish.

Facility, clearance readiness, software, accreditation support, rescue or advisory: describe the requirement and we will tell you which it is. If a facility clearance is not the right next move for you, that is a useful answer too, and it is free.