Implications of instituting FAR

I work for a company who is beginning to bid on Government contracts, and those contracts are requiring that we meet certain setions of FAR. I used to be in defense contracting but its been a while, I am trying to tell peopel here that this is a major undertaking. Is there anyone out there that has been able to institute FAR procedure without adding staff or completely chaning how you do business?

Most of the FARs in our contract were fairly benign, but that could be as a result of the area our contract was in (student loans). It was the NIST controls that were the time consumers for us. A huge time commitment for us requiring input from many individuals on an ongoing basis.