Red Team Review: A Blueprint for Structured Proposal Wins

A red team review only pays off when it’s built like a real evaluation, not a courtesy read. This red team blueprint, from Russell Smith, President of OCI for 39 years, walks through how a real proposal red team review got planned and executed on a live proposal, and why the same structured process is what turns “we read it and it looks great” into “we scored it against Section M and here’s what needs fixing.

” A good, worthwhile (meaning: “worth the huge interruption and distraction”) Red Team doesn’t just “happen” by itself, it takes a lot of advance preparation effort, organization, and setup. Here’s how we planned and executed the best-ever Red Team Review.

Start With a Blue Team, Not a Red Team

First, we had a “Blue Team,” immediately after we had shred out the RFP requirements to our proposal outline. This Blue Team comprised the same individuals who would later review our proposal draft. The objective of the Blue Team was to confirm that we were answering all of the RFP questions and including our win themes and strategies in our proposal where the evaluators expect to find them.

This sanity check, before we started actual writing, would avoid major re-organizing at the last minute. With this confirmation (and redirection, if needed) we knew that our proposal was on the right track and that post Red Team changes would consist of rewriting, not major reorganizing.

Ideal Red Team reviewers know nothing about your company beyond what they read in your proposal, because that’s exactly the customer’s evaluation environment.

The best individuals for the Red Team are people who don’t know a lot about your company, the only thing they should know about your company is what they read in your proposal because that more accurately replicates your customer’s evaluation environment.

Given that “ideal,” for economy most Red Teams comprise senior management or specialists from your company or other divisions, perhaps supplemented by one or two consultants. When this happens, it is all the more important to follow a structured review that evaluates your proposal against the RFP Section , Evaluation Factors for Award, and actually scores it against the evaluation criteria.

Why a Structured Red Team Review Matters

The scoring in a red team review can be numerical (1, 2, 3, etc), subjective (+, OK, -), or color-coded (Red – Unacceptable/Non-responsive; Yellow – Marginal; Green – Acceptable; or Blue – Exceptional with added benefits to the customer). We prefer color-coding because it does not try to “measure a brick with a micrometer,” because it is very graphic, and because it is the scheme that the DoD evaluators will probably use. The value of actually scoring the proposal is that it forces the reviewers’ attention on the evaluation criteria and results in a more objective review.

Scoring Method	Notation	When Used
Numerical	1, 2, 3…	When granularity matters and you want quantitative comparison across sections
Subjective	+, OK, −	Quick internal reviews where nuance matters more than precision
Color-coded	Red / Yellow / Green / Blue	Preferred — matches DoD evaluators’ actual scoring scheme

How DoD Actually Evaluates Proposals

Before we set up the formal Red Team Review process, a few words are in order to explain exactly how DoD customers do and don’t evaluate proposals. Understanding real DoD proposal evaluation — and specifically how SSEB proposal scoring actually works — is what lets your red team review replicate the customer’s evaluation environment instead of just simulating a friendly read-through.

What DoD Evaluators Do NOT Do

First, let’s clear up some popular misconceptions. The evaluators:

How the Evaluation Structure Actually Works

Here is how the Federal Acquisition Regulations require them to evaluate and score competitive proposals, and these regulations are generally followed very closely in order to avoid protests. The evaluation organization is organized into a Source Selection Evaluation Board (SSEB) (or team) that will evaluate and score the proposals.

There is also a Source Selection Advisory Council (SSAC) that will advise the decision maker about other factors germane to the source acquisition (i.e., political, budgetary, programmatic, etc.). Finally, there is the Source Selection Authority (SSA) who is the specific individual who will make the actual decision, based upon all of the information available.

This SSA is under incredible pressure from the eventual users, competing interests, Government oversight agencies, Congress, the White House (on large programs), and the public. It is a safe assumption that the SSA makes the decision that is safest for his or her career, and that can be fully justified to Representatives or Senators of the losing bidders.

Entity	Role
SSEB (Source Selection Evaluation Board)	Evaluates and scores proposals against the Source Selection Plan
SSAC (Source Selection Advisory Council)	Advises the SSA on political, budgetary, and programmatic factors
SSA (Source Selection Authority)	The individual who makes the actual award decision
SSP (Source Selection Plan)	Locked-in scoring standards approved before proposals are accepted

A Real Example: Cheney’s F/A-18E/F Decision

For example, in 1991, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney justified, to Senator C.S. Bond, his selection of the F/A-18E/F over the F-14:

“In selecting the F/A-18E/F, we considered not only performance and unit price, but also a host of other factors which impact on cost, such as weapon system reliability, maintainability, safety, maintenance costs, squadron manning requirements and cost per flight hour.

“In the final analysis the F/A-18E/F was the clear choice over the F-14. It is three times more reliable, twice as easy to maintain, has a safety record which is fifty percent better, requires about twenty-five percent fewer maintenance personnel, and costs about twenty-five percent less to operate per flight hour. When combined, these factors clearly show that the F/A-18E/F is the more cost effective aircraft.”

It’s hard to argue against that, and your red team review should ensure that your proposal is equally convincing. To do so, it has to convey a powerful message to the evaluators.

How the SSEB Scores Proposals

Putting It All Together

For our specific proposal, Section M also identified seven key “tenets” that the evaluators would look for in order to make a “best value” award. If your RFP includes some Key Performance Parameters (KPPs), then you can bet that these will be well represented in the Source Selection Plan criteria. The SSEB presents its findings to the SSA, usually in color codes without identifying the specific offeror by name. The SSAC advises the SSA on other factors that might affect his/her decision, and the SSA makes the final decision.

Worth remembering: The SSA almost always reads the Executive Summaries.

Our Red Team Blueprint: 10 Steps for Setup and Execution

Now we need to set up a structured red team review that will (hopefully) ensure that your proposal makes it through the SSEB. Simply handing your Red Team a copy of the RFP and your proposal may make you feel better, and might even improve your proposal, but has little value in significantly improving your win probability. Proper red team review preparation — from red team reviewer selection through room setup — is what separates a scored, actionable review from a passive read-through.

Room and Materials Setup (Steps 1–4)

The following four steps cover the physical red team review setup; everything that needs to be in place before reviewers walk into the room.

1. Match experts to sections. We identified experts for each technical and management discipline germane to our proposal, and matched them in advance to specific proposal volumes and sections.
2. Two reviewers per section. Every proposal section was reviewed by at least two reviewers, but no one had to review the entire proposal.
3. Set up the room the night before with tables, name plates with the individuals’ functions noted, and reference materials.
4. Provide each reviewer a three-ring notebook with his/her name on the cover and the following material inside:
   • Copy of the Red Team Review Plan and schedule
   • List of all Red Team Members, their review assignments, and contact information
   • List of proposal team management, volume leaders, authors, publications personnel, and their contact information
   • Copy of the RFP Section L Instructions to Offerors (proposal organization instructions)
   • Copy of RFP Section M Evaluation Factors for Award
   • Complete proposal Master Table of Contents (outline)

Reviewer Support Materials (Steps 5–8)

5. Distribute assigned sections. We provided copies of the proposal sections that each would be reviewing at their location.
6. Include the Shred-out to Proposal. We provided copies of the RFP Shred-out to Proposal, showing the actual RFP Requirements that we were addressing in each numbered proposal paragraph (which had been “blessed” by the Blue Team much earlier).
7. Keep reference documents on hand. We provided convenient copies of the complete RFP and reference documents for their use, if needed.
8. Stock the desk supplies. We provided paper, Post-Its, paper clips, and red pens (no black pens or pencils allowed, too hard to see when the proposal pages are marked in black).

Deficiency Reporting and Running the Session (Steps 9–10)

9. Prepare Proposal Deficiency Reports (PDRs). We provided stacks of Proposal Deficiency Reports with places to score — understanding of the problem, compliance with requirements, soundness of approach, and risk assessment and mitigation. All “yellow” and “red” scores required a PDR.
10. Allow direct markup for simple changes. Because of the amount to be reviewed and the short time remaining before submittal, the reviewers were allowed to mark simple changes directly on the proposal draft with their red pens, placing a Post-It on the page so that we could find their markups easily.

After self-introductions all around, the Program Manager briefed the program, and I, as Red Team Leader, briefed the review process and Red Team Review Plan. All volume managers and authors attended this opening session so the proposal team and Red Team would know each other, and the authors were then allowed to leave, even to go home since it was a weekend, but to stay within reach if the reviewers needed to contact them.

At the end of the first day, we held a Plenary Session to determine how the review was going. There have been times on other proposals when the Plenary brought to light the fact that the proposal draft was so rough and incomplete that it could not be reviewed. For that proposal, I reorganized the Red Team into a “Tiger Team,” and assigned each member proposal sections to “Fix or Repair as Needed.” This was the only way we got the proposal out (which, not surprisingly, lost anyway).

For this proposal, however, the review was going well, but, because of the complexities of the proposal and our offering, it was apparent that we would not be able to review the entire proposal as planned. Therefore, I split the team, reorganized the assignments and we were able to complete the review successfully the second day.

Automated Proposal Deficiency Reports (PDRs)

As the Red Team Reviewers completed proposal sections, they gave their completed PDRs to their panel leader who reviewed them, and then gave them to our Red Team Management group, where three of us entered the PDRs into the POW2000™ Red Team Review function. When we entered the PDRs, POW2000 automatically entered the reviewers’ and author contact information, and the RFP Section M evaluation factor under which the proposal paragraph was evaluated.

These PDRs could be organized and printed in order of Red Team Deficiency Control Number, proposal paragraph number, Red Team Panel, reviewer, or author. We printed and distributed hard copies, and e-mailed applicable copies to the volume leaders and authors, and to our teammates across the country.

Was the Red Team Worth the Time?

Time well-spent or a waste of time? This red team review was very difficult, because of the short time to prepare the proposal and review materials, the complexities of the RFP and our proposal, the short time to review a large amount of material, and the short time to respond before submittal. We spent many 16-hour days preparing for it. The reason it worked was because we planned and implemented a workable process, we provided everything the reviewers needed in a convenient format, and the volume managers, authors, publications personnel, and reviewers all cooperated. For this Red Team Review, it was “Time Well Spent.”

How OCI Supports Your Red Team Review

Russell Smith has led OCI for 39 years, and OCI has supported over 5,000 proposals with a talent bench of 6,000 consultants, meaning the blueprint above isn’t a theoretical framework, it’s the process we actually run on real federal proposals. Two services map directly to what a red team review needs:

For more on structured proposal review, see OCI’s related guides on Effectively Using Red Teams, 47 Reasons Why Your Red Team May Be Broken, and How to Review a Proposal.

Frequently Asked Questions