Courtesy of Tim Whalen
Several contractor organizations I have known have felt they were “blind-sided,” when the government scored their proposal low and awarded the contract to a new firm. Many wished they could do the contract competition over again, including a fresh start with a hard-hitting “vulnerability assessment."
Starting in January 2010, OCI began sponsoring scholarships for school children in Kampala, Uganda. The scholarships will make it possible for 30 school children who would not be able to attend school to go to school.
In January OCI provided training classes in proposal management and writing to about 40 students in Hawaii. One class met on the island of Oahu, while the other was on Maui. The classes were sponsored by a small business consortium. The Oahu class met in the clubhouse of a country club. Principal [...]
Courtesy of Mark Baker and Jon O’Connell of Holland & Knight
As a result of legislation recently signed into law by President Obama, most defense contractors will no longer be permitted to subject employees to mandatory arbitration for the resolution of certain types of claims.
Funding secured for insourcing, supplying troops and cutting wasteful spending
Courtesy of FCW
The House of Representatives has approved more than $636 billion in Defense Department spending for fiscal 2010, and the measure would increase oversight to reduce waste and fraud.
Most companies formulate win strategies, but then they leave it up to the authors to include them in their proposal sections. Frequently these strategies remind one of a teenager learning to swear: the words are there, but they appear awkward and make no sense.
During my 25 years in the proposal business, I am always amazed to see how many bidders lose the competition because they haven't adequately prepared for the bid. "Not being prepared" may take many forms.One of the most common forms of inadequate preparation is to assign personnel who don't have proposal experience. This is especially true for companies who try to keep valued personnel by assigning them to work on proposals until a more permanent position can be found. For these companies, it doesn't matter if the employee can't spell "proposal." It is also quite common for small businesses to refuse to begin work on their proposal until the RFP is released. They believe they can reduce expenses by waiting until the last minute. It's as if they are saying to themselves, "We cannot afford to develop the proposal correctly, but we'll find the money to do it over if we have to."
A claim for an adjustment was summarily granted because the contract's Variation in Quantity clause clearly contemplated payment of the indirect and overhead costs sought by the contractor.
A Government Proposal Manager Is…
One who must direct 30 to 50 authors, who don’t want to be there, in responding to several thousand requirements that he disagrees with, scattered throughout a several hundred page RFP that screws up the way he wants to write his proposal, and include several dozen win strategies that are of no interest to the customer, from two of more companies who are in violent disagreement, in a painfully page-restricted proposal with an impossible but inviolable due date, so that in only three days 30 to 50 government evaluators, who don’t want to be there, can find the answers to questions someone has hidden somewhere in the RFP, so that the Source Selection Authority can make a decision that is the least risky to his own career, and that he can justify to the losing bidders’ Congressmen!
In the first five parts of this series we explained the importance of a structured analysis of your win probability and provided checklists for critically analyzing the opportunity, your customer, your competition, and yourself. In this final part we provide guidelines for preparing your win strategies and making a sound bid decision.
