Who – Once the final RFP is received, each of the core members of the team should conduct a thorough review of the various solicitation documents. Ideally, the Proposal Manager will be on board and will lead the overall RFP analysis activity.  If not, the Capture Manager should lead until the Proposal Manager can take over. While the core team should scan the entire solicitation, some sections of the RFP require specialized expertise to ensure adequate review and understanding. All applicable disciplines must be represented: Technical members need to closely analyze requirements and/or performance specifications; a Contracts specialist needs to focus on terms and conditions and all contractual requirements; a Cost/Pricing specialist must review pricing instructions and associated requirements; the Proposal Manager or specialist provides particular focus on proposal development instructions and the customer’s evaluation criteria / methodology.  All (exclusive) team members / subcontractors should also be an integral part of this solicitation review. In some circumstances, it will be necessary to get expertise that is not part of the core team such as legal or human resource personnel. Once complete, the team should meet to consolidate findings and determine if there are noteworthy items, concerns, or need for further clarification. 

When – While RFP analysis will continue throughout the proposal development period, the first pass (initial analysis) should be concluded within 24-36 hours after release of the RFP.  The clock is now ticking toward the proposal delivery deadline and every hour becomes valuable.  It is not uncommon to have final RFP release late on a Friday, so any team expecting an RFP release that can’t depend on specific advance notice of release by the customer should ensure that someone is assigned to monitor for the release during this time and throughout the weekend.  This person must also have a call list of key (available) people to notify and distribute files to so that the team can quickly mobilize for RFP analysis.  This advance preparation may save you from losing two or more valuable proposal preparation days.

Most companies properly take this time after final RFP release to make a final assessment of their chance for success and formally decide to bid – or not to bid. This is especially valid in the case where the solicitation has significant changes, surprises, onerous requirements, or other signals that suggest continued investment in the opportunity may not be prudent.  Once there is a clear consensus that the company will move forward, detailed plans for the proposal are finalized leading to a formal kickoff meeting. Thus, the proposal preparation work begins – even if the company delays the formal Bid / No-Bid decision meeting a couple days for logistics reasons or to allow time to prepare briefing charts.

How – As part of the RFP review process, the team should be instructed to record all questions or comments about areas of the solicitation that are not clear, appear incorrect, or seem to be in conflict with another part of the RFP. Typically, the customer will provide a reasonable window after RFP release to submit questions and will often provide a specific format or instructions for submission of questions and comments (e.g., via the customer’s Web Site). If there is a deadline for submitting questions, put this on the Proposal Schedule. If there is a relatively long window for submitting questions, try to collect questions and submit batches incrementally, maybe once a week or every few days, to allow the customer more time and to avoid a large influx of questions on the final day – and to increase the chance you will get answers sooner.  Follow any customer instructions to the letter. If a format is not specified, a simple form should be developed to ensure consistency and ease of evaluation by the customer. 

As a guide, the question-submittal form should include:

  1. The solicitation number
  2. A question number (unique number assigned by bidding team to each question), specific references including section(s), paragraph(s), page(s) where you have questions or comments.  It is helpful to include the specific text (or excerpt of text) from the RFP to make it easier for the customer to understand and evaluate your question.
  3. Your observations or comments and the specific question(s)

Additional guidelines for handling RFP questions (draft or final) are provided below. Normally, the Proposal Manager will have responsibility for enforcing these guidelines before submitting questions to the customer. This will ensure:

  • The question is valid – assuring there is not an answer or position available across the team or otherwise provided in the RFP
  • The question is important enough to ask – and not something the Capture Manager, Proposal Manager, or Technical Lead can easily decide
  • The question doesn’t reveal a lack of domain knowledge or lack of preparation on your part
  • The question doesn’t reveal your company identity or that of your team members
  • The question doesn’t unnecessarily reveal your strategy, approach, or solution
  • Questions are fully edited and readable with clear references to the applicable solicitation page, section, and paragraph
  • Redundant questions have been eliminated or consolidated to ensure you ask it only once.

An important note – As a rule, responses to questions submitted by any bidder are provided to all bidders. If you have a question that is important but you cannot submit it without divulging information that you do not wish to share with the competition, you may contact the designated customer representative, usually the CO, and ask if they are willing to address a question such that the response is only provided to you – on the grounds that the question and/or response involves proprietary or competition sensitive information. They will inform you if they can support this request, possibly after reviewing your question.  If they are unable to provide a response only to you, they will advise you accordingly and you will have the opportunity to withdraw the question.  The FAR supports the customer’s ability to respond only to the single bidder when appropriate to protect competition sensitive information, but each customer may a have different approach for this. Often, the customer will host one-on-one discussions with bidders.  This is the best time to address these types of questions because these interactions are generally confidential between the bidder and the customer.
The Capture Manager and Proposal Manager should approve all questions before submission to the customer.

Following are additional considerations for RFP questions:

  • When possible, construct the questions so that the Customer can respond with a simple yes or no answer
  • When applicable, construct the questions to lead the customer to the desired response.
  • Inevitably, there will be discussion that the customer’s answer to a particular question might help the competition more than it helps us, and therefore should not be submitted. This could be a valid concern in rare cases and should be considered. As a rule, you stand to gain much more than you stand to lose when you ask the customer to clarify ambiguous direction. You do not want to discover the answer in a proposal concern or discrepancy pointed out by the customer after submittal, when the fix could be time-consuming and costly.
  • Provide feedback to the team members who submitted questions either affirming that the question is being submitted, or the reasoning behind why it was not submitted.
  • You may find a variety of typographical or editorial mistakes that are generally harmless or do not affect your understanding of the RFP; therefore there is a tendency to ignore these. It is OK to identify these as a general courtesy to the customer. In particular, report any paragraph numbering error that might cause confusion in a cross reference or compliance matrix. Rather than submit a single comment or question for each of these, provide a single question that simply lists all of these that you find.
  • Keep a log of questions submitted so that you can track and confirm that the customer has responded to each.  Their responses may come incrementally. A response may prompt the need for a follow up question and this should be sent as soon as possible after the customer’s reply.  If you do not see a response to one of your questions in a reasonable timeframe, it is appropriate to re-submit the question or otherwise follow up with the customer to determine if a response is forthcoming.