In the spirit of Halloween we decided to gather a handful of our favorite proposal horror stories. Is the Headless Horseman or a Late Proposal Worse? Vince O’Connell If you think seeing a headless horseman riding through the woods is cause for fright, you haven’t been through the horror a proposal manager [...]
The appropriations for the balance of fiscal year 2018 almost certainly will include a healthy increase in spending and will be passed this year. This is a breath of fresh air after what has been a flat year for business developers at many contractor companies. Why are we looking at such a [...]
Only 59 shopping days (including Sundays) until Christmas! And it looks like the upcoming holiday season’s going to be particularly festive this year for defense contractors. A hefty slice of the approximately $200 B worth of the 30 $1B+ RFPs expected to hit in the next 90 days is either military- or [...]
Gearing up for a busy proposal season is no easy task. It is always a good idea to identify qualified talent early. Take inventory of internal resources, cross reference available resources with your pipeline, and reach out to your trusted partners for external talent as soon as possible to fill any gaps [...]
During late September 2017, OCI conducted a survey assessing opinion as to past and future volume of federal RFP releases (2016 – 2018). Proposal consultant firms surveyed included the following: AOC Lohfeld Associates OCI Proposal Development Consultants Shipley Associates Winning Solutions Win-Pros Respondents were asked to rate the speed of the market [...]
Addressing a Challenged Market In this article I attempt to address the question: How can BD and proposal groups help their companies counter a down market and earn more revenue? First, let’s look at the reasons why the market is challenged. And then we will look at ways in which we can [...]
Note: Busy readers can skip down to the subhead titled “Winning the business.” Enabling military commanders (and policy makers) to counter and forestall threats to America’s way of life is what the DoD Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), Information Analysis Centers (IAC) Multiple Award Contract (MAC) is all about. The Pentagon is [...]
The Air Force’s upcoming IT contract, the Small Business Enterprise Applications Solutions (SBEAS) is a bunker buster of an IDIQ -- a small business set-aside with a really big price tag: $13.4B. The SBEAS final RFP is expected to hit the streets by the end of this month, September. And not a [...]
Gary Everett After being a proposal training instructor for 15 years, I have learned these major reasons why companies say they need proposal training: 1. We need to understand and use a consistent process. 2. We need checklists and templates of how to do the right things. 3. We need to write [...]
Michael Fischetti, executive director of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA). Recent data indicates protests have increased by about 17 percent since 2012, exceeded only by the decrease in Government contract spending over that same time. The resulting increase in pre-award costs derived from protests for all parties requires a step back [...]
