Russell Smith and Lee Cooper During the past 30 years, we have frequently been asked, “how much does it cost to prepare a proposal?” Back in the day, the generalization was often made that proposal prep costs 2% of the contract value. However, RFP requirements and contractor cost recovery approaches vary so [...]
The Department of Defense (DoD), Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), has a sizable brain power requirement for its DoD Information Analysis Centers (IAC). It’s calling upon contractors to provide it. And there is no telling what great stuff the geniuses put to work under this effort will come up with. Two separate RFI’s [...]
As guardian of the nation’s intellectual property, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) plays a key role in fostering America’s commercial vitality. The USPTO oversees the entire US patent operation; acting as the economy’s immune system, it prevents pirated products and processes from undermining the innovations and inventions that make America [...]
Along with control of US air space and outer space, the US Air Force is tasked with maintaining control of cyberspace. And our men and women in blue are calling on contractors to help them do some very heavy cyberlifting, as well as to provide an extended range of other, IT-related, services. [...]
FATHER OF THE IT/TELECOM AGE – Claude E. Shannon, an electrical engineer and mathematician worked for the US military on anti-aircraft targeting and cryptography during WWII. He later laid the theoretical foundations for modern telecom. When high-octane brain power is unleashed on complex military problems, there’s no telling what where [...]
With no time to make a mistake, the task of finding solid proposal consultants can be agonizing. A New Step in the Vetting Process At OCI, a test based on 100 years of behavioral investigation just added a new level of confidence. A Song Dynasty painting of candidates participating in the [...]
Back in the day, I was working a four-month assignment on a large system rollout. It was to manufacture, load, configure, and install 45,000 desktops. I was tech volume manager. Customer was the Loral division in Gaithersburg, MD. This business unit had been IBM Federal Systems in a previous era. And would [...]
Military Officials and Government Officials Are Adapting to High Tech World – Fast, Fast, Fast… But -- Fast Enough? The RFP for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Solution for Intelligence Analysis (SIA) III contract is expected to drop any day now. An RFI and an Industry Day are planned for this effort, [...]
During the past six years, most industry and Government leaders have joined in lamenting the use of lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) contracting. However, a recent survey completed by the Washington Technology (WashTech) journal has shown that this practice is still widely used. In this article I discuss the findings presented in [...]
Federal contractors are asking the urgent question, when do solicitation releases begin in earnest? Given the nature of the Trump administration, some contractors fear there is a jinx on procurement this year. This article is written to assess the question, what will proposal activity be like in 2017? It looks at trends [...]
