Gary Everett

Especially in this hacking era, the Proposal Manager must establish security protection processes to make sure the proposal is not compromised to competitors. This is important especially when subcontractors are on your team, but not exclusively, and may be participating against your team with other primes.

To protect your work product these things must be done:

  1. Ensure that your IT system is reliably secure and that team members are trained in standard processes to avoid compromising your data.
  2. Obtain signed non-disclosures statements from all consultants and temps.
  3. Ensure that all proposal work copy is marked as Proprietary/Company Confidential to conform to the non-disclosure requirements – consultants sign up to protect only those things that are identified as Proprietary or Company Sensitive.
  4. Orient your team to not talk about the proposal outside of the proper environment, even to other workers or spouses, or in public places.
  5. Obtain and use burn/shred boxes for all dead hard copy – inspect daily to see they are being used properly.
  6. Obtain a Proposal War Room and get people to work there as a unit, whenever possible, to reduce the opportunities for a security breech.
  7. Observe proposal team members for any suspicious behavior and arrange inspections of their carryout bags. If you strongly suspect wrongdoing, but cannot prove it, find a way to get them off the team.

Janitorial personnel have removed proposal material and sold it to competitors.  On a proposal I worked for DynCorp, there was an individual with the janitorial group one night we thought was sent by a competitor.  So we tightened up security procedures.   By taking reasonable precautions, we can all protect our proposal projects from theft.