Relative Importance

Under a Best Value contract award process, the Government is not required to award to the lowest bidder.   In fact, this is why there is a Best Value process –…

The Best Value Tradeoff

I’ve written before about the Best Value acquisition process.   This writing is focused on one of the two types of Best Value awards, the Tradeoff. Recall the whole idea of…

Best Value

Before building the proposal, it’s imperative to understand what type of acquisition method the Government is employing.  Generally, there are two types:  Sealed Bids and Best Value. Sealed Bidding is…

Graphics

Many people tend to love putting graphics in their proposal.  They give color and help alleviate the endless onslaught of words.  But like everything in the proposal, we need to…

Configuration Control

A proposal writing team needs a version control system.  Even for a small company where you are the sole proposal writer, a good system is essential.   During the writing phase,…

Continuity Check

As part of the validation phase (or our detailing phase in this construction analogy) read the proposal for continuity.  What’s that?   It’s a term taken from the film industry, and…

Page Count, Again

Ever wonder what the Government team does when they receive a proposal?   Regardless of whether it’s hard copy or electronic, the first thing the Contracting Officer does is note the…

Page Count

The solicitation should set a maximum number of pages for proposals.  Keep this in mind after the initial embellishment during your rough draft phase.  Ideally, the page count was consciously…