The Planning Phase
When the Government releases a Request for Proposal (RFP), the proposal due date is often 30 days away. This is why advanced planning is so critical to successful proposal writing. …
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 –…
So What? Who Cares? (The importance of Flow & Traceability)
Since your proposal has a page limitation, consider every line as valuable real estate. Don’t waste space (or time and effort) including statements that have no value to the Government’s…
Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA)
Within the Best Value award process, is a category called Lowest Price Technically Acceptable awards, or LPTA. This is a form of Best Value, but it’s a bit of a…
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…