Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Term: Partnership

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One of those terms whose casual use in writing gives lawyers fits.

Under Canadian law, partnerships are not separate legal entities; they occur when two or more companies operate in business together and share the profits (they hope) and the losses (they hope not) in proportion to their ownership share. Partnerships also involve joint-and-several liability, which makes one partner responsible for the bad stuff any other partner does (paraphrasing the legislation).

In proposal-speak, by contrast, “partnership” is a squishy term, mostly meaning that the bidder intends to work nicely with someone else: another company, perhaps, or the client. I have never seen a non-joint-venture partnership as the bidder for what I’m sure are reasons to do with liability; conversely, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a proposal that didn’t talk somewhere about “partnership.”

Buddy & Me: Hello, Isabel?

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Some work has demanding hours; some has demanding deadlines. Proposals have both.

If you don’t manage the work, it will roll right over you. Right over your team.

In honour of Labour Day, and in memory of one too many weekends worked straight through, here is the final excerpt and video in my virtual book launch.

 

Buddy & Me: If You’re Going to Fight

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Not all government contracting is defence contracting: Not all colleagues are retired military members in their second career.

But a whole whack of *it* is, and a whole whack of *them* are. Given that, you’d think companies would do something to help life-long civilians and retired senior military officers work effectively together, rather than just stumbling through it. Maybe some do. I never saw it.

Some of the inevitable bumps were annoying; some were puzzling; some were just funny. Some were all three.

 

 

Term: Joint Venture

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Two or more companies coming together to execute a project, with their relationship governed by a contract.

Although companies may work together on several projects over many years, they form discrete joint ventures for each such venture. In Proposal Land, each discrete venture would be for a contract or project.

Apparently there is significant ambiguity regarding under what conditions a Canadian court will treat a joint venture as something other than a partnership, which affects little things like liability. This may explain the leeriness of corporate lawyers regarding the use of “partnership” language in proposals.

Acronym? JV, pronounced by spelling it out.

Footers and Legislation

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This document includes confidential, proprietary, and commercially/competitively sensitive information not publicly available. We provide this information to [client name here] in strict confidence solely for the purposes of bid evaluation, and on the understanding that it will be safeguarded from intentional or inadvertent release to our competitors, actual or potential.

There. That ought to do it, yeah?

This is the more-or-less standard confidentiality rider in the footer of every proposal I’ve ever worked on. Its purpose is to protect a company’s true technical secrets, pricing strategy, and other good stuff that you wouldn’t want your competitors to know.

Does it work? Well, this article suggests not, or not as well as you might assume. It views the risks arising from Freedom of Information legislation as one of the costs of doing business with the public sector.

I’m not a lawyer, but I suggest you consult one before bidding again. And show them this article. No matter how lovingly crafted, a footer does not trump legislation.