Proposal Land

RFP responses can seem complex and intimidating, especially to the uninitiated.  Simplify the task by dividing and conquering.  After all, there are only four kinds of content in proposals. Herewith, some notes on financial content: what drives the requirement, what it looks like, and where your focus should be.

Where Does the Requirement for Financial Content Come From?

There are two underlying drivers for financial-content requirements:

• To verify that all elements of a bidder’s technical and management proposal have been included in their quoted price
• To assess whether a bidder has made unreasonable assumptions that could drive either “excessive” cost/margins, or a risk of non-performance

What Kind of Financial Content is Required?

Every RFP requires a price to be included for the goods and services as the bidder has offered them in their proposal:

• One price for the whole shebang, or
• One price that varies with the volume or scope of work (e.g. unit pricing of goods; hourly labour rates), or
• A combination of these – one price for the Work as scoped in the RFP and variable pricing for additional Work that might be required

Some RFPs also require bidders to identify the following items:

• Type of cost escalators used or proposed throughout a contract term
• Assumptions that underlie the price
• Things specifically excluded from the price

Even if these additional items aren’t required for proposal submission, they make valuable notes for the proposal manager and the executives (to negotiate a contract) and the operator or project manager (to deliver the Work).

Where Should the Focus be for Financial Content?

There are two things to consider:

• Achieving presentation clarity and compliance with all RFP instructions
• Getting the price as low as reasonably possible

As a general rule, the low price will win the bid.  If the company want to propose a solution that exceeds the requirement, the extra should be priced separately as an option.

 

Some notes on management content: what drives the requirement, what it looks like, and where your focus should be. RFP responses can seem complex and intimidating, especially to the uninitiated. Simplify the task by dividing and conquering.

Where Does the Requirement for Management Content Come From?

I’m thinking you’re able to guess this one: “The RFP.”  But what are the underlying drivers?  I think two things:

• Client due diligence, especially around labour and the environment
• Client risk avoidance

What Kind of Management Content is Required?

“What kinds aren’t required” might be a shorter list.  Here are relatively standard things:

• A description of the bidder’s experience in similar work, both corporately and for the personnel being proposed
• Narrative, tables, and schedules that describe how the bidder will design and staff the organization to deliver the product or services on schedule and budget, including a transition plan if someone else is now doing this Work
• Narrative that describes how the bidder will manage the effort:
  • To deliver on schedule, scope, and budget
  • To meet quality and performance standards
  • To manage subcontractors
  • To handle client interactions
• How the bidder plans to meet safety, environmental protection, and any other regulatory requirements
• In Canadian defence and security procurements, an explanation of how the bidder will meet federally mandated regional development requirements (similar requirements to support small, minority-owned and/or disadvantaged businesses exist in the USA)

Is It a Good Idea to Submit Additional Management Content?

As with technical content, this is an imponderable.  You pays your money, you takes your chances.  Evaluators might reward or penalize additional content.

Where Should the Focus be for Management Content?

Like technical content, management content should be:

• Clear
• Compliant with any management requirements in the RFP
• Complete against the response requirement
• Consistent (tough, tough, tough to achieve, since management topics – think safety and quality –  slop across technical topic boundaries)

But, in addition, management content should focus on real-world credibility and plain-language examples of where the approach has been used, and to what effect.  Credibility is harder to achieve in management than in technical content, because the former has fewer hard, objective criteria.