Proposal Land

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Proposal Land

Proposal Content: Technical Stuff

 

Some notes on technical 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 Technical Content Come From?

As with contractual content, the short answer is: “The RFP.”  But in this case, the underlying driver is the Work.  Clients don’t make up response requirements for the fun of it. Instead, they determine what they need to know about the goods or services (or both) that they want:

  • To validate that a bidder’s offer is what they want, or to assess how close it is to what they want
  • To make bidders commit in writing to delivering the goods and/or services
  • To distinguish bidders’ offerings
  • To identify and quantify any risks that they might be accepting in going with a bidder’s technical solution

What Kind of Technical Content is Required?

Whatever it says in the RFP: Designs, drawings, specifications, plans, procedures, schedules, miscellaneous narrative . . .

Is it a Good Idea to Submit Additional Technical Content?

Ah, the $64,000 question.  Here’s the dilemma:

  • In bidder debriefs, clients sometimes note that they wanted more detail, or even that another (unnamed) bidder submitted not just a plan as requested, but also an operating manual.  That suggests that more is better.
  • In bidder debriefs, clients sometimes note that they took issue with the bidder’s approach, as detailed in extra content.  That suggests that while more may be better, sometimes less is more.

There is no single right answer: What is good will depend not only on the client but on the preferences of the  individual evaluators.

Where Should the Focus be on Technical Content?

Technical content should be clear.

Technical content should be compliant with the technical requirement (that is, the solution described by the technical content should be compliant).

Technical content should be complete against the response requirement.

Technical content should be consistent.

Boy, I’d say that was enough work for any proposal effort.

 

Term: Acquisition Contracting

 

The process of buying a piece of equipment or a system, whether designed from scratch or configured from commercial off-the shelf (COTS) components.

Usually distinguished from services contracting in requiring large capital investment to fund the design and development effort.

Used extensively in military procurement: ships, armoured vehicles, weaponry, radar systems. Information technology systems also fall into this category.

Proposal Content: Contractual Stuff

 

Some notes on contractual 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 Contractual Content Come From?

The short answer is:  “The RFP.”  But there are three underlying drivers:

  • Legal requirements around contracting in the applicable jurisdiction
  • Client due diligence requirements (e.g. environmental standards; employment standards)
  • Client contracting norms and views on risk; that is, things that have gone wrong on earlier contracts can end up being codified in conditions that bidders must meet

What Kind of Contractual Content is Required?

Whatever it says in the RFP.

Clients usually include a draft contract in their RFP.  Sometimes (more often at the draft RFP stage than at the final one) they invite bidders to identify any problems they have, any changes they want to make.  Sometimes they require bidders to indicate their acceptance of its terms and conditions as given.

RFPs sometimes also include forms that bidders must complete and include with their proposals:

  • A form that commits the bidder to the terms of their proposal (known as an “offer” in contracting circles) if the client decides to contract with them (known as “acceptance” in contracting circles, hence “offer and acceptance” in the legal sense)
  • Other legally binding forms; for example, various certifications:
    • That the bidder meets government requirements for equitable employment practices
    • That the people being proposed to do the work will be available as promised
    • That the people being proposed to do the work have the qualifications stated in their resumes submitted with the proposal
    • That the bidder’s insurance company will issue insurance that satisfies RFP requirements if the bidder is successful
    • And so on . . .

Are There Always Forms?

No.

RFPs sometimes require responses or certifications of some sort, but don’t provide any form for bidders to complete.  In that case, bidders must develop their own format.

So How Do You Know What to Submit?

You read the RFP carefully: the overview, the draft contract, the response instructions, and the evaluation criteria if provided.

Does it Require a Lawyer or Contracts Expert?

Not to identify the requirements: An intelligent lay reader can usually handle it.  However, if the requirements are badly (i.e. confusedly) stated, an expert review might be needed, either from the perspective of interpreting legal language, or from the perspective of interpreting this client’s usual language and contracting framework.  In either case, it’s prudent to ask for clarification from the client.

On the other hand, a lawyer or contracts expert should likely validate that the documents being proposed to be submitted actually meet the requirement.

Finally, it might be corporate policy or just good politics to have a contracts expert or in-house counsel (if such there be) brief senior executives on the requirements.  Corporate executives taking signing responsibility for a bid are understandably reluctant to take just anyone’s word that everything is OK.

 

Advice to Procurement Professionals: Test Your Instructions

 

Bidders are highly motivated to do well: to submit, on time, a compliant proposal that will score well and offer the lowest price they can. So why don’t they do better? A major reason is the complexity of bid documents.  Simpler documents will lead to fewer questions during the process, and to better responses at the end of the process, where “better” means closer to the requirement, easier to evaluate, and more competitively priced. Herewith, one final practical suggestion for keeping it simple.

Where Bidders Start

One of the first thing bidders do with an RFP is to “lay out” the required response.  That is, they review the RFP so they can set the table of contents for the response, complete with volumes, tabs, sections, and appropriately numbered writing outlines:

  • To be sure everything required will be included, in the expected location, both for compliance and to facilitate evaluation
  • To assign responsibility for completing each section and for obtaining all required documentation

However, this essential first step comes off the rails in any of these situations:

  • When response instructions are incomplete (e.g. failing to specify where mandatory documents should be included in the package)
  • When response instructions are internally inconsistent (e.g. content instructions citing different volume names and numbers of copies from the packaging/submission instructions)
  • When response instructions are inconsistent with related sections (e.g. evaluation criteria citing different sections in different orders, or using an entirely different framework)
  • When response instructions appear in unexpected places (e.g. in the draft contract or in the statement of work)

Following clear, consistent instructions is relatively easy:
Writing clear, consistent instructions is harder than it looks.
Much harder.
What to do?

Test Your Instructions

Bidders usually review their proposals before they submit them, looking for answers that are incomplete, unclear, or inconsistent with other sections. Go, thou, and do likewise: Before you issue bid documents, go through them as if you were going to respond, looking for instructions that are incomplete, unclear, inconsistent with other sections, or just in the wrong spot.

Don’t just read what’s been written: Actually try to design a table of contents that follows it.  This simple step will save untold hours on both sides, by allowing you to clarify the requirement, eliminating all kinds of questions.

 

This post is based on an article I wrote for the National Institute of Government Purchasing, Canada West Chapter.