Proposal Land

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.

 

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

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, three specific examples of one practical suggestion for keeping it simple.

This week’s advice can be summed up in two words: Get visual.

Use a Picture

Schedules are best communicated visually. To ensure your schedule is feasible, lay out the dates or durations on a timeline. To ensure it’s clear, name the milestones and periods/stages, and then remove any terminology variants from the document.

Use a Form

When you want data, not lengthy narrative, design a simple form for bidders to populate. Whether it’s details on experience, or equipment/product specifications, a form helps ensure that answers are complete, and simplifies both the bidder’s job in organizing the information, and the evaluator’s job in assessing it.

Use a Spreadsheet for Bidder Questions

Give bidders a spreadsheet to submit questions. That gathers all the necessary information in a standard format, allowing you to easily combine questions from different bidders, and saving bidders the bother of designing a readable format.

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

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 practical suggestion for keeping it simple.

Think about the critical-path order of all questions: What do you need to know first?  The organization example given here arises again and again, causing an entirely preventable problem: The order of the questions doesn’t help evaluators understand the answers.

Ask about the Organization First

The gold standard in RFP responses is to say who will do something, where that “who” is a position, not just the bidder’s company. It shows that the bidder has thought through how they’re going to provide the services you need.

So what?  Bid documents often ask about ten other things before they ask about the proposed/promised organization, so that bidders have to decide whether to repeat the organization content at the outset.

So what?  Putting information where it hasn’t been asked for is bad for three reasons:

• It’s out of order: That can annoy evaluators who just want to see what they asked for, where they asked for it.
• It’s repetitive: That can lead to inconsistency when the organization changes, as it surely will during proposal development.
• It eats space: That causes problems with page-limited proposals.

Eliminate these problems by putting the organization question first: in the response and in every applicable section.

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