As a CO, I was managing a source selection for specialized equipment. In response to the RFP, we received a proposal from a company who made a version of the product that was far less capable than the other offerors’ products. From the initial evaluation of the proposal, we realized that this offer had little understanding of our overall mission, did not understand the nuances of what we needed, and additionally was simply stacking together a bunch of products that didn’t fit well together and did not meet the requirement. It seems they hoped that the majority of the offerors would also throw together a loosely designed solution and that we would pick them for some reason, presumably low price. They were essentially closing their eyes and throwing darts under the idea of you don’t hit if you don’t swing.
Compare this to the winner who had researched our agency, hired people who understood what we do, had followed the RFP draft requirement long enough that they understood the evaluation criteria and how important it was to our customer that all of these parts fit together and worked as one unit, seamlessly. They knew that while price mattered, our concern over the product meeting the requirement exceeded our interest in simply getting a lower price. In the end, the evaluators and I spent an entire afternoon wording and rewording the evaluation of the offeror who was so far off the mark that they had no chance of winning.
One evaluator was very frustrated because I had to explain to him that I needed more specificity than his comment, “They obviously didn’t understand the requirement. This product meets none of the performance thresholds.” Helping him to understand how to detail his evaluation took a lot of extra time and effort for both of us. While this is a great legal exercise and shows the true diligence of the selection process, in the end it wasted the time of the evaluator, the contracting officer, and also the offeror because they should not have bid in the first place.
You can argue that it is the evaluator’s job to write these detailed comments. And you would be correct. But then again that’s one of the biggest reasons that I point to when people ask why government contracting takes so long.
Now, take that same concept and multiply it by 90% of the RFPs that are released by the federal government every day. And you see the magnitude of this problem. By not writing a proposal on something you are not likely to win, you are saving your ‘dry powder’ for the ones you can win. Plus, you are saving a government team the time and resources of evaluated unqualified RFPs. On the scale that RFPs are released each day, we stand to shave thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars off the RFP, proposal development and delivery process. I’m just saying…
In an ideal world (which we don’t have, but we can at least strive for), three is the perfect number of proposals (or bids) to get on nearly any contract. The best case scenario for any source selection process is for three highly qualified companies to focus their efforts and provide outstanding solutions for the Source Selection Authority (who is normally the contracting officer) from which to choose a winner.
Three proposals (or bids, depending on the circumstances) create just enough competition, while not creating an environment where you, as the offeror, are encouraged to simply bid on every opportunity. The added bonus is that with only three offerors to evaluate, the government acquisition team can evaluate and award contracts faster. Other contracting officers may use four, or five, etc. However, they all likely have a magic number – and it’s usually less, or sometimes a lot less, than the number of proposal they receive. This means that it is in your best interest to target your efforts ruthlessly to make sure you’re within that magic number. Otherwise, you risk increasing your competition with every proposal you submit.
In some cases, an experienced contracting officer will make every effort to decrease the number of offerors down to that magic number. COs can reduce the number of bidders before RFP release with strategies like using a draft RFP, Requests for Information or by requiring a Notice of Intent to bid. They can also reduce the potential number of offers after they receive proposals with strategies like using down select procedures, two step sealed bids, and competitive range determinations. The preference is to reduce the number of potential offerors before the RFP goes out because that saves the contractor (you) the time and money of writing a proposal. And, selfishly, it also saves the government team the time of reviewing the proposal.
Yes, this is yet another reason you hear me pounding the desk to get people to target ruthlessly.
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