Proposals take a lot of time and effort to put together and submit, especially in the services world. Often, they require detailed written technical approaches on how you are going to perform the contract, as well as a variety of written plans for how you will manage the contract, provide the staff, and perform quality control. Developing these plans forces you to think seriously about the reality of what it will take for you to perform the contract.
Once the proposal is submitted, you’ll want to focus on your “day job” for a while and pay some attention to your current contracts to make sure they stay healthy. But even if the government did not require you to submit one or more of the plans I mentioned previously, they will still expect you to be ready to move forward immediately upon contract award, and that often entails coordinating the hand-off between the government’s current service provider, and your company. Whether or not you were “required” to submit a “Contract Start Up” or “Transition Plan” (sometimes referred to as a Phase-in Plan), you need to develop a detailed plan for how you are going to make the contract transition as painless and smooth as possible, not only for you, but most importantly for your customer.
The period the government allows for contract start up can vary widely from one or two weeks to several months (unusual, but I’ve seen them),. One thing you can be sure of, it’s not going to seem long enough!
Here are some of the things to consider if you haven’t already:
- Establish who from your company is going to be part of your transition team, and what each member’s roles and responsibilities will be throughout transition.
- Lay out a detailed schedule of all the things that must be accomplished from the moment you know you’ve won until you start the contract performance. Purchasing and delivering equipment and supplies, recruiting and hiring new employees, drafting a slew of Standard Operating Procedures for performing work under the contract, taking inventory of the facilities and equipment the government is providing, setting up computer networks and security, training all your new staff. The list can be daunting.
- Plan to contact the contracting officer and COR(s) and schedule a Kick Off meeting with them. You and your government counterparts will go over the contract requirements, so everyone has a complete understanding of how things are expected to work. The written contract rules, but here you are also getting an understanding of what their expectations are, not just the “requirements.”
- Even if you plan to retain incumbent staff, there are often one or more of the incumbent staff who do not want to switch to your contract. This means, of course, that you’ll have vacancies that need to be filled. One of the tasks that can take the longest amount of time is recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and preparing the staff you will be providing. Have a plan for how you are going to collect resumes, conduct interviews, and hire incumbent staff quickly so you can identify the vacancies early in the process and have enough time to fill the positions before contract start.
- If there are multiple locations, things get even more complicated. Lay out the plan for how you’re going to get your staff working at each location by the contract start date. Go through the RFP (now contract) requirements (including the PWS) and identify every step that every person must complete (and what OSS must complete as well!) prior to contract start.
This list just scratches the surface of the tasks you and your team may need to accomplish. Thorough prior planning will help ensure you have a smooth, successful transition, making your customer happy before you’ve even started contract performance. Most of all – DON’T WAIT TIL YOU’VE BEEN NOTIFIED THAT YOU WON TO BEGIN PLANNING FOR WINNING!