After receiving notification that your proposal was selected for award, the last thing you are thinking about is to request a debrief. Some companies may even be of the mindset that it does not matter how they got there, so long as they got the award — the debriefing is only for the unsuccessful offeror. To the contrary, awardees have the same right to a debriefing and it is a good way to close out the Acquisition Time Zone before moving into the Execution Zones.
One benefit of the debriefing is that it can be used to identify success and improvement areas. Just because you received the award does not mean the proposal was perfect… there is always room for improvement. If discussions were held, all deficiencies and significant weaknesses should have been covered, but there could be weaknesses which the contracting officer was not required to address. A company may not be selected for award with a deficiency, but it can be selected with a weakness or even a significant weakness (although not likely). For this reason, the debriefing provides a good platform to understand improvement areas so in a similar future acquisition, the same mistake is not made. In a competition, just one weakness can mean the difference between an award and the ‘So Sorry’ letter. Along these same lines, it is also good to understand the proposal strengths so that you can attempt to repeat the successes in future re-acquisitions or similar procurements.
Another point, is that the debriefing provides insight into the agency’s acquisition personality since the application of evaluation criteria differs between agencies and there is always some degree of subjectivity. For example, an offeror’s past performance may constitute a ‘Significant Confidence’ rating in one agency, but for a similar requirement, another agency may only rate it as ‘Satisfactory Confidence’. The difference between the two acquisitions is okay, so long as the offerors are treated fairly under their respective acquisition. This is a very simplistic example, but the point is that you can use the debriefings to understand how each agency evaluates so that adjustments can be made in future proposals to fit the style of each agency. I will concede that many times all the debriefing provides is a written summary of what transpired, but for those opportunities when you can have a one-on-one discussion with the contracting officer about their processes, the benefits are huge.
Finally, the debriefing will provide you with the information about the source selection that was revealed to other companies, to include the scope of competition. In an acquisition conducted using tradeoff procedures it will help you see where your proposal ranked in relation to the other offerors. Did the source selection come down to lowest price or was there some technical and past performance considerations which warranted the government paying a higher price. This information will be important in the event of a protest that is based on debriefing information revealed. Since your company would have been provided a similar debriefing, you will have a better grasp of the protestor’s position. Even though you will not be privy to their evaluation results, you will be aware of the depth of the debriefing and this information can be used to assess the strength of the protest when determining whether or not to be an intervening party.
Federal acquisition is about information and the debriefing is an excellent way to increase access to the contracting officer to understand the agency’s source selection style. Therefore, even if you are the awardee, request the debriefing, take notes, and incorporate the process into your lessons learned. If done successfully, you will increase your chances of receiving the follow-on contract and future new work.