Preparing a Government Contract Bid

New companies and existing vendors constantly struggle with their ability to prepare for a government contract bid. Sometimes the solicitation language is vague and the questions and answer session from the agency does not adequately explain the problem. This impairs the ability to submit a winning proposal.

In other situations, small and large businesses find that previous proposal writing and bidding strategies are not working. Incumbents find that they are losing contractors to new businesses.  The keys to successfully preparing a government contract bid must start with a basic approach.

Understand the Basic Approaches to Preparing a Government Contract Bid

Take time to understand evaluation criteria. The language of the agency’s source selection evaluation criteria is probably the most important aspect of preparing a government contract bid. This tells you how the source selection team will evaluate your proposal.

In negotiated procurements (FAR 15), the RFP will often give you weighted factors and subfactors. This can be very important when preparing your bid simply because it gives you some idea of how much effort and detail you must provide.

Detail is essential. When you prepare a technical proposal for government bids, the agency prefers detail about your approach and how you intend to do each aspect of the Statement of Work (SOW). This is where many bidders fail to meet the mark. As a result, their proposal often receives marginal evaluation ratings. The Agency also will assess weakness for falling short of the stated proposal instructions.

Reduce risk in your management approach. A commonly missed element when preparing a government contract bid is that companies simply submit an organization chart and list the names of project managers and other key personnel. Although the agency does want to see who these people are, there is usually a deficiency because businesses do not articulate the roles their management will play for the contract. Furthermore, companies simply include old resumes without analyzing whether the proposed employees fall below the government’s experience level.  This can lead to technical weaknesses.

• You must provide detailed government contract bids.
• Failure to do so will generate technical weaknesses that ultimately lead to a no-win proposal.

Learn more about hiring incumbent employees.

Read more information about the best value trade off evaluation analysis.

Avoid The Above Costly Mistakes

GAO protest decisions are filled with losing protests simply because the bidder failed to articulate how it would perform the statement of work requirements. See American Systems Corporation, B-409632: Jun 23, 2014.

In addition, companies fall short of preparing a government contract bid because their management approach contained too many weaknesses. See Savvee Consulting, Inc. B-408416, B-408416.2, Sep 18, 2013

For additional concerns about preparing a government contract bid, call our government proposal writing consultants at 1-866-601-5518.