Proposal Technical Writing for Government Contracts

Technical proposal writing for government contracts is one of the most difficult tasks for government contractors to overcome when responding to an Agency’s Request for Proposal.  Although you might meet the solicitation requirements, your bid often may not reach either the competitive range or final award stage.

Knowing how to write a technical proposal with the right approach carries highly-weighted scores and ratings, you should align your technical bidding efforts with the weighted non-price factors often seen in negotiated procurements. 

Since your technical approach proposal carries weighted scores and ratings, you should align your technical bidding efforts with the weighted non-price factors often seen in negotiated procurements. Knowing hot to write a technical proposal also means considering the below points when bidding on government contracts.

Why Bidders Don’t Reach the Competitive Range

• Not complying with the PWS and technical requirements
• Not enough detail to gain strengths at the evaluation stages;
• Too many weaknesses assessed in the technical approach;
• Staffing that is substantially above the government’s estimate;
• High pricing that does not match the weight of your technical proposal

Agencies’ Differing Technical Approach Proposal and Evaluation Approaches: In your technical proposal writing approach, you should understand the differing agency evaluation strategies. For example, there are the lowest price technically acceptable assessment methods as compared to negotiated best value technical evaluations. Understanding these different approaches has a direct impact on your technical proposal submission efforts.

Apply Strengths That Gain Higher Evaluation Rankings: When bidding on federal government contracts, your technical writing efforts will more than likely bear the most weight.  To get top evaluation scores, you also have to get more strengths than your competition.

• You get more strengths by offering more than the bare minimum solicitation requirements;
• In your technical bidding efforts, you also have to make sure that you provide enough detail in the RFP’s minimum requirements.
• Knowing how to write a technical proposal means getting more performance strengths that also offset any weaknesses.

Tip: The government can justify paying a higher premium for a technically superior proposal.

Find out more about filing a bid protest when challenging technical evaluation scores as an incumbent contractor.

Providing Detail is Essential: The solicitation typically provides the bare minimum to avoid exclusion from the competitive range. However, technical writing for government contracts must offer up the relevant details that explain your approach to the particular project.

• You must explain HOW you intend to carry out each part of the Statement of Work;
• Any anticipated problem areas and solutions to them.

There many instances, seen mostly at the bid protest stage, where the government  penalizes a company because “it failed to offer a detailed explanation of how it intends to do the Statement of Work sections.” Avoid this costly mistake at all cost.

• Summary statements will not get the top score.
• Talk about your technical approach to the particular project, and
• Explain how your company is going to take on the responsibility.

What is the Government Looking For in Your Technical Writing?

Writing a technical proposal means that you must exceed the minimum solicitation requirements. Instead, it has to offer something more that gets the agency’s attention.

For example, when discussing your technical approach, highlighted discussions on “reduction of risk to the government” gets attention.

• The government also can check your technical proposal to decide price reasonableness and price realism. Another example would be to highlight key staff that has more qualifications than what the government is asking for.
• Proposal writing is about you communicating to the government that you have what it takes to resolve its problem without risk.

What are Other Key Elements When Learning How to Write a Technical Proposal?

Since your technical proposal is one of the most heavily weighted factors in government contract bidding, you also want to focus on strategies for submitting qualified teaming partners if you are seeking to get larger contracts. Other key elements of your technical proposal writing for government contracts should include;

• Approach for recruiting and retaining qualified personnel;
• Mapping tasks for teaming partners and subcontractors to the statement of work requirements;
• Make sure that your past performance choices meet the relevancy standards.
• Show foresight by identifying potential problems and proving technical solutions.

Pay attention to the weight given to each technical factor and subfactor: Here, and in Section M of the proposal, you will typically see a breakdown of the weighted factors. The government will also explain how much weight is given to your past performance, technical approach, staffing approach and other non-pricing issues.

Proposal technical writing requires you to prove lack of risk. Therefore, hoping that you will be simply given a larger contract may not happen. The best way to improve your chances is to form a teaming agreement with a larger company that has successfully performed larger projects.

Technical Proposal Writer Mistakes are Evident in GAO Published Decisions

 The trend of technical writing mistakes can be seen in published GAO protest decisions.  A substantial amount of protestors finds out that their technical approaches were weak, and although they may have reached final consideration, they fell short in detail and explanation of how they meet or exceed the solicitation’s requirements.

If you are currently seeking a technical writer or need help with how to write a technical proposal for government contracts, call our proposal consulting experts today at 1-866-601-5518.