CAREFULLY REVIEW THE RFP DOCUMENT
The Request For Proposal posted by a federal agency is an essential document that contains all the necessary project details that should guide you in crafting your contract bid. This hundred-pager document is divided into different sections, and reading through it all is essential for your contract bid writing process.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF AN RFP?
The contents of an RFP may vary depending on the nature of the project or the federal agency requesting contractors. 13 sections make up an RFP, but here are the four most important sections that you should pay greater attention to:
B – Supplies or Services and Price/Costs
This section will let you know the required deliverables of the federal government contract and how the government plans to compensate you.
This second section encloses a comprehensive list of all the billable items or Contract Line Items (CLINs). The CLINs include supplies, labor, and other billable items in the contract. Additionally, this section will stipulate the pricing structure it will adopt for the project.
There are different contract pricing structures you should know about, such as the fixed-price contract and the cost-reimbursement contract. A fixed-price contract is a pricing structure where the stated expenses included in the proposal are not subject to change. On the other hand, a cost-reimbursement contract is where you will shoulder all the costs first before the government reimburses you at the end of the contract.
C – Description / Specifications / Statement of Work
All sections in the RFP are essential, but you should focus more on its three sections–and Section C is one of the three. This section will tell you the work expected from the contractor. So to set your small business apart from the competition, you should detail how your company plans to execute the deliverables. Your plan of action should reflect why your company is the best-valued contractor in the marketplace.
L – Instructions, Conditions, And Notices To Offerors
Federal agencies are very particular in reviewing the submitted contract bids to them. And in this section, the government agency will enumerate their specific instructions on how they want you to construct your contract bid—from the document’s formatting to the organization of their requested materials. Additionally, this section will also include other applicable conditions, withdrawals, and policies of the federal contract.
M – Evaluation Criteria
To ensure that your contract bid adheres to the standards of the federal agency, you should pay attention to the criteria stated in this section. Section M will describe all the deciding factors that will determine whether your proposal satisfies the agency’s expectations. Furthermore, it will also tell you how the government agency will score each aspect to give you an idea of each criterion’s importance.
STRICTLY FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS STATED IN THE RFP
Being a detail-oriented leader is an asset if you want to make it in the federal contracting industry because federal agencies are heavily scrutinizing each contract proposal whether it followed the specified instructions at Section L or not. If your contract bid fails to follow the direction of the government agency, the government agency might eliminate your proposal due to technicalities.
So before you start writing down your contract bid, take note of all the instructions indicated in the Section L of the RFP to guide you through the process.
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