Archive for June 2013

OASIS Update

June 27, 2013 Federal Contracting No comments

OASIS final RFPs are due out in several weeks. On June 24 GSA posted another draft RFP for both the large and small business procurements. The draft solicitation at FBO.gov now says: “The Final Solicitation and complete attachments are anticipated to be released in the mid July time-frame.”

OASIS proposal writing is a complex file manipulation effort requiring great care to ensure full compliance. Our experience is that GSA will use any small non-compliance reason to reject your proposal to reduce the enormity of evaluating hundreds of proposal.

Fedmarket’s OASIS Model Proposals:

  • Reduce proposal writing costs
  • Ensure compliance
  • Simplify task of deciding to submit a bid (by reading the simplified template formats)

The model proposals costs are valuable and worth the savings in staff time in making a bid/no bid decision.

The final OASIS RFPs will not change significantly from the current draft RFPs.

Purchasers of the draft OASIS Model Proposals will receive an updated version of the models within 2 days of the issuance of the final RFP.

OASIS Model Proposal Text  – Get a head start on your OASIS bid with a model proposal.
Read more…

Call 888-661-4094, Ext. 2 for more information or to purchase by telephone.

Why Proposals Lose

June 17, 2013 Proposal Writing No comments

Fedmarket uses a structured RFP-driven proposal process that ensures proposal compliance. We win a majority of the proposals we write and almost all of the multiple award (IDIQ) bids. Yet some of the single award proposals we write proposals lose. Why, because the customer:

  • Was stretching its capabilities and experience and corporate egos hate to admit it.
  • Did not write the critical technical content required to win (a proposal service company usually cannot write complex technical solution content. This has to come from the customers technical staff or proposal library.
  • Won technically but lost on price.
  • Did not understand what the customer asked for in the RFP, e.g., they wanted experience in building barracks and the fact that you built huge shopping centers did not score points.

And sometimes the customer just wanted to work with the company they know and love.

Strategic Sourcing May Favor Newcomers

June 12, 2013 Federal Contracting No comments

Federal agencies are awarding contracts to low price bidders more often because of budget constraints. Low price awards are particularly prevalent if the bidder is offering a product that meets the solicitation specifications. Inherently, low price awards are made for purchases that have well defined specifications (products) and nearly equal evaluation scores for services.

Entrenched and incumbent contractors are crying foul because a low price approach encourages awards to newcomers in general or an experienced contractor that is new to an agency.