Government Contracting Blog

One of the first things you should do when considering bidding on a request for proposal (RFP) is a bid/no-bid assessment. When responding to a request for proposal (RFP), you have to submit a compliant proposal. Below are four basic questions you should ask yourself when trying to decide if you want to bid or not. If you ask yourself these questions before you start putting pen to paper, you will be able to identify whether or not you will be able to submit a compliant response.

When it comes to writing government proposals, everyone who has responded to a government RFP (request for proposal) knows they are often limited to “page count:” the number of pages that the response is limited to. Government entities often limit the pages to the minimum number they believe a contractor needs to explain their solution. As a reader, you can't blame them; they are often reviewing many responses and don’t want to have to sit and read through hundreds of pages of text. And as writing the government RFP response, you don’t want to write hundreds of pages of text. Having read through several responses personally, and coming across pages of just text -- just looking at it is exhausting. How many times have you tried to explain something verbally in a meeting, only to revert to drawing it on a white board to explain it to your audience? The same applies to responding to government RFPs. Sometimes, just writing an explanation is not enough to ensure your audience understands what is being said. You need to illustrate it.