eSign General Contractor Services Proposal Made Easy

E sign general contractor services proposal

thank you for joining to the first shelf in associates in our 2019 webinar Wednesday series we are coming to you live from downtown Washington DC our webinars are every Wednesday and you can find the upcoming schedule on our website past webinars and all recordings are also on a website and on the You Tube channel along with over 160 other recordings from federal contracting topics all are complimentary if you have questions for our speaker today you can email him directly with the contact information you'll see on the last slide indecision is a little bit about us we are Washington DC based firm and provides the resister federal contractors this ranges from market analysis reports to proposal writing and also post the works employment more information is on our website so please visit us there we now offer advertising so you can email me if you would like more information and our webinar today is wanted by AXA track here's a short message from them cute rat consulting and accounting services is an 8 8 w LSP CPA firm committed to supporting entities to growth and government contracting our outstanding DCAA accounting solutions reduce audit risk improve cash flows and give you peace of mind contact us today to learn how we can enhance your DCAA accounting efforts alright let's go ahead and get started today our speaker is Alan shape and he couldn't be speaking about constructing a compliant proposal Alan I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you okay thank you very much Mallory and thank you everyone for coming out this afternoon so I think you'll find that this is going to be very straightforward a little bit about myself I'm Alan shapes with with bid speed so we provide a number of services and the government business development and markets arena they're both at the federal and state and local level I've been in this for about 25 years there's flu in the Air Force and then spent my last tenure in the Air Force there is what I like to call on the other side of the fence so actually being on the reviewing side of proposals in the Oklahoma City area gistic center there so actually received proposals for zone review teams and help to make the award recommendations there so after that I left and went on to large contracting firm after I left the Air Force and learned how to do all of the fun or the fun contracting part of it they're from proposal development capture all of the fun stuff I'm a mechanical engineer by discipline so obviously worked on many engineering projects there at many different levels there so I started bid speed back in 2009 there and we decided to provide out a product that allows companies to do everything in a single look one of the things we work with our clientele on is helping they'll make constructing compliant proposals right so we're not a proposal house and we do not do writing although I've written my fair share of proposals there we concentrate on making sure the compliancy part is there for a client why is that important because that's about 25 percent of the actual response time from your burden right meaning you're going to spend 25 to 30 percent of your time just getting ready to start writing your response there so these are our recommendations or what we always kind of follow through that the first thing is keep all of the documents in the single location right so if you if the opportunity is on FB oh great all the documents are usually there keep that link somewhere build you a folder get you a system like bit speed or there's a number of other systems out there and keep everything in a single location there and then review any amendments as they're released and keep those documents flowing in there the first thing if you've got 15 documents or one document is run through those documents find the instructions so don't just set your PIN down and just click around and find where it says proposal instructions now most of the time this is defined as what we often refer to as section L as in Lima and and then the evaluation criteria in Section M or as in Mike so we often refer to it as Ln in sections L&M right a lot of times you'll never find it called sections element right you'll just find proposal instructions so there's a lot of different government agencies out there there's 30 or 40 thousand different contracting officers all doing it a little different way right so it's all guided by the far but they're not necessarily doing it all the same way it's pretty close to being standardized but and they always release instructions and evaluation criteria but it might read a little different most of the time and I'll define that as 60 to 70 percent of the time you're going to find an SF 49 or standard form 1449 sometimes that form will be called a standard form 30 right you will find all of the far regulations and everything behind these forms along possibly with the performance work statement buried in there at the very end you'll find sections Ellen ends you anywhere from you know could be 60 pages long the entire document I've seen them as far as 250 pages long right so so find the documents usually labeled RFP its or solicitation or sometimes they'll just know identify this 1449 so find the instructions right don't worry about the other 150,000 pages that are in there just find the proposal instructions there and read it there they're going to say proposal instructions you shall do this right you got to have a cover page you got to have volume 1 volume 2 volume 3 see what they're asking for in the instructions and then find the evaluation criteria and read it you know we're going to evaluate you on you know management's staffing and price right so they're going to have different different things they're looking for there so sit there take the instructions get rid of the other 150 pages you know if you're if you're one that likes to print print the stuff out throw all the other stuff away and just keep the instructions evaluation criteria if you've got the ability to to just delete if it's in a Word document delete everything except the instructions evaluation criteria or if it's a PDF I think most PDS now you can convert those to Word pretty fairly easy there may be making it sound easier because I've got the full of full version of Adobe which I think only runs me like 100 hundred bucks of a year actually could be able to convert PDFs to word there and look at the instruction criteria look at the evaluation criteria and create an outline so create that outline starting with the instruction write out exactly the way they're wanting it laid out and then look at the evaluation criteria go back in that outline and lay in where there that evaluation criteria is happening now a lot of times what you're going to see is that they may ask for you to put things in the proposal that aren't being evaluated now does that mean you leave it out no because that becomes a part of the compliance right so you want to make sure that you are compliant with the RFP however you want to put a lot of your focus in the evaluation criteria right so and give me an example the far fifty-two - one two - one is the commercial proposal you'll see that far called out probably 80% of the time if you go to that far it actually lays out there's about 12 different things that they want every proposal to see they want to see in every proposal how its laid out so if you will take that far and you will building a template a company a company template for you using that outline there you will be you know 20% of the head of the head of the RFP when it comes out take those instructions lay it into the outline late evaluation criteria over it and it will you will naturally see where it starts to integrate that then take that outline and create a draft don't still at this point don't worry about trying to write your solution or price your solution or anything like that but complete the draft with a cover page go ahead and build your cover page that's table of contents and already has an all your page numbering headers footers appendices so that by the time you do start writing you have created that that compliancy with the instructions that is married to the evaluation criteria there and I would go as far in the evaluation criteria if they're looking say it's one document they're asking you for and they're saying we're your technical approach is going to be worth 30 percent your staffing is going to be worth 30 percent put that in the in the header for that table of contents entry identify technical approach and then out beside it put parentheses worth 30 percent so let that evaluate or know exactly what that the section they're reading is one that's being evaluated there so a little tidbit there I mentioned back in the beginning that I've set on the other side of the table it makes the evaluators job a lot easier if they know exactly what's being evaluated because what happens is they get your proposal may not be read by one person they're going to take your proposal and they made they may give one person the technical solution they may give one person the key personnel and those two people are going to have checklists there that are going to say okay where's this there was this there was that there there and they're going to check that off and then they're going to score it so if you are pretty explicit and identifying that you know what's being evaluated and what's not being evaluated and you can do that very easily by marking that and header there I think you give yourself a leg up there during that evaluation plus you're able to then maybe summarize your line there with you know summarize some paragraph there we're saying hey we feel like we've provided information that would would score us at a you know thirty percent or whatever that's scoring it so you can really kind of use that to your advantage prepare that outline as a first draft there make sure you've got your cover page again this is all goes back to the far fifty-two - one two - one there that is a good way to to do it you can prepare one right now without a requirement and just build out so you're not having to figure out because it's not every day that you know you know we're engineers and business folks and you're out there and it's not every day you go in and create a table of contents that's actually functional right so sometimes you have to and watch some YouTube videos on on how to operate word in order to figure out how to set your table of contents up so it's completely fair right to do that so spend a little time organizing yourself up front there then when you've got all that done right start your writing price it review it and then repeat that repeat that a minimum of seven times right so go through do your initial push in the writing you know do your initial pricing go back and look at it okay I've got a fifteen page limit and I'm at 18 pages you know what if I elaborated too much on what if I not elaborated enough on go back through it can you know read it again review it again and just just do that seven times now you're probably asking why seven times we've got the data that shows that if one person sits down and does a draft they're eventually going to wind up with seven to ten drafts by the time they are done whether it's just - oops I forgot to put the phone number in here that's another draft or oops I forgot to delete that you know that red part out that was a little note to myself so price right price and review and repeat right so keep doing that then you're going to once you've got that to a point where you're like okay I've got everything set here I think I'm good I've got my gold plated proposal response right here complete all the forms now completing the forms in the 1449 a lot of this is just overlaying your your company information and address and signing it same on the FSF 30 and then if there's any amendments thereto the 1449 or the SF 30 you are going to want to sign those cover pages as well and include those in your proposal right so go ahead and make sure back in step number five go ahead and make sure that your appendices is already set up to to absorb those forms meaning you've got in appendices that says append appendix a SF completed and signed FSF 1449 or SF 30 with amendments there so you've got an area to when you go to package that it's already set and then sometimes they ask for past performance question there sometimes they don't do so you would complete all your forms and gather all that information and then package it together right so now you've got your proposal and all your forms signed and everything package all of that information together and deliver it to yourself as if you are the contracting officer there and here's why write an email to yourself and and make sure that and to see if you really have built everything the way they've asked for it and receive it as if you're the contracting officer pull that out and say okay is you know I can clearly see they've got a cover letter that got everything signed there this will avoid the mistake of oops we we sent the wrong cover letter or you know we we had the wrong price and in there or or we forgot to sign the amendment there so take the time take the day take one email email it to yourself or email it to your colleague if if you're a two-man team email it back and forth to each other so that you can verify substantiate that you have built the package it's going to be delivered today and then deliver it to the procuring organization and always copy yourself and do follow-up right so again you want to put something in the email at the very front after you say you know hi Mallory or hi Alan here's our proposal response you know you want to put in their sick leave and put it in bold italicize and underline it please reply to this email to verify receipt of our response and all the attachments there so you could always add the read receipts and everything like that to but you would want to do this because once you get that reply from them there you want to make sure that one they confirm they got it right so and then continue to followup with the CEO during the award phase right so this is I'm kind of getting on into another subject here but once you have built that proposal it is compliant and they have received it don't be afraid to pick up the phone a week later two weeks later stay in touch with contracting officer I there and say hey what's the status of the award when you planned to make the award you know there's always the blackout period there where they are not going to talk to you but it doesn't mean that they can't say hey we're still in you know we're still in review and though you know don't have I've asked a number of times am I still in the running there and and they've actually answered me before so so you want to stay in communication with that contracting officer there as well so so the summarize here so that I can't emphasize enough to just go dig and find the instructions and valuation criteria keep all of your documents in a single location there and and then integrate those to the evaluation criteria and the instructions together to create your outline that's going to ensure compliance e there and then create your document that's functional right before do all of this before you start doing any of your writing and I think you'll find that once you do this once or twice you're going to say hey you know what I can reuse this over and over and over and over again so you're really building the will and avoiding the recreation of that will by using the far fifty-two - one two - one which I guarantee you will see 85% of the time if you read down into the solicitation documents there and then right price review and repeat write do that - you've got it right complete all the forms deliver it to yourself to verify that you have packaged it correctly and did not leave anything out there and that your email looks good to yourself before you find that off to the contracting officer and we'll do the follow-up there so we do this a lot there so I hope this has been informative and if you have any questions you'll have my contact information happy to answer any additional questions so Mallory I think that does it for me all right thank you all for sharing your knowledge men say today today's presentation has been recorded and can be found on our website or YouTube channel within about 48 hours yes questions about today's topics is content out in the form of our email show screen thank you everybody this concludes slow