The process of buying a piece of equipment or a system, whether designed from scratch or configured from commercial off-the shelf (COTS) components.
Usually distinguished from services contracting in requiring large capital investment to fund the design and development effort.
Used extensively in military procurement: ships, armoured vehicles, weaponry, radar systems. Information technology systems also fall into this category.
Some notes on contractual content: what drives the requirement, what it looks like, and where your focus should be. RFP responses can seem complex and intimidating, especially to the uninitiated. Simplify the task by dividing and conquering.
The short answer is: “The RFP.” But there are three underlying drivers:
Whatever it says in the RFP.
Clients usually include a draft contract in their RFP. Sometimes (more often at the draft RFP stage than at the final one) they invite bidders to identify any problems they have, any changes they want to make. Sometimes they require bidders to indicate their acceptance of its terms and conditions as given.
RFPs sometimes also include forms that bidders must complete and include with their proposals:
No.
RFPs sometimes require responses or certifications of some sort, but don’t provide any form for bidders to complete. In that case, bidders must develop their own format.
You read the RFP carefully: the overview, the draft contract, the response instructions, and the evaluation criteria if provided.
Not to identify the requirements: An intelligent lay reader can usually handle it. However, if the requirements are badly (i.e. confusedly) stated, an expert review might be needed, either from the perspective of interpreting legal language, or from the perspective of interpreting this client’s usual language and contracting framework. In either case, it’s prudent to ask for clarification from the client.
On the other hand, a lawyer or contracts expert should likely validate that the documents being proposed to be submitted actually meet the requirement.
Finally, it might be corporate policy or just good politics to have a contracts expert or in-house counsel (if such there be) brief senior executives on the requirements. Corporate executives taking signing responsibility for a bid are understandably reluctant to take just anyone’s word that everything is OK.
Answer the question; acronym pronounced by spelling it out.
Not sure what the “F” is for.
Bidders are highly motivated to do well: to submit, on time, a compliant proposal that will score well and offer the lowest price they can. So why don’t they do better? A major reason is the complexity of bid documents. Simpler documents will lead to fewer questions during the process, and to better responses at the end of the process, where “better” means closer to the requirement, easier to evaluate, and more competitively priced. Herewith, one final practical suggestion for keeping it simple.
One of the first thing bidders do with an RFP is to “lay out” the required response. That is, they review the RFP so they can set the table of contents for the response, complete with volumes, tabs, sections, and appropriately numbered writing outlines:
However, this essential first step comes off the rails in any of these situations:
Following clear, consistent instructions is relatively easy:
Writing clear, consistent instructions is harder than it looks.
Much harder.
What to do?
Bidders usually review their proposals before they submit them, looking for answers that are incomplete, unclear, or inconsistent with other sections. Go, thou, and do likewise: Before you issue bid documents, go through them as if you were going to respond, looking for instructions that are incomplete, unclear, inconsistent with other sections, or just in the wrong spot.
Don’t just read what’s been written: Actually try to design a table of contents that follows it. This simple step will save untold hours on both sides, by allowing you to clarify the requirement, eliminating all kinds of questions.
This post is based on an article I wrote for the National Institute of Government Purchasing, Canada West Chapter.
When used as “the document,” usually means the entirety of the physical proposal being submitted: its structure, organization, and production.
Used primarily to distinguish the physical proposal that must be produced from the content that must be developed (that is, from the management and technical solution being proposed), as in the following:
“I don’t care about the content; I just care about the document.”