COMMENTARY
DONE THAT BEEN THERE,
GETTING TO A WIN
How industry responds to a request for proposal.
by Dr. Charles K. Pickar
Te U.S. defense industry and DOD communicate with each other in many ways, but none is as significant as a request for proposal (RFP), nor carries such high stakes. RFPs are long, tedious, confusing and filled with legalese, which is not a very good way to communicate. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill, an RFP is the worst form of government-industry communication, except for every other form of communication.
In some of the acquisition classes I teach at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), I use an RFP as a catalyst for term group projects. Students are divided into teams and role-play as government program management offices and contractor companies. Actual RFPs provide NPS students an opportunity to think about the way we communicate with the defense industry and to learn proj- ect management. Ultimately, they can compare their thoughts to what is actually happening in the contract. Tat’s because the tasks usually required of a contractor to respond to an RFP closely mirror the tasks necessary to plan and manage a project. Tese tasks range from developing a state- ment of work to defining a work-breakdown structure, to building a schedule, conducting a risk assessment and more.
Tese activities also feed the cost estimation process, a critical factor in ensuring a competitive proposal. And, of course, quality control through reviews is necessary at every step, often many times, to make sure the contractor’s proposal is perfect. Once the contractor’s technical, pricing and management issues are defined, the proposal design teams, artists and professional proposal writers step in to edit and make the proposal the document you see the day after it is delivered. Understanding this process, how we in government cause proposals to be submitted, is essential to understanding the defense industry.
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