project management

Achieving a consistently high proposal win rate requires a highly capable bid and proposal team, in addition to a strong business ecosystem consisting of contracts, finance, human resources, recruiting, technical and project management, communications, partners, and suppliers. If one or more of the components of the ecosystem is weak, your bid can fail. For example, your proposal might fail if your pricing department is unable to produce a cost competitive proposal, recruiters are unable to identify highly qualified key personnel, or project managers do not receive good customer references. A consistent win rate requires all components of the business to work in harmony. Consider using this check list to determine how well the business units within your company work together to support winning bids. Executives Are executives able to guide the pipeline so only bids with a significant win rates are pursued? Do executives invest time and money in market … Continue reading How strong is your business ecosystem? →

Over the years, I’ve developed a proposal past performance contents template that combines requested past performance write-up contents from hundreds of government requests for proposals (RFP). Here are the items I typically include in a master past performance write-up – which can then be cut down and tailored as needed. Contract name Project name Customer name Standard industrial code Task/delivery order number (if applicable) Task period of performance (if applicable) Classified/non-classified Contracted contract value Actual contract value (and explanation of any variance) Contracted task value (if applicable) Actual task value (and explanation of any variance) (if applicable) Award fee (if applicable) Subcontractor(s) names and contact information (if applicable) Percentage of work performed by subcontractor(s) (if applicable) Total contract labor hours Total task labor hours (if applicable) Program manager (if applicable) Project manager (if applicable) Key staff names (if applicable) Last date used as past performance reference and/or questionnaire completed Software … Continue reading 30 must-have data elements for proposal past performance templates →