As the incumbent you are in a unique position that gives you an advantage over your competitors in winning your recompete: You know the existing contract and customer ‘inside and out’, so can show why your new solution exactly meets your customer’s needs. And you have huge amounts of evidence about your [...]
Editor’s Note:The author of this article Nigel Thacker is arguably the leading authority in the world on recompete proposals. Nigel specializes in recompetes. He has trained OCI personnel in his unique techniques, such as administering the Recompete Workshop. In this article, I explain how to greatly enhance a recompete submission. Of course [...]
As the incumbent, you are in a unique position that gives you an advantage over your competitors in winning your proposal recompetes. You should have data from the existing contract that will enable you to easily win. However, the sad truth is that, incumbent proposal teams often lose competitions they could have [...]
When we are answering an RFP or IFB questions, we always look carefully at what the customer has said to get the best score. The evaluation regime will often have 4 or 5 possible scores, ranging from 0 (didn’t answer the question) up to 5 as the best score. Over time, we recognized [...]
Don’t delay your recompete preparations on the expectation of an extension Expecting to get an extension and then being surprised by an announcement that the official recompete is starting has happened to more incumbents than it should. And the resulting lack of recompete preparation wastes many of the advantages you should have [...]
Extensions are often an opportunity to renegotiate elements of the contract. Sometimes the customer will ask for a cost reduction; perhaps you will ask for a price increase to cover inflation over the additional period. Usually a compromise is agreed. But you can also use the extension as an opportunity to agree [...]
The US Government Accountability Office’s decisions on bidders protests regarding lost bids is a source we have used several times to illustrate real examples of common incumbent mistakes. Below we have pulled together two real life recompete losses which, while being over 17 years apart, illustrate what we believe is essentially the [...]
Business isn’t always ‘fair’ and we don’t always get what we might think our efforts and abilities deserve. Contracting for outsourced business can be an especially brutal process, with apparently small and sometimes unfathomable differences, or opinions of evaluators, making the difference between a large win and a total loss, seemingly irrelevant [...]
This article focuses on how a contractor can plan to have a winning story to tell on the next contract recompete. Being able to use examples from delivery on the existing contract is a real strength for incumbents. Other bidders can talk about other customers and contacts. Only you can give specifics [...]
The US Army released the $37.4 billion Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services (RS3) IDIQ contract March 25, 2015. It is due April 24, and awards are planned for late July, 2015.
The Army released the Draft RFP of the solicitation on February 24, 2015, and released answers to 90 industry questions related to the Draft RFP on March 24, 2015.
Given the high dollar value and the different award categories, the Army will likely receive well over 100, maybe over 200 proposals. Approximately 30 large businesses and 20 small businesses will receive awards, according to the latest information issued by the US Army Contracting Command. The RS3 procurement (draft solicitation number W15P7T15R0008) is intended to replace a number of existing Army multiple award IDIQ contracts, including S3, R2-3G, WEBS, TIES, and TAOSS. While incumbents on these contracts with a strong record of successful past performance are well positioned for award on RS3, the draft PWS has been prepared with intentionally broad language and covers a wide range of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) tasks, which opens the door to up and coming competitors. PWS functional areas include services related to Engineering; Research, Development, Test and Evaluation; Logistics; Acquisition and Strategic Planning; and Education and Training.
Suggestions for Preparing a Winning RS3 Proposal
Offerors that intend to submit a winning proposal should take the following actions:
1. Review the RFP documents and Industry Day briefing slide deck to understand the Section C SOW Requirements, Section L Instructions, and Section M evaluation criteria. In particular, note the insight provided by the Government from the 90 questions and answers that were published on March 24, 2015 on fbo.gov, and fine tune your company’s capture strategy, including teaming arrangements and proposal team resources.
