In doing this work, I have noted the amount of effort individual companies place on planning the proposal process varies greatly. Many companies fail to win contracts they could win by not giving enough attention to prior proposal planning. However, the degree of efficiency in this critical aspect of securing Government contracts is not contingent on company size. There are many medium-size and small companies that are good at this – and they usually don’t remain medium-size or small for long.

The amount of prior planning (the level of detail) in proposal operations planning has a direct impact on the quality of the final product a company submits to the Government for evaluation. It also has a significant impact on the efficiency of the assembled proposal team to produce a quality product. Stated differently, well-planned proposals cost less money to produce and result in a higher quality product. Two issues that cost companies money and should be addressed early in the planning process are: 1) In-house staff and outside consultants are expensive and their time on site needs to be thoroughly planned in the administrative sense. 2) An effective proposal file structure must be in place prior to beginning the writing effort. The structure should be simple and concise, and one that allows the writers to write efficiently within the proposal’s time constraints.

Issue Number One – For corporate management and proposal managers, proposal planning begins long before the designated team has assembled and a kick-off meeting is held. For the purposes of this discussion, I will assume the company has performed a degree of planning, and limit the my remarks to that point in time when the first outside subject matter experts (SMEs) and technical writers enter a company’s location to begin the proposal effort. Anyone who has been in this business very long can sense how effective the proposal planning has been shortly after they walk in the door of the proposal area.

It is surprising that many companies bring proposal personnel in before they are ready to employ them on the work for which they were contracted. Even though the clock is running from the moment the consult arrives, I have frequently spent two, three, four, and even five days waiting for companies to setup workstations, passwords, and pass and ID functions before actually starting work. What can be even more interesting is waiting for a copy of the solicitation or the proposal outline to be issued before you can effectively begin working.

Conversely, prior planning is also evident when all administrative details have been planned for in advance and you can immediately begin analysis of the effort and your own response planning. The effectiveness of this type of advanced planning (in either case) is evident when you consider the cost of five or six people sitting around for three or four days with the solicitation and a pad and pencil keeping them employed. It is incumbent upon proposal management and the administrative support functions to plan and communicate with each other concerning upcoming proposal requirements and ensure they are executed prior the arrival of outside personnel.

Issue Number Two – In order to get the most from outside resources from the start, companies need to plan how they will control and manage proposal information and the actual proposal response. Effective initial file development and follow-on information management is critical to the entire proposal development process and is, in my opinion, the most important proposal management function after work has begun. There are companies that take this planning effort very seriously and other companies that give this important management function little or no consideration. The file management function should never be left up to the writers and editors to develop and control. Senior program management should take an active interest in how the proposal manager and administrative support entities have set up this function prior to commencing the writing effort.

In a worst case scenario, an inexperienced proposal manager or coordinator may find themselves trying to produce a Red Team review document out of an interesting array of file naming styles used by the individual authors. How does one, cost effectively, produce a review document out of a group of files with names such as: Joe’s Stuff, 3.4.5.3.2, Mgt. Vol.1hrk, Technical Response 1e, 2.1.1.1.radars.rmyv4, 2.1.1.1radars.ver2/3, John V8, John V4, TMSgraphics1/2, and Sec.2, vlm. I have seen inexperienced proposal management teams try to make a silk purse out of this type of sow’s ear on more than one occasion. It is not a fun or inexpensive exercise to perform. Further, it is too late in the game when management must then attempt to initiate control over individual author’s file naming conventions at the time of Red Team.

Author file titles should match directly to the proposal response outline. For example: Volume 1 – Technical Response, Section 1, would logically have a corresponding writer’s ile located in a Volume 1, folder titled: 1.0. All other files within this folder should be sequentially titled by outline paragraph numbers (i.e., 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.2, 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.3, 1.3.1, etc. – depending on the outline). Further, these file names should never be changed or have other identifying appendages added such as 1.0/jfs.ver2.There is no need to do this with proper archiving of earlier versions. This critical management and planning function must be accomplished prior to the time the writers arrive. Authors need to be thoroughly briefed on the approved file structure and constantly monitored to ensure they adhere to it.

Once proposal management has established a file structure, another time and money problem comes into play – version control problems. Some authors absolutely love to create and maintain numerous files and versions of the same file. Give them a separate folder to hoard all of this busy information, but never allow more than one version, the latest working version, to reside in a proposal response folder. Authors should be charged with ensuring their most recent version has been placed in this folder on a scheduled or time frequency basis. These folders/files should then be copy archived by proposal management into a restricted management folder, backed up on diskette or CD, and named according to the date their were archived (i.e., 03/23/2000, 03/24/2000, 03/26/2000, etc).

In conjunction with version control management, is monitoring the authors’ versions. This is especially important when you begin applying editorial resources to the authors’ writing efforts. It can be disconcerting for an author to retrieve his working copy from the proposal folder and not recognize it due to editorial changes. Occasionally, authors will take a copy of an earlier version of their work from their C Drive and over-write a working proposal document that has had significant editorial work applied to it. Editors should work closely with original authors to coordinate and discuss editorial issues to avoid these occurrences.

Of course, there are many other planning issues that must be addressed by proposal management prior to Kick-off. Proposed Key Personnel and resumes, Program Management Structures, Work Breakdown Structures, Basis of Estimates, and updated Contract Histories are also important, and can significantly influence cost and quality of the final proposal if not addressed early-on in the proposal planning process. However, I believe companies can save significant bid and proposal costs by:

One: Effectively planning administrative requirements for both in-house staff and outside consultants prior to their arrival.

Two: Developing a simple file management structure based on the proposal outline and then actively managing the structure to ensure use, quality, and accuracy of writing versions as the proposal is developed and refined.

Management time spent on these two issues will reward the company with lower costs, higher quality responses (e.g., more wins), and less frustration as the proposal team moves through the process.