Requests for Proposal — A Call for Standardization

by Peter Zvalo

The old saying that goes "it takes money to make money" can be extended to the fact that it often "takes work to make work." In other words, you have to invest time and effort, at your own expense, in order to generate future work for which you get paid. Anyone who has written a proposal knows that it sometimes takes a lot of work to get business. Many requests for proposals, however, are unnecessarily complex or poorly written, which causes confusion for bidders and creates extra work for everyone involved.

The Government of Canada buys approximately $14 billion worth of goods and services every year from thousands of suppliers. As a general rule, most federal departments are obliged to advertise contract opportunities that are valued above a certain threshold, normally at $25,000.00 or more. Many of these goods and services are obtained through a competitive bidding process, generally through mechanisms such as the Government Electronic Tendering Service (GETS), an online system that advertises government contracting opportunities to potential bidders. This means that, in most situations, if you want to win a substantial contract with the federal government, you must compete against other suppliers through the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

Proposals written in response to an RFP are the means through which an individual or company sells itself — by describing qualifications, related experience, approach and methodology for meeting the requirement, and of course, the cost of providing the product or service.

Writing a winning proposal can be a lengthy, sometimes painstaking process. This is due in large part to the fact that every proposal must specifically address the unique nature of each RFP. Each Canadian federal department uses its own boilerplate format to produce RFPs. Even if a requirement between two departments is almost identical — for example, to provide a standing offer for editing services — the RFPs will usually differ enough to necessitate the creation of two substantially different proposals. With the federal government comprising over 100 departments, Crown Corporations, and Special Operating Agencies, that’s a lot of different formats for RFPs.

A single RFP is normally the collective result of the work of several people, such as the contracting officer for the branch, and subject-matter experts familiar with the specific requirement. While these individuals may be proficient in the areas under their responsibility, none of them are necessarily writers or editors whose expertise is consolidating the input of many different sources and communicating information in a succinct, coherent fashion. In the haste to get an RFP out the door, it appears that no one actually edits the document to ensure that it is clear and consistent in terms of content and formatting.

The result is that some RFPs are difficult to understand, are repetitive, and have obvious formatting errors that detract from the readability of the document. The fact that RFPs originating from different departments employ different structures to present the information means that bidders are unable to rely on past experience with other RFPs for guidance. While bidders are given the opportunity to ask questions and obtain clarification about the RFP, the responses to these questions — which are given in writing — are sometimes less than clear. Going through multiple rounds of questions and answers not only creates additional work for everyone involved, but can result in delays and force the client to extend the deadline for submission of proposals.

Standardization of the format of government RFPs across all departments, for example, would provide an element of predictability. More time and energy could be devoted to writing the proposal than recrafting the original RFP. For bidders, standardization would ease the task of trying to understand individual RFPs by enabling them to draw on past experience for similar requirements. For government contracting officers, standardized RFPs would go a long way toward a more consistent proposal evaluation process. A single formula and a common set of criteria could be used to determine winning bids — something that would also enhance the goals of competition, fairness, and value across government.

To improve the content of an RFP, departments would have to gain a better appreciation for the value that an editor could bring to the process. Before an RFP is released to the public, it should undergo an editing process aimed at reducing or eliminating redundancies, addressing ambiguities, and ensuring that the correct formatting has been applied. This activity would result in clearer, more succinct RFPs that might generate fewer queries, reduce the workload of all concerned, and ultimately produce a greater number of quality proposals from which the client can choose.

The federal government has made strides in recent years to simplify and streamline the procurement process. GETS and other procurement mechanisms employed by government have helped to open up opportunities to anyone with Internet access — regardless of where in Canada they may be. Further improvements to standardize the preparation of RFPs across the federal government would provide efficiencies that would benefit government contracting authorities, suppliers, and ultimately the taxpayer.

Peter Zvalo is a Contributing Editor for Writer’s Block.

NEXT >>