Requests for Quotes (RFQs)

Requests for Quotes (RFQs)

Requests for Quotes (RFQs) Since the advent of major procurement reform, the federal government and selected state and local governments are now using requests for quotes (RFQs) to buy commercial products and services. The RFQ procedure is a simpler, more streamlined...

State and Local Procurement Rules

State and Local Procurement Rules When selling to a state or local government, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the rules of the jurisdiction to which you’re selling. At the very least, understand the particular jurisdiction’s...
Performance-Based Contracting

Performance-Based Contracting

Performance-Based Contracting Federal, state and local governments have engaged in performance-based contracting for a long time. We’ve witnessed a dramatic upswing, however, in the last few of years, especially at the federal level. Last year, the Office of...
Minority-Owned Business Contracting

Minority-Owned Business Contracting

Minority-Owned Business Contracting In the prior installment, we talked about women-owned business contracting. This week, we discuss the 8(a) Business Development Program and the Small Disadvantaged Business Certification (SDB) Program. Background: The Law The Small...
Small Business Contracting

Small Business Contracting

Small Business Contracting Only businesses that fall under certain established size standards are deemed small and allowed to bid on small business set-asides. Federal Programs The Law Let’s begin with an overview of federal law: The Small Business Act of 1953...
Pricing Bids

Pricing Bids

Pricing Bids Pricing your bid correctly directly affects two fundamentally important areas of your business: whether you win or lose the bid, and whether you gain profit or suffer loss on the contract. Is there anything more important in proposal preparation than...
Oral Presentation

Oral Presentation

Oral Presentation When government agency personnel notify you that they would like your company to make an oral presentation, it’s a very good thing. It either means that you submitted a proposal in response to a request for proposal (negotiated procurement) and...
Responding to Public Procurements

Responding to Public Procurements

Responding to Public Procurements In the early selling stage prior to a public procurement announcement, you will also be gathering valuable information for writing your proposal (if one is required), making a bid/no bid decision, and pricing the bid. Gathering...

Publicly-Announced Negotiated Procurements

Publicly-Announced Negotiated Procurements The publicly-advertised negotiated procurement market segment is a new world for companies that have not bid on negotiated procurements using requests for proposal (RFP) procedures. Responding to RFPs is unique for several...
Acquisition Planning

Acquisition Planning

Acquisition Planning An acquisition plan is a document that shows what products and services are required, and how they are acquired, during the life of a given project. Acquisition Plan: Definition An acquisition plan: Provides agency management with information for...
Teaming

Teaming

Teaming Government contracts are getting bigger. Requirements that were once performed under, say, six to ten contracts might now be performed under only one. Not surprisingly, teaming is becoming more prevalent, especially among companies offering services to...
FACNET

FACNET

FACNET In 1993, President Clinton issued a memorandum entitled “Streamlining Procurement Through Electronic Commerce,” which called for establishment of a “complete government-wide implementation of electronic commerce for appropriate federal...
Invitation for Bids

Invitation for Bids

Invitation for Bids Publicly-advertised fixed price procurements are made using either a sealed Invitation for Bid (IFB) or a Request for Quote (RFQ). Governments require more formality in these larger procurements because there is more money at stake: they want to be...
Past Performance

Past Performance

Past Performance In selecting winning vendors, federal, state, and local governments have typically looked at past contract performance information as part of their overall evaluation processes. Simply stated, vendors that have a history of performing well have always...
Debriefings and Protests

Debriefings and Protests

Debriefings and Protests Debriefing and protest regulations are presented in Federal Acquisition Regulation 15.5 Preaward, Award, and Postaward Notifications, Protests, and Mistakes. The basic rules as outlined in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) are as...
Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Contracts

Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Contracts

Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Contracts The General Service Administration’s Federal Supply Service (FSS) operates the federal supply schedule program. The program leverages the purchasing power of the U.S. government to garner volume discounts for commercial...
Finding Subcontracting Opportunities

Finding Subcontracting Opportunities

Finding Subcontracting Opportunities Finding subcontracting business is a bit like finding prime contracting business: you can focus on the bids as they come out (and be a part of the crowd), or you can get ahead of the game by talking to the right people BEFORE the...
Selling to Government Cardholders

Selling to Government Cardholders

Selling to Government Cardholders A number of important changes came out of the federal Procurement Reform Era of the mid 1990s. Perhaps the most significant of these was the emergence of widespread government credit card purchasing. In an effort to reduce red tape...
Government Small Purchases

Government Small Purchases

Government Small Purchases In this article, we talk about small purchases, defined here as government buys in the $2,500 to $25,000 range. We’ve touched on this subject in past articles. This time we devote an entire article to it, and get into a bit more...
Winning Government Contracts

Winning Government Contracts

Winning Government Contracts I’m assuming that you have already gone through the process of certification with your state and/or the two national programs that are discussed here. Making it through that process means that you have a serious business enterprise,...