Charles E. Robinson IV
Business Strategies and Proposals
Bid Strategy
Dr. Tressa R. Shavers
Business 505
May 13, 2012

Provide a summary of the RFP you have selected.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company employs 30,000 people around the globe. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company has nine locations across the United States and several international offices around the world. Fort Worth, Texas, Marietta, Georgia, Palmdale, California, San Antonio, Texas, Greenville, South Carolina, Pinellas Park, Florida, Meridian, Mississippi, Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Clarksburg, West Virginia are the nine locations across the United States. The solicitation number for this bid is NNA12435005Q-AMD. According to FEDBIZOPPS.GOV, the solicitation says, “NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) has a requirement for 60 square yards of Rayon Felt. The rayon felt must be 7-inches thick, so that NASA ARC may carbonize it, which will result in a 3-inch thick carbon felt. For TPS applications, NASA requires thicknesses of greater than 3-inches for the thermal protection of flight vehicles. Carbon felt is the precursor for conformable ablators, currently under investigation at NASA ARC, which offer many advantages over rigid ablators for large heat shields. Commercially available carbon felts are currently manufactured in thicknesses of 1-inchor less. NASA intends to procure the rayon felt on a sole source basis from American Felt & Filter Company, Inc. (AFFCO) of New Windsor, NY, under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b)(1). Market research conducted by NASA ARC within the past year, including the posting of RFI# NNA11TPSRFIL-AMD indicates that only AFFCO is capable of producing a rayon felt at least 7 inches thick to meet the NASA requirement. The Government intends to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12. Interested organizations may submit their capabilities and qualifications to perform the effort in writing to the identified point of contact not later than 4:30 p.m. local time on May 25, 2012. Such capabilities/qualifications will be evaluated solely for determining whether to conduct this procurement on a competitive basis. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed effort on a full and open competition basis, based upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the government. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. All responsible sources may submit an offer, which shall be considered by the agency (FEDBIZOPPS.GOV).”

Outline a bid strategy that would allow your selected firm to effectively compete for the contract award.

The first tactic I would have to do is figure out what type of bid strategy I would use. There are two levels of bid strategy: general or overarching and specific. A general strategy represents an overall approach to the procurement that yields an overarching strategy. The second strategy is actually a series of specific bid strategies. Each is focused on a specific aspect of the procurement with special emphasis on what the customer views as most important. Next, I would have to plan to develop a specific bid strategy for every element of the procurement. I must understand the customer thoroughly and search every single aspect of the procurement to identify areas where I can gain competitive advantage. I will have to have a better score than my competitors for each of the proposal areas. The main goal is to convince the customer that I am better. I will consider performing some trade-off studies or analyses that will enhance the perception of my approach. According to Steve R. Osborne, PhD, specific bid strategies focus on individual elements of the program that we believe are especially important to the customer. The customer’s perception of what is most important is what I refer to as customer key evaluation Requirements. They exist long before an RFP is prepared and represent the customer’s perspective, which may differ significantly from our view, of what is most important. We expect customer key evaluation Requirements to be areas the customer will use to discriminate between competing solutions and pick a winner.” When developing specific bid strategies, it will consist of a four-step process. 1. Identify and list customer key evaluation Requirements; prioritize if possible, compare your capability to the capability of your competitors for each customer key evaluation Requirements, list strengths, weaknesses, and neutral areas based on the competitive assessment, and develop a strategy for each strength, weakness, or neutral area. When you identify those aspects of a program deemed most important by the customer, they are factors that are important to the success or failure of the program. The categories are Technical/performance, management, logistics, schedule, risk and cost. The next step in developing specific bid strategies is to use a list of customer key evaluation Requirements to conduct a competitive assessment. The conduct the competitive assessment, they compare the ability of our team to fulfill the customer key evaluation Requirements versus the ability of the competitor to full the customer key evaluation Requirements. Based on the outcome of the competitive assessment, I can identify potential strengths and weaknesses. According to Steve R. Osborne, PhD, rarely does a situation exist where competitor strength cannot be neutralized, at least from a proposal perspective. If you can counter competitors’ strengths, exploit their weaknesses, and highlight your own strengths, you will win more than your share of contracts. Almost any issue, viewed in the proper perspective, can become strength. It just depends on how you “spin” the information. Next, I will need to develop specific strategies for each customer key evaluation Requirements. In the areas that I have strengths, I want to develop a strategy to protect or extend that strength. In all of the places that I have weakness, my strategy needs to focus on overcoming or countering that weakness. For neutral customer key evaluation Requirements, I will need to develop strategies that transform what is a neutral factor into strength. Some specific bid strategies are approach, benefit to customer, proof or substantiation, and theme. Approach is the collective set of actions we plan to perform to implement the strategy. Starting early allows sufficient time to develop and implement effective strategies. Benefit to customer is a clear articulation of the benefits our approach will afford the customer or user. If possible, these benefits should be quantified. Proof or substantiation is evidence we will present in our proposal to substantiate or prove to the customer that we will effectively fulfill customer key evaluation Requirements and hopefully fulfill them better than our competitors. Theme means the proposal message we want to convey to the customer in our proposal. The next thing that I would do is look at the cost as a specific bid strategy. I would look at the cost strategies in each program element and ask myself if there is anything that I can do to reduce cost that still fits within my overall bid strategy. I will need to make sure actions to reduce cost do not become a weakness in the eyes of the customer. I will review the RFP to fully understand how cost will be evaluated to detect potential strategic bid opportunities. Once the final RFP is released, I will conduct another competitive assessment using the list of evaluation criteria contained in Section M of the final RFP. I will assess the ability of my team to satisfy each technical evaluation criterion compared to the ability of each competitor to satisfy the criterion. I will identify evaluation criteria for which I have a strength, weakness, or neutral area (Steve R. Osborne, 2011).”

Determine how you would organize your capture team to maximize chances of winning the bid.

To maximize chances of winning the bid, I would organize my capture team by developing a matrix of roles, responsibilities, and authority for key members of the capture team. I would get management to approve this matrix and implement it on individual proposals. According to Steve R. Osborne, PhD, the role of the capture manager is to organize and coordinate all the activities required to pursue the opportunity and prepare a proposal. The capture manager calls the plays. He or she is responsible for developing the bid strategy, briefing senior management about the opportunity and keeping them apprised of bid progress, and overseeing proposal planning and development. The capture manager coordinates pre-proposal and proposal activities with other elements of the organization, plus any major subcontractor or consultant efforts. The proposal manager works for the capture manager or holds both positions. He or she is completely responsible for planning and preparing the entire proposal. The simplest proposals require a technical volume and separate volumes or sections for past performance, cost, and contracts. The proposal manager builds the proposal schedule, prepares proposal outlines and writing guides for authors, verifies proposal assignments, prepares the proposal directive, conducts the proposal kickoff meeting, and manages day-to-day proposal activities. He or she ensures that the proposal complies with all RFP requirements, integrates bid strategies into the proposal, works with authors and technical personnel to identify features and benefits to include in the proposal, plans and coordinates proposal review, and makes the final decisions concerning every aspect of the proposal. According to Steve R. Osborne, PhD, the program manager also works for the capture manager or holds both positions. The program manager is responsible for executing the program at contract award. He or she should be assigned as soon as a favorable bid decision is made. His or her role is to participate in the development of bid strategies and to approve decisions that will affect subsequent program planning and execution. The production manager/proposal administrator is responsible for formatting and producing the final proposal and packaging it for delivery to the customer. This person ensures that the proposal follows all RFP format requirements, conforms to all proposal directives, and conforms to any company publication standards. He or she handles all the administrative tasks required to produce both review and final copies of the proposal. The technical volume manager is responsible for preparing the technical volume of the proposal, plus any attachments that address technical content. The cost volume manager is responsible for preparing the cost volume of the proposal. The contracts manager is to read the draft and final RFPs to determine whether the applicable terms and conditions are acceptable to the company, and to identify any special RFP clauses that require management attention. According to Steve R. Osborne, PhD, the contracts manager completes the representations and certifications required by the RFP and prepare any additional information that needs to be included in the contracts section of the proposal. The role of the marketing manager is to position the company strategically with the customer for the forthcoming bid. He marketing manager collects information about the customer, program requirements, and competitors to support bid decisions and the development of bid strategies. He or she also coordinates information exchange between the capture team and the customer and coordinates customer visits (Steve R. Osborne, 2011).”

REFERENCES

FEDBIZOPPS.GOV. (n.d.). Retrieved from FEDBIZOPPS.GOV: https://www.fbo.gov
Steve R. Osborne, P. (2011). Winning Government Business. Vienna: Management Concepts.