Five things contracting officers can do

Being a Contracting Officer (CO) is not an easy job. You are the hub of communication and activity for internal and external stakeholders — with diverse, often conflicting, priorities.

Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to foster trust with industry. Trust yields better engagement, better proposals, and ultimately better value for the government. Some are actually pretty easy to implement. In approximate order of easiest-to-hardest to do:

1. Respond to inquiries.

In government contracting, the CO is the official avenue for communication with industry. This is a central aspect of the role, making sure that communications are done properly and per laws and regulations. Well-intentioned (or not so well-intentioned) discussions outside of that channel can cause big problems for everyone.

What you can do: respond to emails and phone calls. Many COs are responsive. This is great, as industry can get answers to questions. The answer may even be “no new information,” but hopefully contains direct, honest information. With a responsive CO, there is no need to try back channels, and thus less risk all around.

2. Communicate timelines.

Procurements notoriously slip “to the right.” Here are a few all-to-common scenarios pulled from real life:

• ABC procurement is announced on FBO.gov via a sources sought notice or Request for Information. There is no timeframe for the potential procurement. 7 months later, industry is wondering what will happen.
• XYZ procurement holds an industry day in June of 2016 to provide details about an upcoming procurement. It is big, $1 billion big. About a year later, in July 2017, they publish an update, including a timeline for procurement milestones starting with the release of a draft RFP at the end of August. At the end of October, industry is still anticipating when the next step is.

Timelines slip for a variety of reasons, which is understandable for complex undertakings. What is less understandable is the lack of communication…

What you can do: communicate. The simple path to build credibility is to:

• Communicate the expected timeline, and characterize the certainty of that timeline (i.e. use terms like ‘approximate’ or ‘as soon as’ if that’s what it is).
• Before you miss a milestone, publish an update to the timeline. This holds true pre-RFP up through planned award and start dates.
• (That’s it)

Industry also has a big job in planning for proposal responses and lining up great solutions for you. Help them by providing the best information you can. They will take your opportunity more seriously and be able to plan for it. You’ll get a higher quality of proposal as a result.

3. State the purpose of the RFI.

The Request for Information (RFI) is a common procurement step where vendors provide input to the government. However, most in industry are skeptical at best in the value of responding to an RFI. Therefore, they often provide generic capability statements that don’t help anyone much at all. The skepticism boils down to a question: “What are they going to do withe these?” The industry assumption (fairly or unfairly) is that they will probably be collected and filed into a black hole without being read, and certainly without further engagement.

What you can do: share the path forward. State a clear purpose for the RFI, spelling out precisely how responses will be used. Investing time in crafting these few sentences will greatly improve the quality and usefulness of responses you get. Some examples of legitimate purposes for an RFI (or sources sought):

• The government is looking to determine the number of small business vendors interested and capable of providing services in an area of scope in order to make a set-aside determination. (Relevant capability statement and corporate experience information is highly valuable.)
• The government is seeking feedback on the draft Request for Proposal / Statement of Work / Statement of Objectives. (Specific paragraph-level feedback will result in edits to make a better set of procurement documents.)
• The government is seeking information on procurement strategy for a high-level requirement. (Industry opinions on what services/technologies are most effective is of value, as are related capability statements.)
• The government is looking to identify a pool of qualified vendors to make a down-select for the RFP and/or to invite potential bidders for further discussions. (Opportunity-specific qualifications of firms are necessary, including corporate experience and high-level solution or approach information.)

Potential bidders should understand: what will happen with their response; what impact it will have in the procurement; and what the next steps would be (even if that is “expect no further communication from the government”).

4. Release a draft.

Nothing generates questions and input quite like a draft solicitation, where small details can have huge impacts for vendors:

• Will it be a set-aside?
• What are the past performance requirements?
• Are there go/no-go criteria, such as CMMI certification?

Firms often wait for the RFP to come out to make final teaming or bid/no-bid decisions. A draft helps to move the process forward on all sides. Bidders can provide feedback, such as “we cannot bid given the past performance requirements, but could if the threshold were $2m instead of $3m.”

5. Answer questions.

Related to the above, vendors have questions. A well-run procurement provides answers early and often. Providing answers is simple, but not easy — often requiring input from technical experts. Nevertheless, there are some easy things that can help everyone:

• Provide answers in multiple batches. Provide earlier answers to big issues that will sway bid decisions (set-aside, go/no-go criteria, etc.).
• Provide complete answers. Sometimes bidders ask multi-part questions, and get responses that only address part of the question. (And perhaps bidders can do a better job formulating some questions.)
• Provide helpful answers. Some questions may be less than complete. I’ve seen answers to questions that simply state, “Read the RFP.” In a few cases, that is warranted, but in general bidders are highlighting something that is not entirely clear. Keep in mind, bidders are paranoid that if they get one trivial detail wrong (the wrong font), the proposal may be deemed non-compliant and tossed.