 Hey, did you just put off this entire humongous gigantic proposal FBO and now you're confused flabbergasted about what you should be doing? Don't worry in today's video, we're going to talk about the different sections of an RFP on FBO or any other bid site that you may find and what things you should be looking for, what things you should not be looking for so we can try and reduce your anxiety and put this thing together. All right, jump with me over to big screen, we're going to get started right now. All right, today we're looking at the solicitation structure. This applies for the majority of solicitations, however, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution but for the majority of RFPs out there that you're going to run across on Febizops or any of the other bid sites, when you're looking at the actual solicitation itself, you want to know how does the government actually break this thing down. So again, in today's lesson, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the breakdown of the solicitation structure. With that said, let's start off with part one, the actual schedule. So again, the solicitation is broken into four parts. The first part is called the schedule where you're going to have sections A, B, C, D, E and then we'll go on to sections F, G, and H. So again, section A is the actual solicitation, B, price and fee schedule, C, the scope of work, D, packaging and marketing, E, inspection acceptance, F, deliverables and performance, G is your contract administration data, H, special contract requirements. Part two is going to be your actual contract clauses. By the way, we're going to touch base on every single one of these parts and the letter part of the video. So don't worry, we're going to go into them in great detail further on. Part three is your list of documents, attachments, exhibits and part four, representation and certifications. We talked about the instructions to offers, the evaluation factors for award. So let's talk about part one, section A, the actual solicitation and contract form. This is the very first page that you're going to see when you pull down one of these monstrous RFPs. When you look at the first page, it may actually include on there the actual solicitation, it may include on there A through M, it may have on there, it's going to probably have on there the whoever the offer is, the agency, it'll have on their name, their address, their contact information, it'll have on their box for your information that you are going to fill out. It'll have on there probably the signature page where you sign at, delivery location, the proposal due date, the set of site requirements and things like that. Section B, typically a section B which you find right after that first page, depending on that page one lasts for two pages or three pages how long it is, immediately following you're going to see section B which is the price and fee schedule. Most of us are familiar with that because we go straight to okay, what is it that the government wants to price and what they do on the government's particular on the federal side is they call it what's called cleanse. So you'll see CLIN, a clean number and then you'll have, for example, depending upon how the product or the project itself is broken down, you may have one, two, three, four clean numbers, you may have 10 clean numbers, you may have the project broken down by years. So there may be a base year to start with which includes three cleanse and then each additional year the price may escalate a little bit. So that's additional three cleanse. So again, on section B is where you're going to find the price and the fee schedule. You're going to find a brief description of the actual supplies and the services along with that CLIN number and it'll usually tell you they'll want the quantity in terms of units and then the price per unit and then you add it together to give you a total and then you sum that total for a number of cleanse. Here's an example of a very basic one where they're just asking on the schedule, it tells you what the description is for what the services are to provide and to give a price per CLIN number under this particular schedule. Section C, that's where they have the scope of work, description, specs, things like that. If it's a small section that doesn't require an attachment that it will be included in here, if it's a larger spec section that's probably, I don't know, let's say 30, 40, 50 pages long, they may take and create a separate document and then just reference that, say reference attachment C document. So this is where you're going to find out exactly what is it that the government wants you to do, what is it that they're looking for and what does that they want you to do? You'll find that here in section C. Here's an example that was actually included in a bid so you'll see here it actually said section C, descriptions and specifications and then it goes on talking about the contract term, talks about the minimum value, estimate maximums, contract description and this particular example lasted about 30 pages or so. This is great because one of the things I wanted to point out that I know was confusing for me and it may be for some other people out there is when you're looking through this they don't, for example this spec section, the actual words are larger font than the description of the section so be mindful of that when you're going through reading all this information be mindful that sometimes it's not going to just pop out like it's not bold or all uppercase letters or underline. The actual section header is a smaller font and it's less, I would say where it sticks out at you than the actual description of the work so for me I find that to be confusing sometimes and I think for a lot of you guys out there you may find when you're scrolling through all this stuff you don't notice where the section start and end and so for example purposes this was a great example to show you how really amongst all of this other language is the title or the header of the section C description and the other thing that I don't understand why the government doesn't do why don't they make this like a separate page right so why don't they have a like a start page break like we do when we write papers you'll have a page break or you'll have like section C and then you'll start from a whole new section you'll create it there. They just seem to have like run on descriptions and then the sections will just kind of intertwine with previous sections and if you're not careful you won't even notice where they start and stop. Section D packaging and marking this is typically not used but that's what it covers but again like I said even an example that I pulled down they didn't have a section D at all. Section E inspection acceptance very important section because it talks about the quality requirements where they're going to be looking for in order to approve your payment right so again I equate inspection acceptance to money so if you do not have meet the criteria of the inspection acceptance then when they actually when your products delivered then the government's going to reject you and you can't get paid. So again this is a core section but not in the very beginning stages when you're analyzing the whether or not to to go make a go or no go on doing this RFP. This is not the section this is only after you've determined that you want to bid the project you want to make sure that when you're negotiating a price which is suppliers or vendors that they're going to be able to ensure that you meet the the minimum requirements in order for your product to be both inspected and accepted so that you guys can get paid. Here's an example here talks about notice of completion task orders tells you where they're going to the product supposed to be delivered at how it's going to be delivered things like that section F deliveries or performance this talks about the place of performance the period of performance the time frame any liquid dated damages if you don't know liquid dated damages are that's when you are delaying the project the government charges you a penalty penalty so that's where you actually are if you let's say for example you delay the project the government may charge a thousand dollars a day or five hundred dollars a day for delays and actually getting the product delivered so that's liquidated damages it tells you what triggers stop work orders and then also tells you if the government happens to delay you what are the implications of that and how do you recoup your lost time money efforts in terms of a government delay. Here's an example of section H so it says here IDIQ 12 month period contract amount and it tells you deliver performance and specified under each particular task order tells you how the work is supposed to commence. Section G contract administration this just talks about required accounting data so for example let's say when you get the project how are they going to pay you how do you bill them what does that look like tells you for example if you're going to use wide-air workflow if you're going to do invoicing if you can do credit card payments what are the terms and that's what's talked about particularly in section G. Here's an example of contract administration data so it tells you the defaults and again this section I don't really spend a lot of time on when I'm first analyzing a project section H special contract requirements this is for me in construction we don't typically have most stuff here that I have to pay attention to in the very beginning but for you guys out there you may have you may run across this section where it talks about safety regulations environmental protection energy conservation things like that insurance requirements is important types of insurance liability but for the most part if you're out here doing this kind of business you should have all the insurance is necessary but for those who are starting out and you want to know this is a great way to assess your company right when we talk about you know the way the GovCon science model when you're looking at building your team and actually getting the company ready to do business with the government that is great information to know what types of things that you need to have in place what are the requirements for the types of projects that you are looking to pursue so again that's one way to find out what do you need to be ready or eligible to participate in these solicitations section I contract clauses is where you see all the far document to receive far references to the far things of that nature again most of that stuff is standard stuff but if you have I'll give you an example if you have a product that's being imported from another country you want to make sure that the clause is in here do not preclude you or exclude that country from being able to like on a do not buy list say for example so that would come into play into this particular section contract clauses section J list of attachments for me this is big because they have on there at the Department of Labor wage determination also known as Davis Bacon wage act so for me in this particular section we have on there the wage act which is how much we're supposed to pay the people who work on our job site so for for that is very important in essence because we need to know if our subs we make sure that our subcontractors get this particular wage rate so when they're doing their payroll and they're paying the people that they comply with the government's minimum standards and so for me section J is important documents that we hand out to our subcontractors section K reps and certs representations and certifications also named reps and certs I don't know and again don't come you're only I love you know federal government contracting but I haven't figured out why is it that they continue to include this particular section and their projects reps and certs and the majority of the examples you'll see it's it could be confusing because sometimes it's 20 30 pages along but it also at the very beginning when you read clearly the instructions it says if you are registering Sam then there's no reason to include your reps and certs so again when you're reading through a proposal and you're getting ready to submit make sure that you you go through and you clearly understand what's the requirement for this because sometimes they'll tell you that it's not needed if you're already registered Sam I have seen one example where they said to include both your reps and certs and your Sam registration and the project but for the most part and most instances I've found that if you're already registering Sam that you don't need to include this particular section and you know I hate it because part of that the whole thing of the packages it's intimidates a lot of small businesses out there so adding this type of fluff to a package intimidates a lot of small businesses I can understand the premise from like say the 90s when there was no Sam system and companies or contractors were able to actually bid government projects just from a proposal standpoint this made sense but now that the new regulations call for all small businesses all businesses and that fact to do business with the government to be registered inside a central database I don't see the need to continue to include these sections and the proposals but that's just my you know two cents section L super super super super important this is your instructions conditions and notices to offerers so this is talking about how the government's going to determine best value approach and bid submission it's also going to talk about your proposal and pre-bid conference so the section L is extremely important and so is the next section section M evaluation factors for award whenever my team is gets one of these RFP pulls something down right and we're getting ready to bid it these are the first two sections that we look at L and M period we want to know first of all if there's an upcoming bid if there's any upcoming actual bid meetings that we can go out and see the project because if you would hate to pull down this thing maybe you got it late maybe you got it maybe by the time you find out about it it's a week has already passed and so the you know if you don't go immediately to section L and determine when is the pre-bid or pre-proposal date then you may have missed out on your only opportunity to go out there and see the actual site so we jump immediately to sections L and M because we want to know first of all when is the pre-bid date or pre-proposal date and then the other thing that we want to know is what is the criteria that the government's going to use to determine whether or not someone or company is eligible to participate and that is the most important factor when you're starting this thing out are you eligible there's your team eligible as your company eligible to participate do you meet the minimum requirements that the government's asking for in order to be deemed acceptable to submit a bid or proposal on this now they're not going to tell you whether or not you're acceptable but they're going to tell you how they rate the companies and so if you're rating if you can't score high on this then it may be you may decide to make this one a no-go and then pursue you spend your time doing another particular type of proposal but what I find is people will go through they'll go through this whole RPS being they'll start getting prices and then at the very end because this section is towards the very end they'll realize that they were not eligible and in first place to actually even bid the job so what I like to tell people is this find out immediately if you have for example they say two years past performance of doing this task right they want to show two years history they may want to show five jobs of experience they may want to show minimum job size of minimum project size of experience or if it's a historical they may want to show you working in a historical place if it's something say filming they want to make sure you use these types of cameras this type of equipment if it's say shredding they want to make sure that you own or you have access to certain types of shredding machines that meet their minimum standards so again you're gonna have to demonstrate that your your past history someone on your team or a team member that you bring in can show this past history so again in the very beginning if you know this this is helpful to determine okay we do we have this on our team no alright do we want to bring in a subcontract that has this requirement yes or no do we want to partner with another company in form of a teaming arrangement that may or may have this company yes or no do we have someone on our JV side that has this requirement so again annoying this information up front is is tremendously valuable for all of us out there because we will not spend a whole lot of time on putting together numbers and requesting bids from our subcontractors or suppliers or our vendors if we can't even meet these requirements I wanted to all of you guys that I want to stress to everyone out there that make sure make sure this you know if you want to create anxiety and stress then go through and try to read through the whole process and try to understand the whole thing for yourself without actually determining if you're even eligible but again the idea behind my videos and my training my lessons and what I'm doing for everybody is like I want to make this thing as easy as possible as easy as I it can be made possible right so let's break this thing down so again part of that process requires showing you how to skip through the all the mundane task of well Eric someone told me to read the whole package from cover to cover you don't need to read the whole package at this stage at the very initial stage all you need to do is go to sections L&M to see if you qualify if you don't qualify make a determination if you're going to bring on someone who does qualify if you say yes on that now you go back and figure out okay now how do we start putting this thing together but before that there's no reason to read the whole package there's no reason to read through a whole solicitation it just doesn't even make any sense because we all have one thing that limits all of our our lives right it's the same 24 hours in a day so you want to make sure that you are maximizing your time on things that are going to produce you know you're making your efforts on things that are going to produce results and this section L&M is a very highly productive use of your energy and time so to recap key elements of the solicitation section C which is your performance work statement section L proposal instructions M evaluation criteria also make sure you check out any other sections for requirements a lot of times they'll have on their supplemental documents and the actual packages and then because we're going to be talking about putting together proposals and upcoming videos you want to make sure that your proposal if you decide that you're going to do this that the proposal outline follows exactly the letter of the law that they that they state in section M so again the valuation criteria when you put together a proposal they say ABCDE make sure you write ABCDE they say one two three four five make sure you write one two three four five treat them as if they're a bunch of robots there if they if they don't see in there they're the things that they're laid out the exact format the exact way they explicitly state then if the chances are high that you're going to be disqualified right or you're going to score really low in the ranking which essentially makes you disqualified I love the federal government because if they are for the most part explicit and stating how they want their proposals written what information they want written in each section and you know if you look at it from their standpoint it allow if they're evaluating 10 proposals the fact that they are all uniform and consistent allows you to evaluate each one in an expedited manner so don't not stray away from the format that they explicitly state they want because it's going to make it harder or more difficult for them to read yours and so the chances that you're going to score highly in the ranking or approvals is going to be less likely because why you're not following the form outline that they conform me to the outline that they've actually explicitly stated in the requirement all right so again remember section M evaluation factors for ward and section L instruction and conditions notice offers those sections are your friends when you get one of these things and you pull it down make sure you understand these two sections before you go any further thanks so much for watching hi guys listen welcome back we just went through about 15 minutes of how to take a look at the solicitation structure I hope this information is tremendously helpful for you guys out there for most people who have never seen a federal RFP RFQ this thing I mean it's overwhelming right and again I know a lot of us are small businesses and we're just getting started so I was hoping that I can make this introduction to the world of federal RFPs and our cues a little bit easier for you guys out there and helping you to determine whether or not you want to proceed with pursuing this particular RFP RFQ listen as I stated in the video sections L section and are extremely important hey if you like that video if you have anything else that you want me to produce make sure to leave a comment below and we'll see you next time