[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the contracting officer podcast. You're listening to the podcast for people who want to learn about the government market from the contracting officer's perspective. If you are contracting officer, we hope to give you a little more insight into industries perspective. Today's cast is called what is the difference between an RFI, a d RFP and an RFP? Let's jump right in.
Speaker 3:Hey Kevin. Today we're going to talk about the difference between an RFI, a d RFP and an RFP. So a request for information, a draft request for proposals, and a request for proposals. We're gonna talk about why contracts get office, why contracting officers use each one, what they're used for, what, what information they're there trying to get out of each, each piece, what stage of the acquisition strategy, a plan they fit into, what kind of communications go back and forth between industry and the government at this point. And what you as an industry or, or as this as a CEO should be, should be doing in each phase. And this fits, this straddles the market research zone and the RFPs zone. Uh, obviously the RFP is in the RP zone and the other ones are stored in the market research zone.
Speaker 4:So I'm going to jump in here. I can, good morning and we'll start off with the request for information. So, so what is it? Basically it's in the market research zone. So it's market research. As you zoom out far enough, that's really what it is, is that the government is trying to understand, I need some information, I need some technical understanding of what is the industry's capabilities. I need to figure out how many companies can do this. How long does it take you to deliver whatever I'm buying. Um, what's the, what solutions are out there? Is this, I'm trying to figure out, is this something that lots of people make and it's a commercial item or is it a few companies make it and it's something that's going to be, or does anybody make it? Yeah, there you go. Has My, yeah, my personal favorite. Sometimes you throw an RFI over the wall and people are thinking, yeah, that's not something we can do. Right? And so is it really even feasible? And then kind of small business do it. And your, what's the relative costs? So let's, let's, let's pick an example. Uh, request for information for a[inaudible]. Okay. This, this is a fun one. An example. So we have vehicles and it's special operations command. So I'm gonna leave a lot of the details out, but so it's a vehicle and we need the vehicle that can do certain things. It can go a certain speed, it can, it can climb a certain height, it weighs a certain amount, it has a certain amount of range, all that kind of stuff. So you think about it, you're a special operations guy. You want it to do everything. You want the fly, you want it, the float, it's being facetious, but you get the idea. So you ask them what's their requirement? They'll like, we needed to do everything. Okay, well then let's put it on a Fi. And we thin that down too. It has the following, you know, seven characteristics. It's got a head weigh this much, have this, this range. It needs to run on multiple fuels, you know, whatever. Right? The RFI says, okay, industry, are we crazy or can, can this actually be done? Now I bet I've gotten questions before. People say, well, should I respond to an RFI? The short answer is no, and here's why. If you have to ask whether or not you should respond to the RFI, that tells me that you probably aren't watching the agency, you probably not targeting what they do, and you're going to spend a lot of time writing something. That number one isn't going to be very targeted to them because of what you do. If to save time, you may take a marketing material and just put it in an email and send it again. It's kind of wasted their time because they're looking for specifics. Using the SOCOM example, you want to know, can you make a vehicle that does these things? If you send me, we are vehicles. That's not what I asked. So you've got what? You've got to get up my email and you're also wasting your time. However, if you make customized vehicles, then yes, you should respond, but you also know that. So come buys customized vehicles. See where I'm going with this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I was going to take the complete opposite tact on that and say you should absolutely respond to an RFI cause this is your chance to, to market your, your market, what you make and, and actually shape the RFP. The eventually when they come out to buy something, if they may not realize that they want your thing until you tell them about it. So I think this is, it depends on what you sell. It depends on what they want to buy. But the RFI is an important[inaudible] this is so early in the acquisition phase that the government can change just about any, well not just about, they can change any part of the, the acquisition strategy at this point because that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to learn how should we go about buying this because we don't know what the market is capable of. Like he talked about before. Z is your chance to, to make your solution what the RFP is asking for
Speaker 4:and yeah, this is a, this is a fun one cause we, we kind of see this from different sides. So you're taking that, the contracting officer hat, you're looking at this from the perspective of the contracting officer wants the information, please respond to my RFI. I need a lot of information.
Speaker 3:I'm taking the, I'm also taking the industry side and I want the RFP to be so tweaked to me that everybody else doesn't have a chance. And once, once the RFPs out, we'll talk about that later. But I can't get the RP change once it's out. But at this point I can, I can convince the government to a man, this is the requirements really are this. If it's what I make, I anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 4:So yeah, and, and that, that's a great example of, I remember the question I started with was should I respond to every RFI, every being the key word there? And I, I still say the answer to that is no, and you're right. If it's something you've targeted, then absolutely you should. If it's something you're thinking about targeting. Absolutely. You should. If it's something, if it's an agency that you'd like to sell to, then yes you should. But the reason I say start with no is because if you pick up the habit of, hey, it's an RFI, we should respond, you're going to go out of business.
Speaker 3:Totally agree with you there. Totally agree with you there. It's fun to walk our way through that. If you're not, if this, if you, if you aren't already prepared for this, it's pride. Responding to the RFI could be a giant waste of time and energy, right? It's like you're saying, if you're not targeting, if you're not targeting that agency,
Speaker 4:maybe take a pass. So go back to why is a, as a contracting officer hold putting out an RFI, all that information we just talked about, they wanna know can, so going back to the civil thing, they want to know, can you build this vehicle and they'll probably figure out I should, they should figure it out through this process. Half of the companies that replied were small businesses. Going back to what we talked about, what is it used for, they'll be able to tell us that has set aside, how much roughly is this going to cost? Does it already exist? In which case maybe we could do a basically modify a commercial item or is it something that if we're not quite there yet to know to a developmental contract, which you know, this is there all kinds of forks in the road here. You know it's like an infinite number of forays.
Speaker 3:But if you are a small business, this is your chance to say I'm a small business and I can do this and convince them to set it aside so that you don't have to compete against all the bigs that have more resources than you. I mean that's so important.
Speaker 4:Exactly. So, and we're trying to kind of zip through the RFI piece here cause otherwise we could say this is a 40 minute podcast all by itself.
Speaker 3:So we're going to skip ahead cause we'd like to give you guys a bullet of information here. Great. So the last thing we didn't talk about for for this is what type of communication is allowed at the RFI stage. Oh, sorry. Okay, I'll do that. Yeah, and the answer is, is all communications. This is where open communication, it's allowed. It's actually encouraged. You can, you can call people one on one. You can have meetings one-on-one[inaudible] this is, this is where the communication really needs to take place if you're going to have a successful acquisition
Speaker 4:and that that is a very good point for a lot of reasons. The biggest one is that you can have private conversations, meaning that the industry, like a company that the manufacturer can actually have a phone call with a program manager, with the contracting officer, with anybody doing the market research at an industry conference. You get a booth and the guy walks up the counter to the officer or the program manager or the user walks up and this is your chance to, if this is basically what an RFI is used for, raised, collected information. So it's very informal. It's not going to be shared with everybody onto the, on the planet. When you send a an RFI in, it's going to go in the contract file, but it isn't like a question that's asked her in the RFP stage. Everybody's gonna see it. Right.
Speaker 3:Great. Yes. There might actually be a bitters conference here and that maybe, maybe the public questions aren't, don't get asked at the bidder's conference, but before and after the bitters conference, you can still have those private conversations.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think thinking in terms of the aperture on the amount of information coming in is wide open right now. Got It.
Speaker 3:So then after the government collects all that information[inaudible] they put together a draft request for proposal or they should, they don't always, but put together a draft request for proposal, which is there[inaudible] current and best[inaudible] estimate of of how, how to, how, how to go about the acquisition. It's kind of stumbled through that one, but this is going to, this is where they say to eat to industry, here's how the RFP is going to look. Tell me what you think, and this is the first time that you in the industry probably see what, what evaluation criteria they're going to use and how long they're going to give you to submit your proposal and how many pages do you have for your technical volume? If it's one of those kinds of acquisitions and the government at this for the draft RFP, the governor wants to learn w will the evaluation criteria that they've selected for this RFP, will it get them what they want to buy? So if, if the industry's reading it, this is the great opportunity for industry to say you're asking for way too much here and what that's gonna do is that's gonna make me bid this and this is not what you want to buy. You want to buy that. So you need to change the evaluation criteria slightly if that is really what you want to buy.
Speaker 4:Okay. Going back to the aperture discussion, aperture is a little bit narrower now. Some of the major decisions have been made, like you said, the, they decide on the evaluation criteria. They probably also decided whether or not it's a small business set aside. Yep. They've decided some of the contract type, they decided that it's going to be cost plus. Is this going to be fixed prices? It's going to have, they may be asking specific questions like we're thinking about having incentive fee. Is that something that, you know, by the way, they're not going to say, what do you think? They're just gonna include it and then you're going to run.
Speaker 3:All right, great. And this is where if you and industry are reading the evaluation criteria and you think, oh wow, they totally stacked it for acme. That isn't fair at all. This is your chance to say government, you're, you're not, this is not going to be a fair competition. And by the way, that,
Speaker 4:okay,
Speaker 3:there's a completely separate topic to talk about with protests, but if, if it's unfair, you need to say, so now you don't get to say, so when you lose at the end of the competition, that's a timeliness thing. But we have to ignore that now. Or we'll get way off track into the weeds. We go,
Speaker 4:yeah, we can drift pretty quickly though. So, and let me jump on what you said earlier about the idea of they don't all always do this and sometimes they should, but that's true. Sometimes it really makes sense. Think in terms of a 10$10 million service contract, multiple award id IQ, by the way, that stands for different indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity. So they're going to award five contracts to five different companies and they're going to compete for the work of the next five years. That's kind of a complex arrangement. So that's something you may want to have a draft RFP for. If it's something that they bought last year, they may go RFI and it goes straight to RFP. By the way, you can get a copy of the contract by going through the freedom of Information Act. So if the point is the copy of the contract is out there, you can see all kinds of free data. So if this is something that they're just repeat repeating the same process, the Rio, the re competing a contract it was awarded five years ago, they may not do a draft RFP, they may do an RFI or they may not do an RFI, they may just do a draft RFP. It's a getting, they get some of the same information. The RFI is usually used when we, when the aperture is wide open, when the is narrowed down, like if they've awarded this contract for base maintenance for Patrick air force base. Okay, they've had a base maintenance contract for the last 60 years, right? They're not suddenly going to site. All of a sudden it's going to be a cost plus incentive fee contract. They're not going to do that. They're going to say it's rough for the same thing. So here's a draft RFP. Here are the few things that we changed. If they're really nice and they have a whole lot extra time, they'll highlight them for you, but don't expect that and then you'd be able to get the final RFP. So let's just clarify that. These aren't all required. So don't get mad at a contracting officer for not using all three of them.
Speaker 3:They might skip the first two. I mean it might just be an RP if, if, if they know enough about what they're buying, they even in the government, in a lot of cases they'll just release the RFP cause they, they don't need to learn anything else
Speaker 4:and really all they all, and I'm kind of going off on memory here, so don't, don't cut. The lawyers can't come after me if I quote this wrong. They have to do a synopsis, which two weeks before the RFP comes out to say, hey, we're gonna, we're going to tell the world about this in two weeks. So they synopsize that giving you a warning that the RFP is coming out. That might be all you get. But again, that's something they competed the last like when I did. Um, well let's pick one. How about the pick on grounds maintenance but get a grounds maintenance contract for a norad, the north, north, North American, uh, defense system out there in Colorado Springs. And again, I think it's been there for a long time. The grounds maintenance is not rocket science. No offense to those who do it, but you'll get my point. It's the same contract. So we may have come out and said we're recompete in this thing and the new art, we're re talking too fast, we're re competing this and it's roughly the same contract. Here's your two week notice that we're going to put out an RFP. It's going to be roughly the same. So hammering the idea of don't expect to see all three of these, but when you do now you know kind of what they're for.
Speaker 3:So communication for the d RFP phase, like you said, the aperture's closing open communication is allowed. It's usually a lot more garden. Many times a d RFP, there's a question and answer a formal question and answer session where you have to submit written answers or through a website and, and the the questions and the government's answers are published for everybody that's interested to see so that everyone learns and everyone, everyone is treated fairly technically. Private conversations are still allowed until the RFP. The final RFP is released, but usually at this point the government's starting to get a lot more guarded about what they say and how they say it. Well said. They're getting
Speaker 4:more guarded and that's because some of these decisions have been made and the way that I, the reason I did it this way is that we've decided we're going to do a multiple award for a fixed price contract for five years. That decision has been made. That's the acquisition process and again, that's a whole nother podcast about how you use far part seven, but the idea is that some of these major decisions had been made. So as a contracting officer, I'm kind of at the point thinking, don't ask any questions about changing contract type. Okay. That decision's been made. What I want you to look at is, is does the evaluation criteria make sense? That's the statement of work. Make sense? Is it really performance? You know, performance based. I want you to look through this and tell me, do you understand it?
Speaker 3:Right? Do you as industry have the information that you need in order to submit a proposal, a complete proposal for this? Cause sometimes there's, if it's a real technical acquisition, there could be some, some part of the SPEC or some technical documentation that's missing that where industry doesn't have an idea at, doesn't, doesn't know enough to to submit a complete proposal. Yeah. So last thing on the draft RFP, so if there is a bitters conference for the acquisition, a lot of times it's held in conjunction with the release of the draft RFP where they actually government will present the draft RFP to industry and let people ask questions. And usually there's almost no questions at a bitters conference because no company wants to tip. It's, it's a tip. It's a, and let, let, let the other companies know what they're thinking and where they're coming from. So the Q and a is usually pretty disappointing. But, but it is possible.
Speaker 4:And, and here's a, here's a takeaway from that comment for the contracting officer's it. That's what I mean. This is one of those things might be obvious, but there are things that we think are obvious and they're not. That's why contractors love to have one-on-ones. Right. And I got to the point where the open discussion part, like I'd have a one day of of uh, industry day slash, one-on-ones, right? Well we used to do with the industry day presentation was like six hours and then the one on ones were like 10 minutes each for whoever showed up, which could be a lot. I got to the point where the overall part was a PowerPoint deck. You can get off the[inaudible] off of a fed Biz ops and I did like an hour presentation and then the rest of the time was one of them.
Speaker 3:Right? Because that's where the value is. That's the only place they actually ask questions.
Speaker 4:Exactly. And you're going to get so much more information during those one on ones because they're going to be well. But both sides are more communicative. So this is a shout out to the contracting officers is that a good strategy is planned to do more one on ones. And again, it's obvious to some of you, but got to learn it somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right. All right. Moving on from the market research zone to the request for proposal zone to the RFP zone. So when the RFP is released, the aperture you're talking about is closed communications are only, they're strictly controlled and formal and half to flow through the contracting officer there no more picking up the phone and calling the program manager or the technical guys. It, it, they actually get in trouble for, for doing that. Uh, so it's all, all, all conversations, written, verbal, email, whatever has to go through the CEO. And again, there's, there's usually up
Speaker 4:and for those of you following along at home, if you miss the sign, we drove past it. We just drove into a different time zone. Hey, so I like that. Temperature's changed. I mean, it's a different world over here in the RFP zone. So just that was a, there's a, there's a big black line we just drove across. It's a new time zone. So keep going.
Speaker 3:Right. So again, communications flow through the CEO when the RFP is released. Yeah, there's good, there's usually, there's not always, but there's, there's another Q and a[inaudible] period where, where they say questions or do you know, in 10 days or whatever. And again, questions are published for all to see answers are published all to see if you have to ask a question. If there's something that's just, if the RP does not make sense, you still need to ask the question but you also need to strategy wise, you need to understand that some questions will, could lead competitors to your solution. So I'll get off, get off the Q and a now.
Speaker 4:So I'll, I'll jump in here and, and tag onto the idea of when someone asks a question in the RFP and the contracting officer says you've only got 10 days to answer it. Like you said, there's, there's a process behind that. So the reason that they're only giving you 10 days is because they want to get them done. Number one. That's part of it. But also if they answered, if you answer the, they answered the question for you on day 25 of a 30 day, what was this like? I'll have, I'll never see, you won't have time to change your course. Right. So and, and quite honestly, they may not have time to answer it right up front. Exactly. So there's on and you're going to be frustrated cause you're like, I asked this question, you've never answered it. Well if you ask it two days before the RFPs do surprise, they're really busy doing other stuff. So it's not that they're trying to control your time and be mean and be lazy and not answer questions. It's there's a, it's kind of a big deal to get some of these answers done because again, they're going out to the whole world. Yes. The RFP is locked down at that point. So if, if a, if a question comes up that requires a major change, they can issue an RFP amendment
Speaker 3:and you could have multiple RFP amendments, but you shouldn't, you shouldn't count on them. The government doesn't want to do that if it blows the whole acquisition schedule if they have to issue an amendment and start the clock over on, on the the submission time. So[inaudible] very true. Yep. So at this point when you write your proposal, you have to write to the RFP as released, not as you wish it was. Not as the draft RFP said, not as you responded in your RFI, but you have to comply with the P[inaudible]. And
Speaker 4:this is one of, this is one of those little fun where the argument is, oh, government's all about paperwork and oh they're so they, they're making us be really specific. I know they're going to, and I, I've gotten accused of this before. Well you're kicking us out just cause you don't like us. And because you were being nitpicky, you know, we didn't answer this part of the RFP, but obviously we could have done that if you'd given us more time. So there's a reason for this. Okay. Think about if you, and I know this is a different environment cause we're talking to the whole world here. So I apologize if I irritate people. So I'm not going to use company names, I'm just gonna pick company a, I'll say company a makes products like a aircraft company. They make aircraft obvious. It's all they do. They're really awesome at it. Well here comes an RFP, did you to draft RFI, the RFI, a draft RFP, and here comes the RFP for buying aircraft and they say, we need you to make an aircraft that can go this far, this fast does all these great things. Imagine if an I'm, this is hyperbole, but you get my point. Imagine if company a WHO's obviously an aircraft manufacturer doing this, their whole, that's all they do. If they could just say, dude, you know what we do, we're good. We can figure this out and that we're enough to win the contract. Then small businesses, other companies, somebody who is already using this isn't already selling to this particular agency, would never have a chance to get in. So take that idea and extrapolate that over why it's so important that you answer that proposal because, and again, I can give you the far sides things 15 three where it specifically says the contracting officer is, is using what's in the proposal to make their decision. Because if anything outside of the proposal counted, then those of you who are new to an agency or who don't have as much past performance or for that matter make aircraft and other things, if this other company could say, oh, trust me, you know what we do and they would just buy from them, then you'd have no chance to get in. So that's why the RFP so important, we'll have to have a cast to cover what the contracting officer's thinking and what they're able to do. Uh, what, what they have to evaluate. Yeah. And it's a, it's a very important concept to grasp that you as a, as a citizen of the concept of capitalism, you were patient. And I'm, I mean, I'm being serious here. You want the comp, the competitive process to work. Well, the only way to have a, I usually use the term level playing field, but it makes, the only way to have the level playing field really exist is to funnel all of that content that you're being judged on into one place. And that's the proposal. So that's why when you say, make sure that you're, you're responding to the RFP, that's why there's all this stuff outside of the RFP. It's all marketing. And I'm going to jump on the 80 20 rule number. This whole idea of if you listen to podcasts about the 80 20 rule, it's 80% process, 20% relationships. Here's another glaring example of that is that if you don't answer the RFP, if you don't have a strong story, it doesn't matter if you have a 4 million followers on Twitter, it doesn't matter if you're super popular in some other industry, your proposal is what you're judged on,
Speaker 3:right? Unlike pure capitalism where you totally might be selected because you're the most popular or the one they know the best.
Speaker 4:Exactly. Yeah. So it, it, and I, you know, I'm on top, I'm stamping on the, uh, on the podium here, but I really want people to get this because it gets an argument when people say, you're being unfair, you're, you're, I got kicked out because I didn't fill out this part of the RFP.
Speaker 5:Cool.
Speaker 4:The guy that one did. It's, I don't see why that's hard. So, okay, I love it. Go ahead.
Speaker 3:So to sum up the requests for proposals, this is where communications are locked down. Everything has to go through the contracting officer. You actually get in trouble on the industry side. If you try to communicate with other people and the government folks besides the CEO will get in trouble and wreck the whole acquisition. If they are communicating outside of the CIO, there may be a Q and a, there should be a Q and a published for everyone to see. But no private conversations allowed[inaudible] except for amendments to the RFP. This is what you need to propose to. You have to comply with the RFP as it's written, not as you wished it was written and and you don't have any chance to influence the selection other than what you write in your proposal. And that's the difference between the RFP and the other phases your, your, your only chance to win is writing the proposal now. Whereas before you're shaping what the RFP might look like.
Speaker 4:And one thing that popped in my head as you were talking through that is a why people can get in trouble during the RFP stage. Yeah. So look what happens when you email someone who might be on the source selection board. If, if you emailed them and they email you back and you're, and you're, you're having a conversation, they may not be able to be on the evaluation board because we'll do a separate pat[inaudible] themselves. But yeah, but we can, yeah, we'll, we'll have a separate podcast that talks about this, but in simple terms, they've tainted their ability to be objective. Yeah. So when you email them and you, you have a relationship with them because they're, if you see them at industry conferences and all that, it's a different world than when you cost that number that we drove past the time zone sign on. It's a different temperature over here. It's a little, it's a different animal. And I know I'm, you know, I seem like I'm being really crazy and kind of pushing how important this is, but this is the stuff that contracts are won and lost over. And this is how people are not able to be on honest source selection because, and this happened at a industry conference, guys walking in, I didn't know any better. He was working on a source selection for, for when the ones that I was doing and he runs the into the up to the booth of one of the people that we suspect is going to bid because this is, you know, whether one of the manufacturers and he says, yeah, I'm looking forward to have your, you're reviewing your proposal when I'm on the source selection board. How unobjective is that? Right? So I had to pull the guy off the board and he's a, he's a user. I don't want to, I don't want to pull him off, but again, he doesn't know any better. So I'm hope this is the kind of problems I want to solve. So if you're, if you're an industry person, be careful that you're not walking those people into it. I mean, it doesn't say you can't talk to them.
Speaker 3:Great. Just before the RFP, you can play around a golf with them after the RFP is released. You can play around a golf with real things involved with anymore. Yes. Sorry,
Speaker 4:talking to over yet. It's another passionate topic. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Awesome. All right, so I think, I think we walked through, Yup. We gave him an RFI d RFP, RFP. Why does the government do this? What they're used for, what type of communications are, are allowed in each stage.
Speaker 4:So to wrap up, I wanted to say thank you everybody. I don't know if you've noticed, but we've had well over 3000 downloads. So all the conversation, all the subscriptions, all the people talking about it. We really appreciate this things getting off the ground. Uh, also one of the, let everybody know that we've had some people ask about potentially doing sponsorships on our podcast. And honestly this is a new turf for us. We're kind of sniffing around to see this, how does this work, et cetera. So if you're interested in talking about it, send an email to kevin@contractingofficerpodcast.com and we'll start the discussion. So thanks.[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Okay. That's it for the RFI d RFP. RFP discussion went a little bit longer than usual, but hopefully it was worth it. We've covered why contracting officers use RFIDs draft RFPs and RFPs, what information they're trying to gain and what kind of communications are allowed between industry and government. As always, if you have questions, comments, or complaints, send us an email@paulatcontractingofficerpodcast.com or kevin@contractingofficerpodcast.com or even better, start a discussion on linkedin. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:[inaudible][inaudible].