Fedmarket's OASIS Model Proposal Template

Deciding to bid OASIS is kind of like deciding to get married or playing Texas Holdem; fraught with risk and subjective and conflicting variables. One way to look at the issue is to look at a Project Performance Index for your company since the performance ratings of your primary projects are around 70% of the action.

This simplified approach assumes that your company:

• Meets the two NAICS code requirement to qualify for one of the Pools.
• Has about the same systems and certifications as other small business offerors (probably a good assumption because most small businesses have very few).
• The points scored for other criteria besides past performance will be roughly the same for most small businesses.

Past Performance Scoring (For small business solicitation but the approach applies to large businesses)

Note: 3 - 5 projects, total annual amount of all primary projects equal or greater than $750K and no project can be less than $150K

Total Score:

Your Past Performance Index (PPI) Total Score/4,000x100:

PPI by Number of Projects Submitted

GSA expects to award up to 240 contracts to small business. Estimating the number of small business bidders is difficult because of the relatively stringent project size qualification requirements,we will guess 480 for simplicity. Also assume that the average small business submits 4 projects with average past performance scores.

This rough analysis would indicate that you should be aiming at a PPI of over 40.

Other conclusions are:

• Try for as many primary projects as you can and focus on primary projects and their past performance scores.
• A primary project with a past performance score of less than 3.5 or no score at all is worthless.
• The action is in high scoring projects; it trumps other project attributes because of its scoring weight.
• You should focus heavily on getting past performance questionnaires from the customers for the primary projects you are submitting.
• Proposal reviews should focus on (1) do we have the right projects from a performance viewpoint and (2) do we have the contract documents to prove protect attributes. Technical content written by you is not required; GSA is evaluating your contract documents objectively. "Does the offer contain the proof we require."

A frequent question from our customers is: How will GSA score a project where the government's past performance data base shows a low score but the company requested a questionnaire and it has a higher score. The answer is: If its in the government's past performance database, you don't need a questionnaire and the database ratings will be used to score your project.

Some of our customers are getting caught in the inherent trap of circling around and around the issues of (1) "Which projects?" and (2) "Does a document suffice as proof of a project attribute?".  A document submitted as proof must be an official contract document showing the attribute itself or a communication document from a contracting officer verifying the attribute, e.g., NAICS Code.

So you have determined that you could win. Now can you still make an offer before the October 10 due date? (Assuming the due date is not extended on October 3, GSA's proposed date for the last amendment to the solicitation.)

Yes, its possible assuming that you have the staff to find and pull contract documents to prove project attributes. As discussed in an earlier email OASIS proposal writing does not involve technical or management approaches but rather building of files containing contract documents. And getting a past performance questionnaire out to customers and completed.

You will probably need our OASIS model proposal template to speed up the process and we also offer a full-service proposal writing option to assist companies in developing the required files.

Call Steve or Jon at 888 661 4094, Ext 2 for more information.