You have been writing proposals for some time. You have become a pro on piecing responses together, writing, reviewing, booking, and delivering them. But, deep down inside, do you know what goes on once your proposal is delivered to the customer? Yes, it's reviewed, but the question is how?

Every contracting shop has its own style and does things a little differently. The following is an explanation of how your responses get evaluated and scored. The feds boil down your response to a chart that gives them a snapshot view of your offer. The proposal is dissected along the lines of relevance, risk, price, and technical suitability in line with Section M evaluation criteria. You can expect your response to go through an evaluation process that revolves around three pillars: technical evaluation factors, past performance, and cost/price.

Section M evaluation factors are used as the basis for evaluation. The factors and sub-factors listed here are those that will be analyzed and scored. Technical evaluation factors are assessed for strengths, uncertainties, deficiencies, weaknesses and risk. Technical sub-factors are scored as blue, green, yellow, and red. Risk is assessed at the technical sub-factor level using a scale defined as low, moderate, high, and unacceptable.

Past performance is first assessed for relevancy (e.g., was the work completed within the past three years and whether the work performed is similar to the RFP's SOW, etc). The evaluators then assign a performance rating of exceptional, very good, or satisfactory. The relevance and performance ratings are then integrated into a Performance Confidence Assessment. The scale for this assessment is as follows: substantial confidence, satisfactory confidence, limited confidence, no confidence, or unknown confidence.

Cost/price is evaluated for reasonableness. The past performance evaluation is leveraged to supply cost performance data and is used to determine the confidence level in your proposed cost/price.

Finally, one chart is developed to summarize the evaluation. A sample chart follows: