RFP Summary
A request for proposal (RFP) is a document that entails and announces details about a business or project; it also solicits bids, which will help complete the projects from contractors. The RFP summary should be concise and high-level. The person reading the summary will decide whether they are going to accept your proposal or whether they are going to seek a better proposal.
RFP’s summaries contain many important issues that guide the executives or the company managers about a given project in the most straightforward ways. RFPs are solicitations used to negotiate the acquisition of business or project requirements to prospective or viable contractors and solicit proposals (Al-Fedaghi & Al-Otaibi, 2018). RFPs are also used to guide bidders on how to prepare proposals in the most effective ways.
The Request for proposals may entail a statement of work that describes the tasks provided by the winning bidder. The tasks and work that the winning bidder will be addressing are made clear in the RFP summary. The summary also states how the winning bidder is planning on achieving the tasks at hand. The summary explains the methods that the winning bidder will put in place to achieve the tasks. Lastly, the summary also states the duration of time the bidder must complete the given tasks.
The main purpose of an RFP is to portray an understanding of the proposed tasks at hand. The summary also shows how the winning bidder thinks they can manage the tasks (Marshall & Jacobs, 2016). Lastly, the other purpose of the RFP summary is to show the executives how the bidder will handle the tasks in the simplest ways.
Analyze the Procurement Statement and why it is needed
The procurement statement describes an item being procured and explained in sufficient detail so that the prospective sellers or bidders can find out if they have the required capacity to provide deliverables and the required products to the buyers. SOW defines the procurement service or item and the project scope sufficiently. The procurement statement can include quantities, specifications, quality levels, work location, when, and even the performance data. The procurement statement can be refined and revised overtime during the procurement process until it is put or incorporated into the signed contract. Every procurement item needs a different SOW, although multiple services and products can be classified into single SOW.
There are various types of procurement statements of work, such as procurement, functional, and design. The procurement conveys to the bidder what the final product should achieve. The functional conveys the results or purpose rather than the specific approaches or procedures. Lastly, the design precisely conveys what tasks are to be done. The design procurements statements are mostly used in equipment purchasing and construction. Functional and performance procurement statements are used in new areas that have not been done before, for instance, information technology, information systems, development, and research.
The technical department in the large organizations that manage work writes the statement of work while the procurement department writes the tender’s invitation. A work statement entails the following; tasks, deliverables, coordination requirements, schedule, resources provided, and the regulations, standards, and laws required. The first part of the statements of work is the tasks that the bidder is to perform. The task is taken from the project scope statement, but if the project scope is not available, one can itemize the work, one step to ensure that all the tasks are listed.
A deliverable is something that must be given to the customer, client, or owner. Each project has deliverables, and they must be specified clearly in the statement of work. Schedules of the projects are also a good entity in the statement of work. Because of the nature of the projects, specifications of the completion dates and project milestones are good ideas in work statements.
Coordinating the requirements and specifying them in the statement of work ensures that bottlenecks to the performance that could lead to potential claims of extra money outside the contract are prevented. The statement of work also contains standards, laws, and regulations. Work done should satisfy the legal requirements, whether safety-related, employment-based, environmental, or other areas. Lastly, the resources provided should also be shown in the statement of work. Items such as equipment, data, and other facilities that will enable the bidders to complete the tasks should be stated.
Analyze the selection criteria and methodology used for selecting a winner proposal
The main objective of proposal evaluation in selecting the winner proposal is to minimize political positioning and human emotion to enable the panel to arrive at the best decision with its interests in check. One should be thorough, conduct investigation, and seek the rest of the stakeholders’ input before arriving at any given decision. There is a given methodology that also assists the panel in arriving at a unified vendor selection decision.
The first step in the methodology of arriving at a unified decision is to review all the vendor proposals preliminary. Before the selection and evaluation process starts, the proposals should be reviewed for clarity and completeness. Ambiguities and ommissions should be clarified to ensure that it will be efficient and thorough once the selection and evaluation process is begun. The vendor requirements and business requirements should also be recorded. Business requirements should be analyzed, detailed and thorough listing of the requirements is important to arrive at an equitable and fair decision.
Each requirement should be assigned an important value. The vendor selection team should arrive at a constant value for the given products, and if they disagree upon the value, everyone’s value should be taken. An average arrived at to rate the value of the requirements. If a team member is not confident enough and feels that they are not qualified to participate in assigning values, they can abstain from submitting their values.
A performance value for each of the requirements is needed. The vendor selection team will need to assign a performance value for what they feel or believe that they perform on the requirements. Suppose the team cannot decide on a given score. In that case, each team member’s values should be taken, and the average found if the team agrees that the vendor has not met the requirements, the vendor is removed from any further considerations.
The fifth step is calculating the total performance score. Since each vendor’s performance score and the importance value of each requirement have been worked out, the total performance for each vendor can be calculated (NUMBER, 2020). The total performance score can be obtained by multiplying the vendor’s importance value and the individual importance value. Selecting a winning vendor is the last step, and since we can now obtain the total performance score. However, the total performance score does not always determine the absolute value of a proposal; it is used to bring up meaningful discussions among team members and highlight vendors’ differences.
Analyze the type of contract being used in RFP
A fixed-price contract is a contract with a set price for a pre-specified nature of work, while a cost-plus contract is an agreement whereby the owner pays the actual cost of the work to the contractor plus an additional fee. Each of the contracts has various risks and benefits to the sellers and buyers. Fixed-price contracts are generally put into place when the cost estimates can be acquired with high accuracy, and the concrete future outcomes are known (Putz et al., 2019). businesses prefer to favor the cost-plus pricing method rather than the fixed price. With the cost-plus, it can be applied in various situations, and it is easier to calculate.
The type of contract being used in the RFP is the fixed price contract because its features fit the type of proposals given. The benefit of the fixed-price contract that is the most significant is that it allows the buyers to have an exact budget in advance. The buyer knows the total cost even before the start of the project. The seller can charge high costs under the fixed price model, and once the prices have been determined, the buyer does not contest the amount owed or experience sticker shock. For instance, in the call center hardware upgrade, the company already has a plan in place and has all the corresponding figures of the projects listed; I believe fixed-price contracts would be the most effective in this case.
