Marketing Your Requests for Bid

Associate Guest Post by Rusty Joerin of Woodsgift Enterprises

You have carefully prepared your RFP or Request for Tender document and consider it to be a great opportunity for a range of suppliers. You post it on a public bidding site such as BC Bid® or Civic Info® and wait for the responses to come rolling in.

If, as many do, you have a process that confirms receipt of the opportunity and you know that several good bidders have the documents – that is a good first step.

If you don’t have a process that confirms receipt of the request documents, you will not be able to gauge interest in your request. Even if you do confirm potential respondents, how do you know you have reached all qualified potential suppliers? There are plenty of excellent suppliers out there that do not log on to tendering sites looking for bidding opportunities.

You might be missing out on an opportunity as well. By doing some creative marketing of your request, you just might find the perfect supplier. Here’s an example: our facilities department was looking for someone to supply custom millwork. I prepared the request and then went looking for qualified responders. As a part of my search I called likely suppliers to millwork and cabinet shops. This led me to (among others) a small shop that did high quality work. He relied on word of mouth for business. I informed him and others of the posted bidding opportunity and how to get the documents. This shop became a valuable supplier to our facilities department providing excellent product for many years.

Creative marketing of your requests can include sending notice of your request to the likely suppliers of the type of supplier you are looking for. It is probable that they will know who the better suppliers are and pass along your information to them. Inform the local chamber of commerce and other pertinent associations that type of supplier may belong to as well.

Consider doing some supplier development in your community. A talk to the local Chamber of Commerce on how your organization sources its supply could provide you with an expanded range of competitive respondents to your next request.

More competitive responses to well constructed requests can mean greater value to organizations seeking the best available suppliers.

Rusty James Joerin, SCMP is a Supply Chain Management Professional and accredited by the Purchasing Management Association of Canada. He offers procurement services primarily to public sector organizations that do not have a professional supply manager on staff and provides additional capacity to assist with project related supply.

Information about his experience and qualifications may be found at:www.woodsgift.com

Yet Another Countdown...

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012. Government offices are back to regular working hours again. In Procurement, its the calm before the storm. Just like the mad rush of shoppers on Christmas Eve, Government year-end spending comes just before March 31st every year. Returning from winter holidays means there are merely 12 weeks and 3 days for the public sector to commit (spend) any remaining budget funds they may have.

Although the budget approval process starts in September the year before (ie the business plans for capital and programs are submitted in the Fall prior to the start of the new budget year) you will find procurement is only 'called' at the moment the program area is ready to go to RFP.

Timelines will be short, as the RFP needs to be "on the street" from 2- 5 weeks, depending upon the complexity and value. Evaluations will take another 2-3 weeks depending upon the schedules of the evaluators, and the number of responses required. In order to commit the funds, the contract needs to be signed before the year-end and delivery made.

So, dear vendor, at this time of year, when you send in a request to extend the closing date of the RFP - don't be offended, when the request is summarily refused. What I would suggest, rather than stating you need more time, explain WHY it is necessary that the marketplace has more time to provide complete materials that will shorten contract negotiations and expedite delivery, in a manner that would 'save time, money & scope creep' for the buying organization.

Issues That Bind

Associate Guest Post by Rusty Joerin of Woodsgift Enterprises

This is the third in our series entitled Find, Bind and Mind Your Suppliers.

The first thing to remember is that as you bind your supplier, so you bindyourself (or more properly your organization). As a result of some recent court decisions concerning the formation of contracts resulting from the solicitation of offers to supply, procurement professionals have explicitly stated in their requests that no contract will be formed until such time as an agreement to supply is reached with the best respondent. This statement will also apply to the respondents who also will be under no obligation to contract with you, although there is a presumption they will because they responded. I suggest that this clause be used with care and not be attached to every request. This issue is complex, still evolving and well beyond the scope of this message. Be aware of this issue, monitor the latest legal developments and seek expert advice.

There are situations where you definitely want to bind all respondents to a request to supply. Bid bonds have long been used as a tool to ensure that the preferred bidder will contract with you, even if they have second thoughts after bid closing.

I once experienced a situation where after a prequalification process one of the shortlisted firms backed out midway into the second phase of a high value, complex RFP which decreased competition by a third. For subsequent projects and with expert advice, we extended the bid bond process to ensure that all short-listed proponents to similar high value complex procurements were compelled to submit a viable proposal. In short the binding process was advanced a step.

Depending on the procurement, suppliers can be bound by the request document, contract terms presented in the request to be included in any subsequent contract or by reference to an industry standard document with supplementary conditions given in the request document.
The joy in all of this is that you, the buying organization, get to decide what the terms of engagement will be. My advice is to ensure that the terms are fair, which encourages competition and so that a resulting contract becomes a beneficial relationship for both parties.

Rusty James Joerin, SCMP is a Supply Chain Management Professional and accredited by the Purchasing Management Association of Canada. He offers procurement services primarily to public sector organizations that do not have a professional supply manager on staff and provides additional capacity to assist with project related supply.

Information about his experience and qualifications may be found at:www.woodsgift.com

Related articles

• Find, Bind and Mind Your Suppliers (psbdelegation.com)
• Find the Best Suppliers
  

Fairness in the Process - Now or Later?

In the aftermath of the Gomery report, many organizations have started using a "fairness" role with their large complex or politically sensitive procurements. The primary objective of involving fairness resources is to provide objective evidence that the process has been run in a fair, open and transparent manner. Having the role start with the process keeps the process ontrack and saves time later, versus the standard waiting for complaints and having someone audit the process 'after the fact'. I've done both roles a number of times, partly to deal with the perception of bias towards incumbents; alleviate union concerns of outsourcing, ongoing vendor relations issues, etc. Thanks to close contact with National Education Consulting Inc & the Legal Edge publication means keeping up-to-date with the latest/greatest court decisions.

Even in cases where RFPs are better developed (in terms of how evaluations would occur) with an incumbent in place, it might be useful to request a fairness advisor/monitor/auditor play a role. Generally, the procurement department itself doesn't hire the fairness role (as it is reporting on their conduct/process!) Personally, I believe a fairness role needs to be appointed by an assurance department or a higher authority. There are even 'little things' that should be considered in the course of 'fairness' such as having all the evaluators sign a disclosure agreement (much like how the vendors are to provide within their proposals). I sat in on an evaluation process where the chair did NOT request this, and the evaluators went through a dozen grant application proposals and it wasn't until they faced the last proposal, one evaluator disclosed his son worked for the firm and would recuse himself from that evaluation - which was good to do, HOWEVER, he was involved in the scoring/discussions on all the competitive proposals up until that point! That is still a conflict of interest, even if he wasn't going to play any role in the scoring of that last proposal, he influenced the other scores. The organization changed their practices for future evaluations, and dealt with the issue by awarding to 'all' grant applications received - eliminating the risk of breach of process. I've been in other processes where the evaluations had to be 'tossed' and a second evaluation had to occur.

Is this more bureaucracy? Red tape to an already onerous process? How do you think the fairness can be 'above reproach'?

Comments/discussion appreciated

Surprise, surprise we've issued an RFP!

I was working with an IT Team for an RFP where one of the stakeholders (formerly a consultant) stated that in his former company, "if they found out about an RFP when it hit the street, they wouldn't bother responding". The vendors didn't feel they had enough time to understand the buyer's needs AND to build a comprehensive response to the RFP (traditionally they don't get enough time to do so). As well, they figure their people needed to build a relationship with the buying organization to 'truly' understand their needs.

The buyer's view was in order to be fair, no discussions should be occuring in advance of the posting. To keep a level-playing field, everyone must receive the information at the same time, and that means when the RFP is posted. Back-door discussions with vendors would taint the process, and could create mis-perceptions of bias.

But what is fair? Complete & utter secrecy until the RFP is public, or giving vendors a chance to prepare for an upcoming competition?

I don't want to start agreeing with vendors who try to 'get in the back door', scoping for info their competition doesn't have, but I do believe vendor relationships are strained (at best) if they are surprised by an RFP. It's bad enough most organizations spend months building a business case for buying a service, then 4 weeks drafting a solicitation document to end up giving the vendor community the minimum amount of time to respond "because they are in a rush". If you cannot give the vendors enough time to respond (they should get the equivalent amount of time it took you to build your solicitation), then at least give a public heads-up so they are prepared for the timing of the RFP.

Why? Take a look at this example of a relationship gone wrong, "Disagreements unravel popular music festival" the RFP was a complete surprise to the incumbent vendor; template language was obviously used if the vendor saw his 'intellectual rights' were to be handed over; and end-result: no-one responded and the media is talking about it. Finger pointing doesn't solve the issues.

So, no, don't disclose your criteria, nor solicitation details, nor meet with 'potential' vendors, but please consider giving a heads up when you need to do a competitive process - it'll make your process more successful.

Related articles

• RFP Tips: Being Clear on Closing (psbdelegation.com)
• RFP Closing Days (psbdelegation.com)
• RFP Templates (psbdelegation.com)

Breaking Down Compliance w Procurement Policy Directives

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Last week I posted a link to the Ontario Broader Public Sector Procurement Directive/Accountability Act. With an implementation date of April 1, 2011, smaller, independent public organizations are finding themselves having to implement corporate-sized procurement rules ‘off the side of their desks’.

How do you approach implementing something this complex without a corporate procurement department? Break it down into smaller components:

1) Understand the rules – make sure you are aware of what you can/cannot do, what your dollar thresholds are. Single page “cheat sheets” are helpful reminders to staff as to what path to take when they determine a need for a good or service.

2) Explain your process – both internally and externally. It is easier to be transparent, when everyone understands what you are procuring, how you will be doing it, what will be evaluated, and when.

3) Disclose your evaluation criteria – one of the keys to the trade agreements is disclosing the high level criteria for evaluation, and the weightings. Some organizations go further to disclose it on ALL procurements to be clear to all potential vendors (and to eliminate the internal confusion of ‘when do I need to disclose this?”)

4) Ensure all potential vendors have the same information – another key trademark to transparency and fairness. Make sure that any information that an incumbent may have is available to other bidders in order to level the playing field. As well, disclosing whether there is/is not an incumbent gives the vendor community the ability to decide whether it is worth their time to respond.

5) Keep an audit trail – in the name of transparency, and to withstand an audit of the process – keep documenting every step of the process, maintain a complete file from specification building through to contract award. This includes drafts (leading to a decision), email communications, faxes, proposals, evaluation books, signed declarations, letters/notifications of award. It may seem bureaucratic, but it makes life much easier at the end of a process to have a complete file in one place. Maintaining notes during the evaluation also helps for debriefing unsuccessful vendors without having to go back and re-read their proposal and evaluation score sheets.

6) Posting time – The minimum solicitation posting time of 15days is read by the vendor community as “you already have made your choice & are just doing a process to meet policy requirements”. Consider how much time it took you to build your specifications/statement of work and process? If the good/service is highly complex and your project document was built over a number of months – better quality responses will take longer than 15 days.

7) Be consistent – Ensure your processes follow the same path each time. There’s nothing worse than changing the rules, and then changing the way you do things at every turn.

8) Form of agreement w RFP – posting a copy of your resulting contract with your solicitation will greatly reduce the negotiation time as it will form part of your process. Depending upon the wording of your solicitation document (most Canadian public sector templates are based upon the non-negotiated RFP), vendors, by responding with a proposal, have accepted the terms and conditions of your contract attached.

9) Contract management tools – policy changes will affect your existing suppliers as well as smaller companies that haven’t bid on large contracts in past. Providing a sample invoice, contract documentation checklist, and monitoring reports will assist both your internal contract management efforts and compliance on the part of your vendors/contractors.

10) Debriefing - consider this a means to educate and build a stronger vendor community. The more vendors understand your process & how you evaluate proposals, the better the proposals & competition. PLUS, ask for feedback from the vendors as to how well you communicated your requirements; what additional information would they have wanted/needed. Improving the procurement process for future in addition to improving vendor proposals is a win/win for everyone.

RFP Templates

Image via WikipediaI dislike templates 'usually' because I've seen too many people ignore defining their requirements and instead 'cutting & pasting'. That being said, templates serve a purpose of consistency and providing some 'legal' protection of the process through the use of standard terms & conditions/administrative requirements for the process.

I'm currently assisting a client with developing an RFP template to be used by skilled and experienced procurement staff. Not a difficult assignment since I know the end-users understand the process so will need less 'prompts' in the template. This will be more about making their job easier and more consistent. It's also the first time I'm NOT having a template dictated to purchasing by the legal department!

In past, I've found the legal department develops the template terms and conditions and puts them up-front in the document, leaving procurement to fill in their requirements around it. Legal's point of view is to keep the legal information front and centre. From a technical writing perspective, the MOST IMPORTANT information should be front & centre.

So I ask you, what is more important in an RFP document - legal boilerplate or project scope/requirements? Please comment/email me or comment on twitter - I seek viewpoints from both the buying and selling sides!

Last-Minute Proposal Craziness

Image by rickz via FlickrI've seen my share of 'last minute' craziness for vendors to get their proposals accepted (here's the most common & why they don't work):

1) Speeding down the highway - I don't recommend putting lives at stake for a proposal - besides the potential accidents/tickets, if you get there even 1 second late - you'll have wasted all that gas for nothing. Legally, I can't accept your late proposal, no matter how mad/frustrated you get. Regardless of the threats of calling your MLA, I will not put my organization at risk of being sued by everyone else that did submit on time.

2) Calling with excuses - I've heard my share of sobstories, and I feel for your adorable little nephew who recently came down with leukemia - but again, it's not my cold-heart telling you I cannot accept your proposal after the closing, it's the courts. A bid even one second late is non-compliant (see #1 above).

3) E-mail - our legal department decided that email isn't legally binding, so I cannot accept your emailed version of the hardcopy proposal that is enroute via courier. There are 'some' organizations that accept emails, but unless it's written in the RFP as an accepted method of delivery, the email proposal is non-compliant.

4) Faxes - yes a faxed signature is legally accepted in Canada. However, the issue with fax machines is missing pages, paper jams, a single phone line for multiple uses - so generally, no, we won't accept a 50+page proposal via fax...again, any exceptions will be noted in the RFP document, but as a general rule, only tenders/bids/quotes of 1-5 pages are accepted by fax.

5) Bad Weather - I've worked with various public sector organizations in BC since 1999, and in that time, they've NEVER extended the closing date of an RFP due to bad weather conditions on the day of the closing. In fact, I've been told, the only time the BC Purchasing Commission extended the closing date of proposals due to bad weather was during the "1996 snow storm" (it shut down ferries, collapsed roofs, etc). So if you're having difficulties due to weather on the morning of the RFP closing, it is unlikely you will get an extention - especially if the organization already received proposals yesterday from the people who paid attention to the weather channel.

Reference Checks

Image by Tim Morgan via FlickrIn 90% of RFPs I've been involved in, the end-users always requested references. However, few, if any actually call the references of their short-listed proponents. Why?

First of all, they think its time-consuming - I generally say it's not likely as time consuming as hiring a supplier that can't do the job.

Secondly, they don't trust the references will be 'candid'. Few, if any contract managers will say something 'bad' about a supplier for fear of reprisal.

Third, and this just might be in the area I've worked, the legal advisors state that a reference cannot change how they scored the 'written' proposal. The argument is 'what has changed in the proposal?'

So, to combat these issues, we found it helpful to build a reference call sheet with specific questions that you will ask ALL references, and keep it fact-based so no-one is put on the spot to say something 'bad'. If a vendor never met a deadline, it's a fact, not opinion. If they had a cost overrun, it's a fact, not opinion. If they had to redo something under warranty, it's a fact...etc

Also, adding some wording to your RFP about using the references to 'verify the information in the written proposal' and allowing yourself to adjust accordingly, *should* satisfy your legal department (but check with them anyway!)

I don't score references as a rule of thumb, I use them to verify information, and if necessary, disqualify someone who either 'stretched' the truth or omitted some key facts in their proposals.

The RFP Process Map

Asking for some research help here! Do you know how many steps are in your Request for Proposal writing process, how many dept's/people it affects and the timelines? Are you aware of any redundant steps?

I have a client who (for purchases over $10,000) had 27 steps impacting 6 areas (taking 14 weeks from needs identification to contract signing), and a former employer with 48 steps affecting 5 areas for purchases exceeding $50,000 (although in their defense, extra steps involved client contract & billings for the service).

Please help my curiousity and either comment, email, or tweet your number steps/dollar threshold/areas impacted (if known!)

Disclosing Number of Responses

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A question for buyers: Should/Do you disclose how many responses you received to a particular solicitation if asked? ie if you provide a debriefing to an RFP and the vendor asks 'how many proposals did you get', do you or should you tell them?

In past, some buyers would say 'no', there is no reason to disclose this information and in a situation where you only had 2 or 3 responses, might the vendor then start pushing to find out who the competition were and/or fight for extra points?

My thought - tell them the number - you don't need to give any further details unless your Freedom of Information Act requires it...and if it does require you to disclose the other details, why fight it?

In the late 90s/early 2000s I found we had dozens of responses - ie I would get no less than 7, but on average 14 responses to 'average' RFPs - and a whole lot more for prequalification processes. However, as time went on, I found in the mid 2000s the response rate dropped and in some cases I was lucky to get 4 responses to an RFP.

Now in the past 1-2 years, those numbers are back up again, and we're finding people/firms that never used to respond to RFPs are doing so now. The economic climate has changed and people are trying new avenues of business...

So, back to the original question, should you disclose the number of responses? I think this might provide vendors with a context as to how competitive their market is. In the mid-2000s a firm may have won a significant number of contracts and are now scratching their heads as to why they aren't winning them now...in all likelihood, they had less competition and now everyone has jumped onto the bandwagon...better for them to understand how the RFP marketplace has changed than for them to blame the process...

10 Ways to Better Value Procurements - #5 - Tools

Supply management professionals utilize a variety of processes and documents to find, bind and mind a supplier of goods and services. They range from informal phone calls to creation of highly complex tender and RFP documents.
Find a Supplier
Situation: you have a unique need and are uncertain who may deliver the required solution. A Request for Qualifications or Expression of Interest document posted on a public site such as Civic Info or BC Bid may attract the right attention. A detailed internet search and the supply manager’s peer network will also aid in finding qualified suppliers. Depending on possible outcomes stated in the request and other factors, a negotiated contract may result or a RFP may be issued to a short list of responders.
Bind a Supplier
Situation: you are requesting something of high value and/or there are valuable time constraints and you wish to mitigate supply risk. This is a balancing act; transfer too much risk to the supplier and you may not get the best quality of responses, transfer too little risk and you may be left with an incomplete project. Careful application of indemnity, insurance, bonding and liquidated damages clauses in the request document can be used, always depending on the particulars of the situation. Standard industry contract documents such as Canadian Construction Association documents can be used to fairly bind a supplier of applicable services.
Mind a Supplier
Situation: you wish to contract for goods and/or services to be delivered over a period of time; construction, system contracts, and service contracts are examples. A request for proposal or tender document may be issued. The difference being the degree of specification and appraisal criterion contained in the request document. The commonality is that the request will address management of the contract during the contract term. I address this issue in the next installment of this series.
Time
Time is a valuable procurement tool. Use it to plan the procurement from needs analysis to end of contract. Allow enough time for the best suppliers to participate.
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Other Posts in the series: How to Add Value to Your Procurements
• Be Proactive
• Analyze what is required – bring clarity to the specification
• Understand the supply chain
• Align procurement strategies with corporate strategies
• Apply the highest standard of ethics
• Use the right tool for the job
• Plan contract management before there is a contract
• Learn from what was done
• Mitigate procurement risks
• Utilize the skills of supply management professionals

Over the coming year, Rusty Joerin, guest blogger, will expand on the above. Your comments are welcomed.


Rusty James Joerin, C.P.P. is a Supply Chain Management Professional and accredited by the Purchasing Management Association of Canada as a Certified Professional Purchaser. He offers procurement services primarily to public sector organizations that do not have a professional supply manager on staff and provides additional capacity to assist with project related supply for those organizations with purchasing specialists on staff.
Information about his experience and qualifications may be found at:www.woodsgift.com

Measuring Success Rates on RFP proposals

Image by Camilla Ferrari via Flickr

Another topic of discussion on LinkedIn...

Response Rates to an RFP

I assume we have all responded to an RFP in the past. I am interersted in hearing from you what your success rate has been with the RFP's that you have responded to this year.

My response: I'm on the buying side and while I believe it is good to measure your 'success rate', I hope you are measuring a few other parameters to put it into context (ie not just looking at how many RFPs you responded to vs how many you were successful on) because this year was a little different.

1) are you checking how many opportunities in your field have been available (whether you responded or not) - ie did you notice there were less RFPs for your field this year than in previous years (in BC, definitely there were less consulting opportunities due to spending freezes)

2) are you finding out how many people are responding to each opportunity? Not that every buying organization will disclose this, but I can say for a fact we've had MORE companies respond than in past years... for example in the early 2000s, I would normally receive about 12-14 proposals to each of my RFPs, then about mid 2005/2006 I was only getting about 5-6 and some only got 1-2 responses (everyone was busy), now we're back up to 15-20 proposals per RFP....

So, if you don't take these other factors into consideration, you may find your success rates 'look' lower this year

June Pre-Submission Proposal Review Special

A colleague recently posted a June special from her business coach due to unexpected 'free time'. Strangely enough, I have a similar situation, I have clients on holiday until end of June, and two projects winding down this week, so I thought "why not?".

So I'm offering a Pre-Submission Proposal Review (see the Legal Edge issue #89 for details of what I do) for ONLY $200 - I'm only offering this to 10 firms, and the RFP MUST be a Canadian public sector RFP with a due date between now and end of July.

Want more details? Send me a message klc at psbdelegation dot com

Proposal Evaluations: Scoring

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One of the most often misunderstood measures of the Request for Proposals process is the proposal evaluation scoring matrix. Scoring a proposal is not like marking a school assignment, giving an A, B, C or 90%, 80%, 70% based upon the content. Instead each criterion in the Request for Proposals is weighted according to importance/relevance and each individual question is scored on a scale. Sometimes that scale is 0-4, or 0-5 or 0-10...in some cases the scale is A-D or A-F so evaluation committee members can't 'calculate' the score ahead of the consensus meeting. For example a 0 (or F) usually means "no information provided", on the 0-5 scale the scoring would typically be:
0 = No information provided
1 = Meets few requirements
2 = Meets most, but not all requirements
3 = Meets all requirements
4 = Meets and exceeds some requirements
5 = Meets and exceeds all requirements

You can find publicly available examples in the BC Ministry Guide to the RFP Process. There are similar guides in other public sector organizations (you just need to know where to look!)

The first step as an evaluator is to score each proposal on your own (individually). At this point it's just the individual stakeholder/end-user/subject matter expert reading/scoring without discussion with anyone else - I find it easier to read a proposal once, then score it on my second reading, but everyone has their own way of doing this. They can print the evaluation sheets and score by hand, or enter their scores into an evaluation spreadsheet, and save each as a separate file.

For the public sector, anything written down in the proposal or evaluation sheets IS FOI-able (it is deemed to be leading to a decision). Now on the other hand, I advise evaluators to not hold back from writing notes! I beg them to PLEASE, keep notes on why they scored things a certain way or if information is missing or unclear in the proposals. I also ask them to reference proposal page numbers in the comments so that our consensus discussion will move along more quickly, and we can easily find the information if ever asked to review the evaluations later.

As well, I advise evaluators that to keep things in context, when scoring, always consider how we will explain this score to the proponent in a debriefing? It's much easier to do debriefings if we have diligent notes in the scorebooks eg. "On pg 19, the vendor stated they did X but didn't demonstrate it" "On pg 24-27 they provide a case study of similar development work and the outcomes of the learning" (demonstration is done through action statements, and/or case studies).

As noted in a separate blog post, after the individuals finish scoring, we meet for consensus scoring.

Sitting Across the Table

My father is a salesman. In my eyes, he was very successful and HONEST. He never played games, wasn't a schmoozer, and for a really shy guy, he did extremely well - winning awards, keeping family afloat during the aftermath of Black Monday (87), and eventually buying the company he worked for.

I chose a career in purchasing, basically sitting across the table from my father :) Strangely enough, I never felt we were at 'odds' with each others goals. My father, as a salesperson, sought to solve his customer's problems. I was most amazed at the fact some would want the latest, greatest machine; he'd look at their operations and tell them why they didn't need that, and how a different model (smaller, less expensive) would suit their needs including meeting their growth projections over the life of the machine.

So, never did I see sales and purchasing 'at odds', both were looking to solve a problem, build a relationship. However, in light of LinkedIn group conversations, I'm seeing a difference between sales and public sector buyers in the 'timing' of that relationship! Sales people want to build the relationship to 'win' the contract. Public Sector buyers need to run an open, fair, transparent competition, be completely objective, have no perceived conflicts, then build a relationship AFTER the contract is awarded. (there is a fear a relationship before/during a competitive process gives the perception the buyer has bias towards/against particular vendors).

That appears to be the issue regarding vendors hating the RFP process (no relationship building), and public sector buyers needing an arm's length approach to spending taxpayers' money. In light of Gomery enquiry and Ontario's E-Health scandals, public sector buyers are even more aware of keeping at arm's length from the vendor community when competing a contract.

So, how do we resolve the relationship timing, get the problem solved with the best solution, and avoid perception that public sector buyers are giving contracts to their 'friends' (Gomery, Ontario e-health scandals, etc)?

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Vendors Question, unanswered

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It's difficult to put out an RFP that will be fully understood by every single person reading it, so it is expected there will be questions. Many times the questions are items that are process-related, so we can easily direct the enquiry to the "how to respond" instructions, helpdesk, etc. Other questions can be related to the background of the project, which is important to understand in order to write a decent solution to the problem. Being the RFP writing team is so closely connected to the project, we can very easily make assumptions that people would understand a requirement but find later (via questions) we didn't include enough details.

Sometimes, I admit, I've been frustrated by questions that were already written into the RFP itself, so it appears the person asking the question didn't actually READ the RFP. So, in past, I have responded with a requote of the section number and paragraph number. However, now, I do try to add some 'elaboration' to not insult the vendor community in case my RFP words were unclear.

So, I found it EXTREMELY surprising to read this in a Q&A posted recently:

Question: What is driving the 20+ year experience requirement for the consultant? We have a number of consultants who can support the RFP requirements but don’t have the number of years of experience requested.

Answer: Not a valid question. The experience required to fill any business role/position, either as a consultant or a staff member, is at the discretion of the employer.

Wow, am I the only one reading this as a defensive posture? As a buyer, I don't agree, I do think it is a valid question to ask what the DRIVER is for the requirement. It could be valid, I could see answering with "we require a seasoned professional who has worked their way through numerous levels of X, and have found 20 years is the best indicator of having the depth and breadth of experience we require to mentor our existing staff with 10-15yrs experience" ie they may need someone with greater experience than their existing staff.

Instead, the answer given appears rather 'rude' and dismissive. Would you want to work with this group? What might you think is going on in the background to have this answer posted publicly in response?

As always, I welcome comments: What do buyers think of this response? Would you answer differently? What does the vendor community think of this response? Would this answer alter your go/no-go position on responding whether you had the 20yrs or not?

RFP vs Contract requirements

I'm about to start another Procurement & Contract Management course 210 (Understanding and drafting contracts). As I've been teaching this course nearly two years now, I have seen a trend of common errors made on assignments. In one particular exercise, learners are to write criteria for an RFP to avoid "problems of last year". This is something, as a buyer, most of us have had to do. We draft RFPs based upon needs, specifications, etc, but we also inherit projects that "failed" and need to 'fix' what went wrong.

What tends to be common, is listing 'future requirements' of the contract. It is one thing to ask for qualified personnel, and expect the proposal to demonstrate experience and qualifications, it is another to require 'must engage all stakeholders', to which a vendor responds "yes, we will" and meets the requirement! A better method for managing this future requirement would be to ask for demonstrated experience in engaging stakeholders, or ask for 'how' they will engage stakeholders in the process.

Essentially, everything in the RFP is written to determine whether a vendor can meet the future requirements. Requesting Milestone reporting and payment in the RFP as a means to ensure that the contract manager would be getting the information required and that payment was being issued based on performance requirements is good for the contract management. However, for an RFP, you might find it hard to ‘score’ a written response to Milestone reporting – ie in the RFP the vendor can provide ‘yes we will report on milestones’ or give an idea of what they’d do, but not anything really helpful.

Essentially, you need them to provide a proposal to do your project, and in general terms you would evaluate what is ‘important’ to know they can do the job – first would be the ‘how’ they’d do it (Approach/Methodology), the second would be ‘who’ would do it (Qualifications/Capacity/Experience), you might want additional information on their research/analysis tools at their disposal which could be included under Approach/Methodology or scored separately (depending upon how you want to see the information).