Handle RFP Earned Value Requirements
You’ve found new work to bid for – congratulations! Then the paperwork comes through and you realize you have to prepare a response to the Request for Proposal (RFP) that talks all about your Earned Value Management System (EVMS). Your heart sinks. This is going to take ages. Is it still worth bidding at all?
Well, we believe it is, because while the EVMS requirements for some bids can feel time-consuming, they are an important part of making sure you meet contractual requirements. And you may well have all the information in house, just not in a format that makes it easy to drop into your response. Once that section of the documentation is out of the way, you can focus on showcasing your technical expertise and the commercial aspects of your offer to create a winning bid.
The way you handle RFP earned value requirements is going to depend on whether you already have an EVMS in place or whether you will need to build one out if you win the bid.
What kind of contracts require an EVMS?
If you are bidding for government contracts that fall above a certain financial amount, you will be expected to manage your project performance via an EVMS. That’s the de facto standard for government work and it ensures there is standardization and comparability between high-value projects. EV is a robust and professional way of tracking project performance using data, so it shows a commitment to monitoring and controlling the work and thus increases the likelihood that work will complete on time and to the required budget.
Other independent and commercial organizations may also require you to commit to using an EVMS for the duration of the project. EV is industry-standard in many industries from manufacturing to construction, engineering to aerospace. The RFP will make this clear.
What goes into your bid response?
The content of your RFP earned value requirements response is going to depend on exactly what is being asked for in the paperwork. Typically, the information you have to provide depends on the following criteria:
- Which organization or government entity you are responding to
- The financial amount of the contract
- How many of the EIA-748 criteria are required
- Whether or not you need to have an EVMS already in place
- The level of risk related to the contract.
From there, the project leadership team can go on to document the aspects required. For example, you might have to provide an EVMS system description document and/or implementation plan.
Think about how you can best represent the following in your response:
- How the organization is going to deploy a successful EVMS if you do not have one in house already
- How the project will be managed and how progress will be tracked
- How EVM reports will be produced and how these meet the contract requirements.
What if you need certification?
Some contracts will require you to have, or commit to obtaining, EVM certification. If you don’t have that yet, you’ll have to draft your response in a way that demonstrates your commitment to gaining the certification in the shortest possible time so you can meet the requirements of the contract.
Normally that would involve choosing and implementing the various software aspects of your EVMS, training the relevant staff, and creating appropriate processes to ensure project controls are adopted and maintained in the right way.
Presentation and accuracy
Finally, make sure that you have responded to everything and provided evidence, supporting paperwork, plans and all the details required. There’s no point submitting a brilliant bid only to find it was rejected because a key question wasn’t answered or you failed to respond to one specific point.
This checking step is so important because most bids are a team effort. You’ll be pulling together work from various teams including project delivery, sales, project controls, legal and more. The more experts involved in preparing the response, the more chance there is that something falls through the cracks due to an accidental miscommunication or the belief that someone else was providing that part.
Review for presentation, spelling and grammar and make sure that you are offering up a document that really reflects what you are capable of doing with no silly errors.
All this might sound a lot – and if you are breaking into the world of government contracts, then it may feel overwhelming. However, once you’ve done it for the first time, you will find the RFP process easier and easier. Each time, you can use the previous documentation created, make sure it is up to date and highlighting your services and systems in the best possible way for this bid, and then submit. Once you have the assets created and a good understanding of what agencies are looking for, you will find it increasingly simple to craft a good response.
It all starts with taking the first step and investing the time and effort into making your bid response the best it can possibly be.
Whatever work you are bidding for, a good RFP response makes an excellent first impression and can be the difference between winning the work or not. If you are at all concerned about showcasing what you can do – or don’t have time to write all this documentation in detail – then one option is to pass the baton to an expert team who can do it for you. EVMS RFP support is a specialist skill that relies on a detailed knowledge of what government organizations expect and technical abilities to put together a realistic and comprehensive view of your current and future capabilities. Expert help can speed up this whole process and ensure you are submitting a confident RFP response.