After-Award Debrief As A Tool For Winning Proposals
by Olessia Smotrova-Taylor
You submitted your proposal, and then waited anxiously to hear whether you won or lost. You had your hopes up, and maybe got exactly what you were wishing for: the contract is awarded to your company. You have millions of things to take care of since you now need to start up the program. You may not even have enough time to plan your win party because you are so busy. Or, maybe you have lost and are thoroughly disappointed. After all, you have given it your best, spent scarce resources and sleepless nights, and witnessed heroic efforts from your entire team putting the proposal together. Whether you won or lost, however, you cannot consider your proposal effort complete until you have asked the government for a debrief. You are bound to win a lot more proposals if you consider lessons learned after each pursuit to improve your proposal management process, your knowledge of your customers, and your offers.
So, what is a debrief? The government is required by FAR 15.506 to provide official feedback on your proposal to your company, if you make a request within three days of the notification. During the debrief, the government contracting officer, with support from other evaluators, discusses strengths and weaknesses in your proposal, provides the overall evaluated price and technical rating of the winner, offers summary rationale for award, and provides “reasonable” responses to “relevant” questions.
It makes sense that a debrief after a loss is a way to understand what you missed and what you could have done better, but it may seem redundant to ask for a debrief when you won. Obviously, they loved your proposal and chose you, so what more could you ask for? Besides getting a reassurance that you got things right, there are a couple of important reasons you should ask for a debrief.
One reason is that . . . Click
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