How to read an RFP

The three main solicitation types

A Request for Quotation (RFQ) is used for simpler, usually lower-dollar purchases. You submit a quote — often just pricing plus basic technical information — and the government issues an order. RFQs move fast and are the most common first win for new contractors.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is used for negotiated procurements where the government weighs technical merit, past performance, and price against each other. Proposals are longer, evaluation is more involved, and the government may hold discussions with offerors before award.

An Invitation for Bids (IFB) is sealed bidding: requirements are fixed and fully defined, bids are opened publicly, and award goes to the lowest-priced responsive, responsible bidder. There is no negotiation — your price is your bid. IFBs are common in construction.

The map: uniform contract format

Larger solicitations typically follow the uniform contract format — lettered sections A through M. You do not need to memorize all of them; you need to know where the three sections that decide your fate live. Section A is the cover sheet (the SF33 or similar form), B contains the pricing structure, and the middle sections hold clauses, deliverables, and administrative details.

Smaller commercial-item solicitations often collapse this structure into a streamlined combined document, but the same three questions always have answers somewhere: What does the government want? How must I respond? How will I be judged? Find those three answers before anything else.

Section C: what the government wants

Section C contains the description of work — a Statement of Work (SOW), Performance Work Statement (PWS), or specifications. This is where you learn what must actually be delivered: the products, services, quantities, quality standards, delivery locations, and timelines.

Read it twice. First to decide whether you can genuinely perform the work (the honest bid/no-bid question), and again to extract every 'shall' statement — each one is a requirement your proposal must address and your performance will be measured against.

Section L: how you must respond

Section L gives instructions to offerors: what volumes to submit (technical, past performance, price), page limits, fonts and formatting, required forms, submission method, and the deadline. It sounds bureaucratic, and it is — deliberately. Evaluators use it to compare offers fairly.

Here is the hard truth: proposals that violate Section L get eliminated or downgraded without their substance ever being weighed. Exceeding a page limit, missing a required certification, or submitting through the wrong channel can end an otherwise winning bid. Compliance with Section L is the cheapest competitive advantage available to a new contractor.

Section M: how you will be judged

Section M states the evaluation factors and their relative importance — for example, technical approach, past performance, and price, with a statement like 'non-price factors, when combined, are significantly more important than price.' This tells you exactly where to invest your effort.

Two common evaluation schemes: Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA), where anyone meeting the technical bar competes purely on price, and best-value tradeoff, where the government may pay more for a stronger offer. Your strategy should be completely different under each — under LPTA, gold-plating your solution just raises your price without earning credit.

CLINs: the pricing skeleton

Contract Line Item Numbers (CLINs) break the contract into priceable units — each with its own description, quantity, unit of measure, and price. A supply contract might have a CLIN per product; a services contract might have CLINs per year or per labor category; option years typically appear as separate CLINs the government can exercise later.

Price every CLIN exactly as structured, in the format demanded — do not combine, skip, or restructure them, even if your commercial quoting works differently. Evaluators total and compare CLINs across offerors, and a malformed price schedule reads as inability to follow instructions.

Amendments and the Q&A period

Solicitations change after posting. Amendments (issued on Standard Form 30) can alter requirements, extend deadlines, or answer questions — and you must acknowledge every amendment in your submission or risk being found non-responsive. Monitor the posting until the deadline; do not download the package once and go quiet.

Most solicitations include a question period. Use it: if a requirement is ambiguous, a spec seems to point to a single brand, or Section L conflicts with Section M (it happens), submit a question before the cutoff. Answers are shared with all offerors, and the Q&A record often reshapes the requirement in ways that create — or kill — your opportunity.