Too many government-issued statements of work try to "solve the problem." In such cases, the agency issues a detailed SOW, often with the assumption that "the tighter the spec the better," without realizing that this approach increases the government's risk. * The agency SOW establishes what to do, how to do it, what labor categories to provide, what minimum qualifications to meet, and how many hours to work. The agency then asks vendors to respond with a "mirror image" of the specifications in the proposal. The result is that the "competing" vendors bid to the same government-directed plan, and the agency awards the contract to the company with the best proposal writers... not the best ideas.

So the first key to selecting the right contractor is to structure the acquisition so that the government describes the problem that needs to be solved and vendors compete by proposing solutions. The quality of the solution and the contractor-proposed performance measures and methodology then become true discriminators in best-value evaluation.