The purpose of this process is to develop and issue a solicitation (Request for Proposals) to which commercial vendors can respond with formal offers. The heart of the document is the Performance Work Statement (PWS), identifying the performance expectations of the Government for the commercial activity under review. The Source Selection Authority (SSA) must approve the Acquisition Plan (AP) before announcing and holding a pre-solicitation conference. This is a brief overview of the process.
Requirements are descriptions of an agency's need, and includes the appropriated funds to satisfy the needs.
Market Research is the process of collecting and analyzing information to establish the foundation for an agency's description of need, the solicitation, and resulting contract.
An acquisition strategy & plan is a high-level business and technical management approach designed to achieve program objectives within specified resource constraints.
Solicitation Preparation consists of selecting appropriate clauses and provisions, tailoring them when necessary, and finally assembling the various parts of a solicitation for issuance.
A general source selection strategy is that the less definitive the requirement, the more development work required, or the greater the performance risk, the more technical or past performance considerations may play a dominant role in source selection.
The advisory multi-step process is a process whereby the Government publishes a pre-solicitation/ solicitation notice setting forth its requirement and invites potential offerors to submit information that allows the Government to advise them about their potential to be viable competitors.
The Draft Request for Proposal (DRFP) is not a formal solicitation tool, rather it is used to gather comments and suggestions from potential offerors. The DRFP is mandatory for all competitive acquisitions expected to exceed $25 million.
As part of public information, all agencies must supply space accessible to the public for reviewing RFPs. This space is known as a reading room.
An RFP is a formal negotiated solicitation issued for buys over $100,000 resulting in a formal contract (as opposed to a purchase order). To finalize an RFP, it should at a minimum clearly state the significant evaluation factors such as cost or price, cost or price-related factors, past performance and other non-cost or non-price-related factors, and any significant subfactors, that will be considered in making the source selection, and their relative importance.
Once the RFP is finalized, it is a released for a briefing to the SSA. The SSA is the only person with authority to release information regarding this ongoing source selection. Once the SSA has approved the RFP, it is released (announced) in the CBD (Commerce Business Daily). The RFP is then released to industry.
