February 2015: Proposal Best Practice - Square Brackets Around All Compliance References

More and more often I see RFPs requiring specific references to SOW paragraphs and CDRLs within the text in the proposal responses. To make it easier for the evaluator to see/notice them, I use square brackets e.g. [CDRL A001] to visibly distinguish the compliance references from curved parentheses such as used for acronyms e.g. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This best practice aligns with the common practice of L and M references within square brackets appended to document headings….e.g. 1.0 Title Of This Section [L 3.1.1; M 4.1.2]. It also enables the evaluator to use “[“ and “]” as electronic search terms to quickly discover and identify all of the compliance references within the document. This innovative process and Proposal Navigator® tool efficiencies add productive work days to your constrained proposal development timelines. Contact us for your capture/proposal support needs or to arrange your Proposal Navigator® system capability demonstration. 2015 pricing is $25,000 annual subscription (unlimited use) per proposal center site.

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