Management plans for federal government proposals: tips and a checklist
Management plans for federal government proposals are required by most RFPs and other types of solicitations. The instructions and evaluation criteria in different solicitations range from detailed to vague. Even in the latter case, however, many procurements weigh “management” heavily in the evaluation of submissions.
Other parts of your proposal will focus on the excellence of your staff, your firm’s relevant expertise, and the capabilities of your subcontractors and consultants. In the management chapter, you want the evaluators to conclude that you have the management skills, systems, and tools in place to orchestrate these resources effectively, while minimizing risks to the government (e.g., risks of overruns or schedule slippage). In brief, you want to convince the panel that your firm:
- Understands the specific management challenges of the contract.
- Has the capacity and experience to meet these challenges.
- Will be easy to interact with on a routine basis and in resolving issues that may arise—in a manner that is consistent with the particular culture and style of the procuring agency or department.
- Is well equipped to successfully deploy resources, coordinate the contract’s diverse activities, respond effectively to unforeseen changes, and deliver high-quality services on time and within budget.
- Will place a minimal management and coordination burden on the agency.
To achieve these goals, you should try to make meet each of the following objectives within your proposal’s management section or chapter.
1. Demonstrate proven ability.
Somewhere within your management section—preferably near the beginning—it is can be useful to assure the evaluators that this contract would be well within your firm’s comfort zone.
First, you should establish that your firm has managed many contracts that are similar to the one being procured. You should provide concrete examples of contracts you have managed and describe why they are similar, along dimensions such as magnitude, scope, complexity, and size.
Second, you should establish that your management of these contracts was excellent. Don’t simply assert excellence; provide concrete indicators. Can you provide written testimonials from clients, in which they attested to your firm’s management skills (e.g., business-like concerns for the needs of clients; willingness to resolve issues quickly; ability to respond to changes in direction or scope)?
2. Prove your understanding.
Within your management plan, you should provide detailed, concrete insights into the specific management challenges associated with this contract. For example:
- Will the workload be highly variable during the contract’s life, including periods of low activity and periods of peak workload?
- Will there be particularly tight timelines for some deliverables or other milestones?
- Will the contractor have to meet special administrative requirements, such as unusually detailed cost reporting?
It is particularly beneficial if you can describe your understanding of management challenges that you know to be of special concern to the client agency.
You may want to place special emphasis on areas where you know that other contractors have stumbled in the recent past. Do not explicitly identify or criticize the other contractor; simply be straightforward and objective in describing how you will avoid these problems.
3. Describe systems, procedures.
The core of the management portion of your proposal—by far the longest section—typically will be your discussion of your firm’s management systems and procedures. Sometimes the solicitation’s instructions will be quite specific about what items to address. The checklist identifies examples of the types of management systems and procedures that you might want to describe.
In describing your management systems and procedures, there are a few good rules of thumb:
- Describe how you will tailor your systems and procedures to meet the unique management challenges of this contract.
- Be succinct.
- Avoid boilerplate.
- Be realistic.
4. Present an appropriate organizational approach.
Your proposal should present an organizational structure that is as simple as possible for the contractual effort that is being procured and that reflects a clear vision of how the firm will manage the effort.
A description of your firm’s proposed organizational approach also can be strengthened by explicitly addressing lines of communication with the client organization.
Key problems to avoid include the following:
- Providing unclear descriptions of the roles of each key person in the management structure.
- Providing contradictory descriptions. For example, if you are proposing task managers for each major task, it typically is not a good idea to provide elaborate descriptions of other functional experts who will serve as “technical leads” in some sort of cross-cutting role. This will lead the evaluation panel to wonder who will really be in charge and how decisions will be made.
- Neglecting to address how subcontractors and consultants fit into the organizational structure.
- Contradicting other parts of your proposal. For example, another part of your proposal may discuss a QA/QC approach that includes a QA Manager who reports to senior management of your firm independently of the program manager. Your organizational chart should reflect this.
5. Resonate with agency’s culture.
Your management plan should reflect a sophisticated understanding of the agency’s general approach—its “culture”—for interacting with contractors. For example, are either of the following two scenarios accurate for the procurement you are considering?
Scenario A: The agency has a highly sophisticated internal technical staff and believes (correctly) that it could perform the work being procured were it not for the relatively small size of their internal roster.
Scenario B: The agency believes (correctly) that it does not have the appropriate technical expertise in house. The agency is looking for the contractor to provide technical leadership. The agency is looking for a management approach in which the contractor will do a fair amount of technical hand-holding along the way and will help educate staff on technical issues so that they can make informed choices during the course of the project.
Knowing which scenario is the correct one should help set the tone of your management plan and can affect many of the specific procedures that you propose (e.g., procedures you propose for obtaining agency reviews of methodologies).
6. Concretely describe your commitment.
Successful management plans create a sense that the proposing firm is excited about the prospect of winning the contract and performing excellent work. You can best achieve this by making sure that your management plan persuades the reader that:
- The work being procured is squarely within your firm’s business focus. It does not represent a “flyer”—an opportunity for your firm to try to spread its wings, which, if it ends in failure, will not have a major impact on your firm’s reputation in its core business areas. Conversely, performing excellent work on this contract is central to your business strategy and reputation.
- Because this contract is in your core business area, your staff would view working on this contract as an opportunity to further their career advancement within the firm.
- In recognition of the importance of this contract, you are proposing an excellent program manager, with just the right combination of technical and managerial skills. (Provide succinct, explicit details to back up this assertion.)
- You are proposing an organizational approach that will give this project excellent visibility with your senior corporate management.
7. Demonstrate sufficient capacity.
No matter how strong your management procedures and systems, the evaluation panel will typically score the plan low if it detects that your firm does not have sufficient resources of the right type in the right place; your available staff mix is too senior, or too junior; or your proposed staff are simply not sufficiently available, given their commitments on other contracts.
8. Describe subcontractors management.
If you are proposing a team of subcontractors and consultants, it will be to your advantage if you have worked together successfully in the past, on other similar contracts. If this is the case, your proposal should emphasize this history of successful, proven working relationships. This is especially important for large, complex contracts with intricate scheduling and phasing of tasks. Some evaluation panels will give more credence to a prime contractor’s claimed ability to orchestrate the work successfully if there is tangible evidence that the team members have forged successful working relationships in the past.
Management Plan Checklist
Click here to download a checklist that you can use in preparing management plans for federal proposals. The checklist identifies a range of management systems and procedures that you may want to address in a proposal. The checklist is divided into the following main topic areas:
A. External Communications
B. Internal Communications
C. Accounting System and Procedures
D. Cost Control
E. Schedule Control
F. Quality Assurance/Quality Control
G. Personnel Continuity
H. Accommodating Workload Peaks and Valleys
I. Rapid Response
J. Protection of Sensitive Data and Documents