Blog Post

What if all clauses in solicitations were displayed in full text?

In the federal marketplace you've become accustomed to work with solicitations where almost all FAR clauses, but for a few provisions, are incorporated by reference only.

That's not a problem, you might say, because that approach saves space and speeds up the proposal review process...and saves trees!

In addition, this practice also allows you to focus on the remaining hundreds pages worth of schedules, requirements, instructions, evaluations, and other attachments that are provided in full detail...

...so that in your proposal or gate review you can positively declare:

"Yes, I have read the entire RFP!" 

But how about the Section I? 

How much time are you devoting to locating and reading the full text of the clauses?

If not all of them, do you at least read the full text of those that may increase the risk of performance or those that contain some reporting requirements or proposal instructions? 

But how would you know which clauses contain such constraints and requirements without reading them in full text in the first place?

I wanted to know for my own education by how many pages would an RFP increase if all clauses and provisions were included in full text.

I used the FARclause.com database to extract all clauses from a random, but recent IDIQ RFP that I pulled from FBO.gov. 

The program is called "The Global Solutions Management – Operations (GSM-O) II" and the RFP number is HC102818R0024. According to the document this is recompete of the HC1028-12-D-0021 IDIQ.

The RFP for this program, not counting all the attachments, comprises 276 pages -- that's a lot of pages to review!

It also contains 344 FAR, DFARS, and Army clauses and provisions, 28 of which are provided in full text.

So, not counting those 28 full text clauses that span across 33 pages, how many pages will this RFP contain if all clauses were published in full text?

615 pages, assuming that multiple clauses could be listed on the same page to save space.

The number of RFP pages would more than double, from 276 to 615, an increase of 339 pages.

Now go to your proposal review meeting and tell them that you have read the entire RFP! J