What is an RfP?
A Request for Proposal (RfP) is a detailed specification of what a customer requires a contractor to complete. RfPs are used in industry to select proposals submitted by contractors. The RfP used for the GSDC is very similar to those used in industry and consists of four major sections.
Sections of the RfP
Introduction
This section summarises the name, location, type, population and purpose of the settlement. It provides the most important information and context about the settlement you are designing.
Design Requirements
This section is an itemised list of requirements organised by each technical department. These requirements should be used to check that your designs fulfil the RfP and deliver what the customer wants as detailed in the Concept section.
Concept
This section is a numbered list of the top-level wants and needs of the customer that must be present in all proposals. These are the major problems that the customer believes must be addressed via cross-functional collaborative design.
Proposal Requirements
This section is a numbered list of requirements for the final proposal including the format of the presentation, the deadline, rules on plagiarism and rules on how you must present your bid.
Fulfilling the RfP is a phrase that will be commonly said throughout the competition but what does it mean? To fulfil the RfP, you must demonstrate to the customer that your proposed space settlement delivers what they want. All of this information is contained in the Concept section making it the most important part of the RfP. Your company must focus on delivering the settlement’s purpose to fulfil the RfP.
Your company structure contains the same technical departments as outlined in the Design Requirements of the RfP (M – Mission Systems, H – Human Factors, O – Operations Engineering, S – Structural Engineering, B – Business and Finance). It is important to recognise that the design requirements of one department may imply a restriction on the settlement design that applies to everyone! Likewise, a design concept to fulfil one design requirement might be able to solve problems elsewhere. Therefore, it is advisable to understand the RFP as a complete entity, rather than a collection of sections!
RfP Tips and Tricks
Take Your Time
Avoid only reading the RfP sections relevant to your department to prevent confusion and conflicts later. Understand how your responsibilities interact with others for better coordination. An RfP is typically 2500 to 3000 words long, requiring at least an hour to read thoroughly at a speed of 50 to 75 words per minute. Although it seems time-consuming, this practice mirrors the industry, where companies spend up to 15% of their resources on systems engineering and requirements management.
Stay On Task
Stay focused and avoid getting sidetracked by interesting but irrelevant information. Misinterpreting the RfP’s instructions, like using detailed analysis when asked to describe, can waste hours. To keep on track, regularly review the RfP throughout the competition and have team members check each other’s work. This ensures alignment with the requirements and helps correct deviations constructively.
Highlight & Annotate
With the RfP being so long, detailed and complex, you cannot possibly hope to remember everything as you go through it. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you highlight and annotate key points within the RfP so that you can refer to them later. This includes, but is not limited, the following:
- Identifying which RfP points are interdependent.
- Identifying derived requirements.
- Rank the RfP points from highest to lowest priority.
Justify All Choices
You must tell your customer why you have selected your design. The specific reasons why you have selected your design are called justification. Your justification can focus on technical, financial and operational reasons for your design. Remember to reference the particular section of the RfP that your design solves.
A Cohesive Proposal
Your customer wants a cohesive proposal where the quality of all designs is consistent throughout the presentation. Try this:
- Read the whole RfP as a company and highlight and annotate important information.
- Use the first 2-3 hours of the competition to create a first design for the settlement as a whole company using only the Introduction and Concept sections of the RfP.
- Identify what parts of your design fulfil the Concept and Design Requirements.
- Develop the sections of your proposal that require more work to fulfil the RfP.
- Practice presenting the sections of your proposal that fulfil the RfP.
- Simplify your designs so it takes less time to justify your design choice.
- Repeat steps 3-6 as many times as you can.