Rapid

Down Selection
of Prospective Bidders
John Gilligan, Former PEO, USAF

Rapid Down-Selection of Prospective Bidders

Prepared by John M. Gilligan
Former Program Executive Officer (PEO), United States Air Force

Process Objective
Rapidly reduce the field of prospective bidders to identify the most qualified companies and
convince those companies who are not most qualified not to continue pursuit or submit
proposals. Additional benefits of the process are to dramatically reduce source selection time
and costs for both government and industry.

Process Summary
The rapid down-selection process consists of a quick but formal assessment by the government
of a small number of relevant qualifications of interested bidders to determine those
companies that are most qualified for the contract opportunity. The process takes
approximately 4 weeks from start to finish. Potential bidders that are determined to be not the
most qualified are contacted by the government at a very senior level within the company with
the recommendation not to continue to pursue the opportunity since they are unlikely to be
the/a successful bidder. Based on the government assessment and feedback that a company is
unlikely to be successful in winning the contract, senior management within companies
voluntarily cease activities to pursue the opportunity (in favor of pursuing other opportunities
with higher probability of success). This process has been very successfully used a number of
times.

Process Description
Step 1: (Early) Solicitation of industry interest

Note that it is very important that this first step begin early in the acquisition process and well
before a formal RFP, and preferably well before a draft RFP. Otherwise, companies may have
already invested considerable resources in pursuit of the opportunity and will be reluctant to
forgo pursuit activities.
The first step is for the government to announce its intention of conducting a rapid downselection for the upcoming acquisition in order to identify the most qualified potential bidders.
Concurrently the government will request submission of information from industry using a
request for information (RFI) that can be used to determine the most qualified contractors.
2

The RFI should be constructed so that it requests only that information that will help distinguish
the bidders who are most qualified from lesser-qualified potential bidders. The information
requested in the RFI should be focused (e.g., 5-7 questions) and tailored to the specifics of the
upcoming procurement action. Industry responses would be expected to be approximately 10-
15 pages with two weeks allowed to submit responses to the RFI.
An example RFI question might be, assuming the purpose of the contract is to facilitate
transition of technology solutions from research and development to operational use, to ask for
specific examples where the prospective bidder had successfully done technology transition
including describing the role of the contractor, key issues that had to be addressed, and how
success of the transition was objectively assessed. As another example, if the contract was for
an integrated solution of products against very high reliability criteria, the RFI should request
description of examples (ideally several) where the company had successfully engineered,
developed and/or purchased, and delivered integrated solutions of a similar nature and
complexity as what is envisioned in the future acquisition contract as well as how the high
reliability was demonstrated in these instances.
Step 2: Government Evaluation of Industry RFI Responses

This step closely resembles a mini source selection process, but it is accomplished in about a
week (or two) rather than months for a formal source selection. Prior to receipt of industry RFI
responses, the government team will develop and document desired characteristics of the most
qualified prospective bidders for each question. These characteristics are used as the
benchmarks for evaluating the RFI responses. The industry responses are scored with each
question being rated (for example on a 1-10 scoring system). Brief summary notes are
developed to support the scoring.
Step 3: Determination of Most Qualified Prospective Bidders

The scores and notes for each prospective bidder are reviewed by a senior government
individual ideally not involved in Step 2 of the evaluation process. This step also resembles a
mini source selection process. In conducting the review, the industry submissions are referred
to by letter (e.g., Respondent A, Respondent B, etc.) to reduce the potential for bias. The
evaluation team provides a summary of the evaluation results, summarizes the discriminating
differences, and shows the rank ordering of the companies from highest score to lowest score.
The senior individual first asks questions to gain comfort with the evaluation process. Then the
discussion focuses on where the cut off should be for the group that will be identified as the
most qualified bidders. Factors that influence this are the closeness of the scores, natural
break points (i.e., there is a big gap between a set of scores and the next highest scoring
company), and finally how many bidders the government wants to ensure adequate
3

competition (e.g., the number of bidders would be larger if multiple awards are anticipated).
After reviewing the scores and rationale, the senior individual makes the determination of the
most qualified companies.
Step 4: Notification of Bidders that are Not Most Qualified

Other than the need to conduct the rapid down-select process early in the process and
specifically before companies have invested substantial resources, this step is the most critical
to success of the rapid down-selection process. In concept, the step is relatively
straightforward: a senior level government individual will place a telephone call to a very
senior-level person in each of the companies who were not deemed most qualified. However,
the manner in which this step is conducted is very important.
First, the government person who is making the contact needs to be recognized by industry as
someone who can speak with authority on behalf of the government acquisition community.
This should be a senior government executive, ideally an SES or Flag Officer for a large
acquisition, in the acquisition community. For example, a Program Executive Officer (PEO)
would be an appropriate person to make the calls to the bidders who were not deemed most
qualified.
Second, the person contacted in the company must be a very senior level executive. Ideally,
this executive is the CEO, COO, President, or a Senior Vice President.
The words used in the communication to the industry executive are very important. They must
be exactly or similar to the following:
Hello, my name is [Mr/Ms/Gen]. I am [describe role/title within the organization]. I am
responsible for the upcoming acquisition of [Project] in the [name of organization]. Our
organization recently conducted an evaluation of companies in order to determine those who
were the most qualified to provide the products/services required for [Project]. Your company
responded to our RFI where we asked for a summary of experience that would be required for
the [Project]. We then conducted a formal evaluation of your response against the expected
criteria developed for [Project]. After a formal review of your response, I/we have determined
that you do not stand a good chance of being a successful bidder for the [Project]. Therefore, I
recommend that you not continue to pursue the [Project]. My team will contact your
companys point of contact and provide a debriefing of our evaluation to your team and explain
our process and how your company scored in the evaluation.
Note that the wording used does not say that the company cannot bid; the wording is that the
government recommends that you not bid due to the very low probability of success based on
the evaluation of the RFI response.
4

Explanation of Why This Process Works

The rapid down-select process works fundamentally because companies in general have more
potential contract opportunities to bid than they have resources (people and funding) to
support. Therefore, if they are informed prior to investing substantial resources that they have
a very slight chance of winning, the prudent course of action by senior management is to forgo
pursuit of that opportunity in favor of other opportunities with a higher probability of success.
Critical to the success of the rapid down-selection process execution is the following:
1. The down-selection must be done early in the process, specifically before the
investment in preparing for and bidding on a solicitation is largely a sunk cost. There is
no magic here. Companies are very willing to redirect their investments if they have not
already committed substantial resources to a course of action.
2. The executive who is contacted in a company that is determined not among the best
qualified, must be a very senior level individual. It is recommended that one start at the
very top of the organization and work down only if necessary due to the size of the
organization. The reason is simple. it is at this level where resource allocation decisions
are made. When this executive is told that his/her company has a very low probability
of success, their decision is easy and automatic--we (the company) will not bid this and
will focus scarce resources on other pursuits. A less senior person in the company may
be reluctant to forgo the opportunity to bid since they may have included the
opportunity in their business plan. The level of engagement is critical as the response
will likely be different from less senior management.

Final Thoughts

This process has been used repeatedly with consistent successful results. In almost every case
when a senior executive was contacted to inform them that they were not among the most
qualified, they responded with: thank-you. The thank you was because the process
prevented the company from wasting resources where there was almost zero potential for
success. This response is contrary to what many in government might expect. This process
works not because it is based on a law or an acquisition regulation, but because it is based on
common sense: companies dont stay in business by investing resources in pursuits that have a
low probability of success.
As an interesting anecdote, the author only had one instance where the government program
team heard from a not best qualified company who indicated that they were still planning to
pursue bidding. In this instance the senior executive was contacted again. He quickly
5

responded that he was not aware of his teams plans to continue to pursue the effort but that it
would stop immediately. He appreciated the call.
Lawyers and contracting officers will correctly observe that this rapid down-select process does
not preclude a company who is not among the best qualified from bidding on the opportunity.
One can hypothesize conditions where this might make sense to a particular company.
However, the author never had any company continue pursue bidding after being informed
that they were unlikely to be successful in a source selection.
Upon executing this process, the speed with which the source selection process can be
executed accelerates dramatically. Bidders conferences can be held in a small room rather
than an auditorium. Discussions on acquisition strategy, RFP structure, and evaluation criteria
are focused on a small group of companies and quick. Finally, proposal evaluation time is
significantly reduced, in some cases by an order of magnitude.