How to bid on government contracts

Solicitation types: RFP, RFQ, IFB, Sources Sought

The first thing to know about a government opportunity is what kind of solicitation it is. The four main types behave very differently — they ask for different things, score on different criteria, and have different submission rules.

Invitation for Bid (IFB)

An IFB is the simplest type. The agency knows exactly what it wants, has written it down precisely, and the only thing left to decide is who can deliver it for the lowest price. IFBs are common for construction, maintenance, and commodity goods where the specification is unambiguous. Bid evaluation is purely on price among bidders that meet the technical specs. If you’re the lowest responsive, responsible bidder, you win — there’s no “best value” subjective scoring.

Request for Quotation (RFQ)

An RFQ asks for a price quote on a defined scope of work, often as a precursor to a small simplified-acquisition purchase or a task order under an existing IDIQ contract. RFQs are typically shorter than RFPs, often have shorter response windows (sometimes 5–10 days), and tend to be evaluated primarily on price with a basic technical capability check. Many state and local solicitations under $100,000 are structured as RFQs.

Request for Proposal (RFP)

An RFP is the most demanding solicitation type. The agency wants a full written proposal that explains your technical approach, your qualifications, your management plan, your past performance, and your price. Evaluation is on “best value” — a tradeoff between price and technical merit, scored by a panel against criteria spelled out in the solicitation. RFPs are common for professional services, IT, R&D, and complex construction. Proposal preparation is significant work — typically 40 to 200+ hours.

Sources Sought / Request for Information (RFI)

These aren’t bidding opportunities — they’re market research. The agency is figuring out whether qualified small businesses exist for a given requirement, often to decide whether to set the eventual contract aside. Responding doesn’t commit you to anything, but it’s often the difference between a contract that gets set aside (where you have a real chance) and one that goes unrestricted (where the primes win). Always respond to Sources Sought in your wheelhouse — it’s the cheapest marketing in government contracting.

Reading a solicitation

Government solicitations are long, formatted in a Uniform Contract Format that’s the same across most federal procurements, and structured in sections labeled A through M. You don’t need to read all of them in detail. The sections that actually matter for your bid decision are:

• Section B — Supplies/Services and Pricing. What the agency is buying, how the price is structured (firm fixed price, time and materials, cost plus), and how many contract line items (CLINs) there are.
• Section C — Statement of Work or Performance Work Statement. The actual work. This is the most important section. If you can’t describe how you would do this work after reading Section C, no proposal will save you.
• Section H — Special Contract Requirements. Includes any unusual terms, security clearance requirements, key personnel definitions, and government property issues.
• Section L — Instructions to Offerors. Tells you exactly what to submit, what format, what page limits, and what gets you immediately disqualified. Read this before you write anything.
• Section M — Evaluation Factors for Award. Tells you how the proposal will be scored. If technical is more important than price, your proposal needs to lead with technical. If past performance is a major factor, you need to dedicate real effort to that section.

On state and local solicitations the section structure is less standardized, but the same four questions apply: what are they buying, what do I have to do, what do I have to submit, and how will it be scored.

Most procurement vocabulary is jargon-heavy. Our government contracting glossary has plain-language definitions of NAICS codes, set-asides, IDIQ, GWAC, BOA, and 50+ other terms you will encounter.

The bid/no-bid decision

The single highest-leverage decision in government contracting is which contracts you don’t bid on. A bad bid takes 40+ hours, costs you opportunities elsewhere, and ends in a loss. A disciplined bid/no-bid process protects your time. Use a structured set of questions before you commit:

• Can we actually do this work? Be honest. If the SOW requires past performance you don’t have, security clearances you can’t get in time, or facility requirements you can’t meet, no proposal will fix it.
• Is there an incumbent? Many contracts are recompetes where the incumbent has years of relationship, knows the agency’s preferences, and has built-in past performance. Beating an incumbent is possible but expensive — you need a clear differentiation story.
• Does the set-aside fit? If it’s a total small business set-aside and you’re large, walk away. If it’s 8(a) and you’re not 8(a) certified, walk away. The set-aside type is a hard gate, not a preference.
• What does the past award history say? Search USAspending.gov (or your matching tool’s past-award feature) for similar contracts at this agency. If past awards are at $80/hour and you can’t deliver below $130/hour, you’re not competitive.
• Do we have time to do it well? If the response window is 14 days and you’re also working on three other proposals, the math says you’ll deliver a weak proposal. A weak proposal is worse than no proposal because it costs you the time without giving you a real chance.
• What’s the win probability? Be honest. If your team rates this as a 5% win, multiply that by the contract value. If the expected value of the bid is less than the cost of preparing it, no-bid.

Successful small business contractors no-bid 70–90% of opportunities they look at. The discipline isn’t about saying no — it’s about concentrating resources on the bids you can actually win.

Writing a basic proposal

For an IFB or simple RFQ, the “proposal” may be a single price form. For an RFP, you’re writing a multi-section document that has to win on both technical merit and price. The structure below is the standard pattern for federal RFPs and most state RFPs:

• Executive summary. Two-page summary of who you are, what you propose, why you win on the evaluation criteria, and what your price is. Many evaluators read this first and form an opinion before they get to anything else.
• Technical approach. The longest section. Explain how you’ll actually do the work — methodology, tools, schedule, deliverables, quality controls, risk mitigation. Match the structure of Section C of the solicitation; the evaluators have a checklist that maps to it.
• Management approach. How the team is organized, who reports to whom, how you’ll communicate with the agency, and how you’ll handle problems.
• Past performance. Three to five recent (typically last 3 years), relevant (similar size, scope, and complexity) contracts you’ve completed. Each entry includes customer name, contract number, period of performance, dollar value, and a description of the work and outcome. If you’re new to government contracting, commercial work in the same domain is acceptable on most solicitations.
• Key personnel resumes. One- to two-page resumes for each named key personnel, formatted to highlight relevant experience and certifications.
• Price proposal. Always submitted as a separate volume from the technical proposal. Includes labor hours, labor categories and rates, materials, ODCs, and a fee.

Read Section L carefully. If it says the technical volume is limited to 30 pages, the page limit is a hard rule — pages 31+ may not be evaluated, or your entire proposal may be rejected as nonresponsive. Same for font size, line spacing, margins, and font. Format compliance is the cheapest thing to get right and the easiest reason to get disqualified.

Pricing for government work

Government pricing is different from commercial pricing in three important ways. First, your costs have to be allocable, allowable, and reasonable under FAR Part 31 — not every cost you incur is billable to a federal contract. Second, your indirect rates (overhead, G&A, fringe) have to be defensible if asked, especially on cost-type contracts. Third, what wins isn’t usually the lowest price — it’s the lowest price that’s competitive and credible at the technical level required.

• Build up from labor categories. For services contracts, your price comes from labor categories × rates × hours, plus materials, plus ODCs (other direct costs), plus indirect rates, plus fee. Most agencies will see a price that’s lower than the GSA Schedule rate range as either a discount (good) or a sign that you don’t understand the work (bad).
• Use past awards to anchor. If similar contracts at this agency have been awarded at $X per labor hour, your bid needs to be in that neighborhood unless you have a real cost advantage. Past award data from USAspending.gov and the agency’s contract files is public record.
• Don’t buy in. “Buying in” means bidding below your cost to win the contract and hoping to make it up on later modifications. Federal regulations technically prohibit it, and even when no one catches you, you typically lose money for the entire period of performance.
• Price realism vs. price reasonableness. On best-value RFPs, the evaluator may do a price realism analysis — testing whether your price is high enough to credibly deliver the work. A price that’s below the realism threshold can lose you the bid even if you’re the cheapest.

The submission process

Federal proposals are typically submitted through SAM.gov, agency-specific portals (PIEE for DoD, FAR.gov contracting offices), or a designated email address. State and local proposals are often submitted through state procurement portals (eVA in Virginia, COMMBUYS in Massachusetts, BeaconBid in Houston). Practical rules:

• Submit early. Submission systems lag, hang, or go down right at deadline. Submitting two hours before deadline gives you room to retry. Submitting two minutes before deadline is how proposals get rejected as late.
• Confirm receipt. If the portal sends a confirmation, save it. If it doesn’t, email the contracting officer to confirm your proposal arrived.
• Watch for amendments. Solicitations get amended — sometimes the day before the deadline. You have to acknowledge each amendment in your proposal. Failure to acknowledge makes the proposal nonresponsive. Subscribe to the solicitation’s amendments feed in SAM.gov, or have your monitoring tool watch for changes.
• Submit questions during the question window. Most RFPs have a question deadline a week before the proposal deadline. The agency’s answers are posted as an amendment and bind the agency’s interpretation of the SOW. Smart questions during this window are how good proposals get sharper.

After you submit

Federal evaluations typically take 30 to 120 days. State and local evaluations are sometimes faster, sometimes slower. You’ll receive one of three outcomes:

• Award. The contracting officer notifies you that you’ve won and sends a contract for signature. Read it carefully — terms can change between RFP and contract.
• Notice of unsuccessful offeror. You lost. You’re entitled to a debrief on federal procurements above the simplified acquisition threshold — request it within three business days. Debriefs explain what you scored well on and where you lost points. Use the feedback to write better proposals next time.
• Discussions or negotiations. On larger procurements, the agency may enter discussions with shortlisted offerors and request final proposal revisions. This is your chance to clarify and lower price if you’re close to the price ceiling.

If you believe the award decision was improper, you can file a bid protest — but the bar is high, the cost is real, and most protests fail. Treat protests as a last resort, not a strategy.

How monitoring tools feed into bidding

Bidding is the destination. Everything before it — finding contracts, qualifying them, deciding which ones fit your business — is the funnel. The bigger the funnel, the more bids you can be selective about. The more selective you are, the higher your win rate. The more you win, the more past performance you build for future bids.

Manual portal checking caps the size of your funnel at whatever your team has time to do. A monitoring tool with semantic matching across federal, state, and local sources widens the funnel without adding labor. ContractRadar pulls daily from SAM.gov, SBA SUBNet, and 47 state and local portals; ranks matches by AI compatibility score; and includes past-award history from USAspending.gov on federal matches when available, so you can do the price-anchoring step in seconds instead of hours (USAspending.gov only tracks federal awards, so state and local matches don’t have this context).

Related guides