A little update on my current project. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have a new client who wants to submit proposals for three related but separate state bids for psychological/behavioral services. The RFPs for these bids were released in October, but my client decided only a week or so ago to bid on them. And they are all due on January 14. The proposals will all have several sections in common, but the description of services and the budgets for these services will be different for each one. And therein lies the problem.
My client took off for the Xmas holiday, and only began sending me stuff on Wednesday of this week. He's a good writer, but the State is requiring a lot of descriptive and detailed information, particularly on the services sections which are worth more than 50 points. So he is finding it to be more difficult than he originally thought, and the writing is going more slowly than anticipated.
We talked on the phone yesterday. He's now beginning to realize that it will be an impossible task to do three separate proposals. So he's aiming for two proposals. I told him that I thought that getting even two proposals done by mid-January would be very difficult, considering the time that is is taking to do this first one. He is maybe 1/10 of the way through the first proposal, and some of the stuff he has written so far does not address all of the RFP requirements. We agreed that he should not commit at this time to getting two of them finished, but should concentrate on doing the best possible job on this first one. Then we'll see where things stand.
Today, my job is to do a more intensive review of what he has written and get back to him with my comments. I have quite a few, and he's probably not going to be very happy.
C'est la vie. This all stems from waiting until the last minute.
Leave a comment