How to read an RFP: the sections that decide whether you should bid

Start with the dates and the submission checklist

Before the scope, before the price pages: find every date. The questions deadline (after which no clarification is possible), the pre-bid conference date and whether attendance is mandatory, any site-visit requirement, and the submission deadline with its exact time and portal. Put them on a calendar immediately. Then find the submission checklist or required-forms section and read it as the grader will — public evaluations disqualify responsive-looking bids for a missing signature, a missing form, or a certificate in the wrong name. More small firms lose RFPs to paperwork than to price.

Read the scope like an estimator, not a reader

The scope of work is where the money is decided. Read it with a pencil: quantities, frequencies, locations, response-time requirements, staffing minimums, equipment the buyer expects you to supply, and every 'contractor shall' sentence — each one is a cost. Mark anything ambiguous for the written questions process; answers arrive as addenda and bind the buyer, while assumptions bind only you. Watch especially for scope that grew quietly from the last contract: an added location or a higher service frequency is exactly the kind of change incumbents price and newcomers miss.

Find the evaluation criteria — they tell you what 'best' means

Unlike a low-bid Invitation to Bid, an RFP is scored. The evaluation section states the points: price, experience, staffing plan, past performance, small-business participation, and whatever else the buyer values, in the buyer's own weights. Read them before writing a word. A proposal that spends twenty pages on the criterion worth ten points and two pages on the criterion worth forty has misread the document. If price is the overwhelming weight, decide honestly whether you can be the low credible price before investing in the narrative sections.

Check insurance, bonding, and eligibility against your real file

RFPs set insurance minimums, bonding requirements for larger work, licensing requirements, and sometimes set-aside or certification eligibility. Compare each against what you actually hold today — not what you could obtain eventually. Some gaps close in a week (a certificate naming the buyer as additional insured); others close in a quarter (a certification still in review). A requirement you cannot meet by the submission date is a pass, and knowing it on day one instead of day twelve is the entire value of this reading order.

Decide bid or pass in the first read — then work the addenda

After those four passes you know the dates, the deliverable, how you will be scored, and whether you are eligible. That is a bid-or-pass decision, and making it in the first read is what leaves the remaining time for pricing and writing instead of discovery. If you bid, keep reading the portal: addenda change scopes, dates, and forms, and the bidder working from the original document alone is bidding on a contract that no longer exists. BidPelican's digests flag deadline and addendum changes on matched solicitations for the same reason — the document you win on is the current one.

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