Bid and Proposal Services | Recruiting | Business Management Consulting | Small Business Start-Up Consulting | Program and Contract Management Support
TRAINING MODULES CATALOGUE
Fundamentals of Federal Contracting
| 101 |
Federal Market Overview |
This module will provide you with an overview of the Federal Market including general market statistics, historical federal spending and projected allocations, and discussions of current market trends. |
| 102 |
Federal Market Resources |
During this module, you will learn about the many resources available to federal contractors for market research, opportunity identification, federal agency information, key government contracts, industry organizations and committees, trade publications, partnering resources, etc. These resources include government and private sector sources, both free-of-charge and fee-based. |
| 103 |
Federal Government Organization |
During this module, you will gain an understanding of the general organization of the federal government including compositions of major civilian and defense agencies. You will additionally learn about the key positions within each agency, from appointee positions to procurement and program personnel who affect major contracting decisions. |
| 104 |
Basics of Federal Government Contracting |
This course defines and simplifies federal government contracting by explaining the various approaches contractors can use to sell products and services to the U.S. Government. You will discover the types of contracting mechanisms available to Government (federal supply schedules, contract vehicles, open market purchases, etc.), an introduction to the roles and responsibilities of government personnel, and basic contracting requirements. |
| 105 |
Federal Government Purchasing Processes & Procedures |
To most effectively win business from the Government, you must understand what a Contracting Officer goes through to issue an order or award a contract. During this session, you will learn about contracting officer requirements for using vehicles, awarding new contracts, and following regulations and internal guidelines. This will serve as a basis for understanding how you can make a Contracting Officer’s job easier, in order to facilitate purchases. |
Advanced Concepts in Federal Contracting
| 201 |
Acquisition Regulation Basics |
You will be introduced to the more important aspects of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Parts 8, 12, 13, 14, and 15 so you can understand which rules apply when, and which ones don’t. By the end of the course, you will be aware of how the Government is likely to treat you under various types of competition, so you can work with your customers most effectively. |
| 202 |
Agency Specific Acquisition Regulations |
Most federal agencies have supplemental acquisition regulations, guidelines and/or procurement or evaluation handbooks. This course will provide you with specifics on the regulations, policies and guidelines of the agency of your choice. Contact Red Team to inquire about agencies for which we currently offer training. |
| 203 |
Contract Vehicles |
There are three parts to this module. First, you will learn the differences between contract vehicle types and the pros and cons of each. Second, you will find out about the most commonly used vehicles in the market today. Third, you will learn about some of the industry’s most popular procurements coming in the next year. |
Proposal Strategies and Development
| 301 |
Proposal Writing Basics |
A Request for Proposal (RFP) typically provides instructions on how to organize your written proposal and how it will be evaluated. Yet few contractors understand how to properly interpret this and write a corresponding proposal that meets the Government evaluator’s expectations. Through this course, you will learn proposal structure development, differentiating essential from non-essential content, and creating evaluation tools to help the Government score your proposal more favorably. This course can benefit even experienced proposal writers. |
| 302 |
Advanced Proposal Writing |
Your company can have the greatest capabilities, the best past performance, the most desirable proposed solution and the best price. But, if all of that isn’t properly conveyed and sufficiently convincing, you won’t win the contract. Following the Basic Proposal Writing module, this course will teach you writing efficiency and effective messaging techniques through a hands-on workshop using samples from real proposals. |
| 303 |
Capture Management Techniques |
Designed for sales executives, business development professionals and capture managers, this course covers topics including opportunity identification, opportunity qualification, team member selection, competitive analysis techniques, positioning-to-win methodologies, and cost-of-capture/return-on-investment considerations. |
| 304 |
Proposal Management |
This course is designed for large-scale proposal managers and volume managers who are typically responsible for defining proposal outlines and storyboards, creating proposal development timelines, collecting content from multiple sources, ensuring overall compliance and quality, managing production and generally overseeing the proposal. This class will teach you effective techniques relating to each of these responsibilities. |
| 305 |
Competitive Bidding Basics |
In this course, you will learn the following competitive strategies: interpreting evaluation criteria effectively (it’s not always as written in a solicitation), understanding common government evaluation methodologies, applying effective pricing strategies, and differentiating yourself from competitors in ways that are meaningful to evaluators. |
| 306 |
Advanced Competitive Bidding Strategies |
In this course, you will learn how to address advanced capture strategy concerns such as: What are your competitors are bidding? How does that affect what you propose? What is the winning price, and how can you afford to reach it? How can you convey “best value” in your proposal? Should you “ghost” your competition? What are the real preferences of the contracting agency? What do you do when those are different from the stated evaluation criteria? What do your competitors know about you, about your team, or about your proposed solution? How should that affect your strategy? |
| 307 |
Competitive Proposal Pricing |
Regardless of what the evaluation criteria says, competitive acquisitions are always price sensitive. This course begins by teaching you how to determine where your prices need to be, followed by teaching you commonly used pricing strategies. You will also learn in detail the logical and mechanical exercises to quantify and assess risk/return to make the most effective cost/price decisions. While Red Team does not endorse deceptive pricing practices, you will learn about them so you can guard against them during competition. |
Proposal Evaluation and Protest
| 401 |
Government Proposal Evaluation Methodologies |
Section M of a traditional Request for Proposal (RFP) defines the Government’s evaluation criteria and methodologies. But, what really happens behind closed doors during an evaluation? This course will explain to you the roles of an evaluation team, a Source Selection Evaluation Board (SSEB) and a Source Selection Authority (SSA). It will also describe to you common processes for establishing color ratings, adjectival ratings and quantitative scores, as well as commonly used best value determination methodologies. |
| 402 |
Procurement Protests |
This course will provide you with answers to questions such as: What rights do you have to protest a procurement or contract award? When is appropriate to exercise your rights? What are the possible outcomes you could expect for various protest scenarios? What protest venues exist, and how should you decide which one to use? What are the typical costs of filing and pursuing a protest? You will learn from the presentation and discussion of actual case law. |
Post-Award Concerns
| 501 |
Federal Program/Contract Management Basics |
This course will teach you the basics of good program management and contract management practices including customer relationship development, essential program information management, change proposal development, common reporting functions, and effective ways to communicate program/contract information within your own company. You will also learn about commonly used management tools. |
| 502 |
Task Order Management |
While our Federal Program/Contract Management Basics module pertains to managing federal contracts in general, this module pertains specifically to managing task orders. We place particular emphasis on large-scale, multiple award services vehicles, whereby awarded contractors must formally compete for individual orders under their awarded IDIQs. You will learn about task order bidding scenarios, performance tracking, reporting requirements, change proposals and subcontract management. |
| 503 |
Federal Sales Training |
There are countless ways to sell to the Federal Government. This course teaches you how to select the ways that are most beneficial to your customer and most effective for you. You will learn transactional opportunity identification and qualification, transactional quoting and proposal development, appropriate follow-up techniques, customer relationship management, and techniques to facilitate rapid “closing.” |
Small Business Contracting
| 601 |
Small Business Programs and Partnerships |
Few companies, whether large or small, are taking full advantage of the opportunities available to them through Small Business programs. This course will give you a comprehensive understanding of the world of Small Business and 8(a) contracting. You will learn how to work with regulations that provide preferential treatment and unique opportunities to certain company types. You will also learn how to partner with uniquely privileged companies, as well as the details of common industry practices and current trends. |
| 602 |
8(a) Program Applications and Entry |
This course will provide guidance to Small Disadvantaged Businesses wishing to enter the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program. You will learn about the eligibility requirements for the 8(a) program, how to complete the necessary applications and financial attachments, how to expedite approval, and 8(a) regulations and procedures that you must follow after acceptance into the program. You will learn from case studies of recent 8(a) success stories. |
| 603 |
Small Business Subcontracting Plans |
The Federal Government mandates that each of its agencies must spend a designated portion of their funds with Small Businesses, and further requires that large business contractors spend a portion of their federal revenues with Small Business subcontractors. Therefore, the Government requires large businesses to develop and secure approval of Small Business Subcontracting Plans. This course will give you guidance on how to develop reasonable plans that secure government approval, and how to effectively manage Small Business subcontractors. This will be supplemented by commentary on identifying small businesses. |
| 604 |
Sole Sourcing Contracting Techniques |
This course is designed for firms that are eligible for sole source contracts as well as any firm interested in teaming with eligible companies. There are multiple mechanisms allowing the Federal Government to issue sole source contract awards, but each has a unique set of requirements. You will learn about each of these so you can structure your proposals for sole source contracts in a way that will most likely result in contract awards. You will gain an understanding of the requirements and methodologies for unsolicited proposals, as well as their limitations. You will learn from case studies of successful sole source contracts. |
| 605 |
Teaming Agreements and Subcontracts |
Designed for prime contractors, this course will provide you with a breakdown of the typical elements of teaming agreements and subcontracts, defining and explaining considerations for each element. You will also learn how to differentiate the need for teaming agreements versus subcontracts, as well as identifying trends in the market that will allow you to have proper expectations of what is and isn’t reasonable during agreement and subcontract negotiations. |
| 606 |
Joint Venture Contracting |
There are many pros and cons to entering a joint venture (JV) and pursuing federal contracts as one. This course will help you understand the opportunities and challenges of joint venture contracting including JV consideration factors, JV establishment procedures, JV bidding concepts, and JV management. You will learn from case studies of successful JVs. |
Performance Based Contracting
| 701 |
Performance Based Service Acquisitions (PBSA) |
PBSA is a rapidly emerging trend in federal contracting. This course will teach you everything you need to know about PBSA. Specifically, you will learn what performance based contracting is, how it differs from traditional contracting, what the additional contractor responsibilities are, what the Government’s additional obligations are, what steps are taken toward establishing a performance-based contract, how you can effectively establish and define performance metrics, and how you can effectively measure them. |
Communications Workshops
| 801 |
Effective Communication Workshop |
Whether you’re engaged in a one-on-one conversation or speaking to a large audience, there are important concepts to understand in communicating effectively. Most importantly, you must change how you communicate based on the intended recipient of your communication (i.e. executives aren’t interested in the same details as engineers). Small audiences and large must be catered to differently. Through this course, you will learn how people hear and process information, and then apply this understanding in a series of workshops that test and refine your communication skills. You will discover effective messaging, which will help you communicate in convincing, non-threatening, and efficient ways. The course is appropriate for individuals of all backgrounds and experience levels. |
| 802 |
Effective Writing Workshop |
This course is designed to benefit the most experienced and skilled writers as well as beginners, all at the same time. Before learning to write effectively, you must first understand how potential customers read and interpret information. Following an interactive interpretation activity, you will begin a series of hands-on workshops involving content definition, effective messaging, simplified document composition, thought-flow, efficient sentence structures, phraseology tips and modern grammar. You will learn from real writing samples throughout the course. |
| 803 |
Oral Presentation Workshop |
This course is designed for intermediate or experienced presenters who would like to more effectively present critical information to both small and large audiences. Our instructors, who have years of experience as presenters and coaches, will give you examples of good and poor presentations. You will also participate in a series of interactive workshops to create presentation content from a given set of criteria and instructions, give your presentation to other attendees, and receive feedback regarding your content, messaging techniques, and style. You will learn from your own feedback, as well as by participating in feedback sessions of fellow presenters. |
| 804 |
Conflict Resolution Workshop |
This course will teach you effective methods of resolving conflicts common to many work environments, primarily derived out of differences in experience, responsibilities, expectations, preferences, and biases between organizations and individuals. You will learn about common conflicts between technical and contracts personnel, between engineering and sales organizations, and between working level and managerial staff. Note: This course is not intended to address conflict resolution from a legal disputes perspective. |
Solicitation Development
| 901 |
Government RFP Development Process |
Most government agencies go through similar processes to develop solicitations. This course will teach you the common approaches taken, detailing each step in the process. Specifically, you will learn about requirements definition, contracting office assignments, transfers of funds, required approvals, and assignments of evaluation teams. |
| 902 |
SOW / SOO / PWS Development |
In this course, you will learn the difference between a Statement Of Work (SOW), a Statement Of Objectives (SOO) and a Performance Work Statement (PWS). You will further learn when each should be used, how the writing approach should differ from one to another, at what level of detail requirements should be defined and by whom, what the common pitfalls of development of these documents are. You will learn through examples of good and bad SOW, SOO, and PWS documents how to write effectively and with minimal risk of misinterpretation. |
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