How to request a debrief after losing a bid

Federal procurements conducted under FAR Part 15 give a clear entitlement, and it is worth knowing because it sets the template most state and local practice follows.

• Postaward debriefing (FAR 15.506). An unsuccessful offeror who requests a debriefing within 3 days after receiving notification of contract award shall be debriefed, and the debriefing should occur within 5 days after receipt of the written request when practicable.
• Preaward debriefing (FAR 15.505). An offeror excluded from the competitive range, or otherwise eliminated before award, may request a debriefing within 3 days after receiving the exclusion notice.

At state and local level there is no single rule. Three patterns:

1. The solicitation states a debrief process. Increasingly common in state agency RFPs. Follow it exactly, including the deadline.
2. The state procurement code provides for one. Many state codes give an unsuccessful proposer a right to review the evaluation or to request a debriefing, sometimes tied to the protest window.
3. Nothing is written down. Which is the norm for cities, counties, districts and authorities. In practice most purchasing officers will meet with you or take a call, because it is a routine part of their job and because a contractor who bids better next time is useful to them.

Where there is no formal debrief mechanism, you still have a public records route. Bid tabulations, evaluation score sheets, the award recommendation and the winning proposal are generally public records after award under state freedom of information law. That gets you the numbers even if it does not get you the conversation. Ask for both.

Do it the day the notice of intent to award is posted. Not after you have discussed it internally, not after you have had time to be annoyed about it. The federal window is 3 days, several state windows are similar, and a request made late is simply refused.

Put it in writing, to the procurement contact named in the solicitation: the purchasing officer or contract specialist, not the project manager or the department head who will actually use the service. Keep it short, professional and forward-looking. Something like:

Dear [name],

Thank you for the notification of award on Solicitation [number], [title], posted [date].

We would like to request a debriefing on our proposal, in accordance with [the debrief provision in Section X of the solicitation / your agency's procedures]. We are available at your convenience over the next two weeks and are happy to do this by phone or video if that is easier.

We would also like to request, under [state public records act], a copy of the bid tabulation, the evaluation score sheets, and the award recommendation for this solicitation.

We appreciate the opportunity to compete and intend to bid future work with [agency]. Any guidance on where our proposal fell short will help us submit a stronger response next time.

Regards,

Three things that email does. It preserves the deadline in writing. It bundles the records request, so you have documents to read before the meeting. And its tone makes clear you are gathering information rather than building a protest, which materially affects how open the agency will be, because a procurement officer who suspects a protest is coming will read from a script with counsel present.

The federal minimum content at FAR 15.506 is a useful checklist to bring to any debrief, federal or not.

A postaward debriefing must include, at a minimum:

• the significant weaknesses or deficiencies in your proposal;
• the overall evaluated cost or price and the technical rating of the successful offeror and of your own proposal;
• the overall ranking of all offerors, where a ranking was developed;
• a summary of the rationale for award;
• reasonable responses to relevant questions about whether source selection procedures in the solicitation, applicable regulations and other authorities were followed.

It must not include:

• a point-by-point comparison of your proposal with other proposals;
• trade secrets, privileged or confidential manufacturing processes and techniques;
• commercial and financial information that is privileged or confidential, including cost breakdowns, profit, indirect cost rates and similar information;
• the names of individuals who provided past performance references.

A preaward debriefing under FAR 15.505 is narrower still: it covers the agency's evaluation of significant elements of your own proposal and a summary of the rationale for eliminating you, and it may not disclose the number or identity of other offerors, the content of their proposals, or their rankings.

Knowing those boundaries makes you a better participant. If an evaluator declines to tell you the winner's staffing plan, that is not evasion, it is the rule. Ask instead about your own weaknesses, which they are obliged to discuss.

Come with a written list and take notes. Ask about your own proposal, not about the winner's. You will get far more that way.

On scoring

• What was our score on each evaluation factor, and what was the maximum available?
• Which factor cost us the most points relative to the highest-scoring proposal?
• Were any factors evaluated on a pass/fail basis, and did we pass all of them?

On weaknesses

• What did the committee identify as significant weaknesses or deficiencies in our proposal?
• Was there anything the committee wanted to see that we did not provide, or provided in a form that was hard to evaluate?
• Was anything in our response unclear or open to more than one reading?

On price

• What was our evaluated price, and what was the awardee's?
• How was price scored: lowest price gets full points and others scored proportionally, or another formula?
• Was our price considered unrealistically high or low for any line item?

On fit

• Did we meet the experience and past performance requirements as the committee understood them?
• Did our references respond, and were their responses helpful?
• Is there anything about our firm's profile that made us a poor fit for this particular requirement?

On next time

• What would have made this a stronger proposal?
• What upcoming solicitations should we be watching, and is there a bidders list or notification we should be on?
• Is there a class of work with your agency where you struggle to get enough competition?

That last question is the one to ask if you only get five minutes. Purchasing officers routinely have categories where they get one or two bids and would like more, and they will often tell you what they are.

What not to do

Do not argue. Do not re-pitch. Do not tell the committee they scored it wrong. The moment a debrief becomes adversarial it becomes a scripted, lawyer-supervised recitation of the minimum required content, and you have lost the only thing you came for. If you conclude afterwards that there was a genuine procedural error, that is a separate decision with its own deadlines. See how to file a bid protest.

These two clocks interact, and getting the sequence wrong can cost you a remedy you would otherwise have had.

Federally, 4 CFR 21.2(a)(2) provides that where a debriefing is requested and required, a protest may not be filed before the debriefing date offered, and must be filed not later than 10 days after the date on which the debriefing is held. So requesting a required debriefing can extend the protest window rather than consuming it.

More importantly, 31 U.S.C. § 3553(d)(4)(A) sets the automatic performance stay to run through the later of 10 days after contract award or 5 days after the debriefing date offered to an unsuccessful offeror. If you want performance suspended while your protest is heard, the debriefing date is part of that arithmetic and you need to file inside it.

At state and local level, the interaction is often the opposite. Protest windows as short as Florida's 72 hours can expire before a debrief has been scheduled. Where that is the case and you have a genuine concern, the practical answer is to request the debrief and file a protective notice of protest within the statutory window, then withdraw it if the debrief resolves your concern. Get advice before doing that; a filed protest changes the tone of everything that follows.

For a bid where you have no protest concern at all, none of this matters. Ask for the debrief, learn what you can, and move on.

A debrief is only worth the hour if it changes what you do next. Write it up the same day, in a file you keep by agency, and act on the pattern rather than on any single meeting.

1. Separate price problems from proposal problems. If you scored well technically and lost on price by 4 percent, your writing is fine and your cost structure or your assumptions need work. If you were cheapest and lost on technical score, the opposite. These lead to completely different fixes and firms routinely misdiagnose which one they have.
2. Fix the reusable content. If the committee said your quality control section was generic, it will be generic in the next twelve proposals too. Rewrite the library, not just this proposal. See how to build an RFP compliance matrix for how the reusable core fits together.
3. Fix the qualification gaps. If you were marked down for lacking public sector references of comparable size, that is a two-year business development problem: take smaller public work, subcontract to a prime, pursue cooperative contracts.
4. Recalibrate your bid/no-bid gate. Three debriefs saying you were never within range on price for a particular buyer type is telling you to stop bidding that buyer type. That is a saving of dozens of hours a year. See how much does it cost to bid on a government contract?.
5. Build the agency file. Who evaluates, how price is scored, what the incumbent charged, what the committee cares about. By the third bid to the same buyer you should know more about their process than most of your competitors.
6. Ask when you win, too. Winning debriefs are rarer and more useful than losing ones. Knowing you won by 2 points rather than 20 tells you exactly how much room you have.

If you want the debrief requested, the records pulled and the lessons folded into the next proposal without it landing on your desk, that is the work we do. Book a call.