Where can I submit a Request for Proposal to get competitive bids?

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound?

Organizations, whether they are non-profits, corporations or municipal governments, often spend a lot of time defining a project's requirements, crafting a detailed 100 page Request for Proposals (RFP), and then they announce the project on their website, or possibly advertise in a local newspaper, and set a 3 week deadline for submissions. They then sit back and wait for the proposals to come rolling in.

This strategy requires that the issuing organization have a site that gets enough visits that word of the project gets out, or that the site places high enough in a Google search to attract attention. Often what happens is that a small group of vendors known by individuals within the organization are notified of the RFP.

While the process started out with good intentions of an impartial competitive bidding process, the process is essentially derailed by the inability to promote unsolicited bids.

Procurement officers, whether official or unofficial, need to understand that advertising their RFP and getting a number of unsolicited competitive bids is an essential element to the success of their bidding process.

Publicizing your RFP doesn't need to cost money or be time consuming. A quick way to advertise your RFP is to publish it on the Request for Proposal Database, you can list it on your local Craig's List site, or you could set up a project blog using sites such as Blogger or Wordpress. Since these sites get higher search engine placement and have good content distribution, announcing your RFP through these venues will likely significantly increase the number of competitive bids that you receive.

New RFP project-listing blog is created

To further the Word about the RFP Database, Confluent Forms LLC has created the RFP Blog to announce projects as they are added to the site.

We hope you enjoy and spread the word!

Political isolation in Western Massachusetts

Go ahead and pull up a list of this country's state capitols. Running down the list you might notice a pattern: in very few cases is the capitol of the state the most populous. One of those few exceptions? You guessed it! Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is an odd-shaped state, much longer from east to west than north to south. It's not a big state, but with Boston being on the eastern side of the state, those on the western side (the rural and generally poorer) feel isolated from the politics of the state. Any time the Governor comes "out west" there is general hoopla and the Governor feels that he needs to say "I am your Governor". You'd assume from the press coverage that a foreign dignitary was visiting instead of our elected representative.

One of the Governor's campaign pledges was that he'd re-open a governor's office in Springfield where a deputy or director-level staffer would be situated and hold office. Locals would be able to go there to connect with their elected executive branch. Of course this hasn't happened yet and we'll need to wait until the 2008 budget cycle and available funding to see this become reality.

This being said, I think the citizens of Western Massachusetts need to demand more! Why should we be placated with a satellite office and a deputy? The state should move the capitol! Why is Massachusetts so special that, unlike other states, its capitol is in its biggest city, making decisions that primarily benefit those around it at the expense of those further out.

Does Pennsylvania have the capitol in Philadelphia or even Pittsburgh? Nope. It's capital is the small city of Harrisburg, a stone's throw from the Amish in Lancaster. I think it's credible to believe that the Governor of PA takes the farmers' needs just as seriously as he does the city-folk since he'd be surrounded by angry Amish with pitchforks!

I think it's time we demand a real change in Massachusetts politics that can only be accomplished by a change in the scenery surrounding Beacon Hill. Move it to Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, Northampton... move it somewhere central and a median of the entire state. But definitely move it.