How to build a compliance checklist for a federal proposal

What it is

A compliance checklist, often called a compliance matrix, lists every requirement the solicitation places on your offer, where each one is written, and where your proposal answers it. It is not a summary of the work. It is the list of things that must be true of what you submit for the offer to be accepted and evaluated at all.

Where the requirements are

• Section L, instructions to offerors. Volumes, page limits, fonts and margins, file formats, how and where to submit, and the deadline with its time zone. A commercial solicitation on the SF 1449 usually puts these in an addendum to FAR 52.212-1.
• Section M, evaluation factors.What is scored and in what order of importance, or the addendum to FAR 52.212-2 in a commercial solicitation. Every factor is something to answer, even where no sentence says “shall”.
• Section C, the statement of work.Also called the PWS or the SOO. Here a “shall” is a promise you are making about the work.
• The forms and Section K. The cover form (SF 1449, SF 33 or SF 18) signed where asked, and the representations and certifications, most of which now come from your SAM.gov registration.
• Every amendment. Any of them can add a requirement, move the deadline or change a page limit, and most must be acknowledged in the way the amendment says, often on the SF 30.
• Section J and the attachments. Pricing schedules, past performance questionnaires, wage determinations and drawings, each with requirements of its own.

The words that make a requirement

Read for the language of obligation: shall, must, is required to, no later than, at a minimum, and will when it describes what the offeror or the contractor does rather than what the government does. A requirement in Section L is about the offer; one in the statement of work is about the work. Both belong on the list, in separate parts.

Building it, row by row

1. One row per requirement, quoted

Copy the sentence word for word and write where it is: the document, the section and the page. A paraphrase is how a requirement gets softened by the time it reaches the person writing that part of the proposal.

2. Mark the ones that disqualify

A late submission, a missing signature, a page over the limit, a volume in the wrong format, an amendment not acknowledged. These go at the top, because missing any of them can end the bid before anybody reads your approach.

3. Give every row an owner and a home

The person who answers it, and the volume and section of the proposal where the answer is. A row with no owner is a row nobody answers.

4. Check it again at every amendment

Re-read each amendment against the list the day it posts, and update the rows it touches. A changed page limit or deadline is easy to miss when the amendment is mostly about something else.

5. Check the finished proposal against it

Before you submit, every row answered, and every disqualifying row ticked by somebody other than the person who wrote that part.

Doing this faster

InstantSam builds the first draft of this list for you. Its compliance checklist holds up to forty requirements that decide acceptance, the disqualifying ones first, each with the sentence it came from, and every quoted sentence is checked against the text of the documents before you see it; a requirement whose sentence cannot be found there is dropped. You assign items to people, tick them off, and on a paid plan export the list as a spreadsheet or a Word document.

It reads up to 40,000 characters of each attachment and 180,000 in all, largest first, and says which attachments it read. Treat it as the first draft of your list, not the last word, and read each requirement in the document before you rely on it. How InstantSam reads a solicitation.

Questions people ask

What is a compliance matrix in a federal proposal?

A list of every requirement the solicitation places on your offer, where each one is written, and where your proposal answers it. It is not a summary of the work. It is the list of things that must be true of what you submit for the offer to be accepted and evaluated.

Where are the proposal instructions in a federal solicitation?

In Section L, instructions to offerors, when the solicitation follows the Uniform Contract Format. A commercial solicitation on the SF 1449 usually puts them in an addendum to FAR 52.212-1, Instructions to Offerors. Read the amendments too: any of them can change an instruction.

What happens if a federal proposal is submitted late?

As a rule it is not considered. The FAR's instructions to offerors, 52.212-1 for commercial solicitations and 52.215-1 for others, allow only narrow exceptions, so plan to submit well before the deadline and check its time zone.

See also: how to read a federal solicitation, and how to decide whether a solicitation is worth bidding.