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Why would you leave only 30 minutes before the deadline to hand in a proposal for billions of dollars?

by pclark 16y ago

buro9 16y ago
Indeed. And there's a view that if you couldn't get the proposal in ahead of the deadline then just how are you going to get the project in on a deadline? Even with a proposal you should attempt to get it in early and to exceed expectations.
- joezydeco 16y ago
  Have you ever prepared an estimate for a project with any unknowns? Can you make sure that plane on the blueprint can be successfully manufactured? Can your vendors deliver on time? Where are your vendor quotes? Are they all on time? Having done quotes for a government agency, they always ask for you to do these estimates in half the normal time, but then take four times as long to get back to you with an answer. And really, the quote was at the door of the base before the deadline. Do you really need to have it on a certain desk 500 yards away from the front door to be considered in? That's just being pedantic at that point.
  - buro9 16y ago
    > Have you ever prepared an estimate for a project with any unknowns? Yes. I've been involved with major IT delivery within the UK for GCHQ and the Home Office. It sucked in a major amount of resource to get it done, and we still made sure that we submitted it a week early. If there are further questions that your proposal didn't cover you can always answer them later. Miss the deadline, and there will never be questions.
    - joezydeco 16y ago
      This last quote I worked on required the proposal to be uploaded to the agency's fancy new web server. Efficient and technologically savvy, right? Wrong. Every vendor tried to upload their 2GB proposal to the server about 15 minutes before the deadline, crashing their server in the process. Thankfully no vendor got a quote in on time, so the deadline was extended three hours to let uploading finish. But I'm guessing if one or two got completed and the rest were still in HTTP limbo, they would have let those vendors fail.

Why would you leave only 30 minutes before the deadline to hand in a proposal for billions of dollars?

by pclark 16y ago

Why would you leave only 30 minutes before the deadline to hand in a proposal for billions of dollars?

buro9 16y ago

Indeed. And there's a view that if you couldn't get the proposal in ahead of the deadline then just how are you going to get the project in on a deadline? Even with a proposal you should attempt to get it in early and to exceed expectations.

joezydeco 16y ago
Have you ever prepared an estimate for a project with any unknowns? Can you make sure that plane on the blueprint can be successfully manufactured? Can your vendors deliver on time? Where are your vendor quotes? Are they all on time? Having done quotes for a government agency, they always ask for you to do these estimates in half the normal time, but then take four times as long to get back to you with an answer. And really, the quote was at the door of the base before the deadline. Do you really need to have it on a certain desk 500 yards away from the front door to be considered in? That's just being pedantic at that point.
- buro9 16y ago
  > Have you ever prepared an estimate for a project with any unknowns? Yes. I've been involved with major IT delivery within the UK for GCHQ and the Home Office. It sucked in a major amount of resource to get it done, and we still made sure that we submitted it a week early. If there are further questions that your proposal didn't cover you can always answer them later. Miss the deadline, and there will never be questions.
  - joezydeco 16y ago
    This last quote I worked on required the proposal to be uploaded to the agency's fancy new web server. Efficient and technologically savvy, right? Wrong. Every vendor tried to upload their 2GB proposal to the server about 15 minutes before the deadline, crashing their server in the process. Thankfully no vendor got a quote in on time, so the deadline was extended three hours to let uploading finish. But I'm guessing if one or two got completed and the rest were still in HTTP limbo, they would have let those vendors fail.