What is an RFP?

A federal RFP follows a standard structure, lettered A to M. The parts you live in are C, the statement of work, which says what you must deliver; L, the instructions, which say exactly how to write and submit your proposal; and M, the evaluation factors, which say how you will be scored.

Read M first, then L, then C. Most people read them in the order they appear, which means they write a proposal before knowing how it will be judged.

An RFP asks how you would do it and what it costs, and the award weighs both. An RFQ asks only for a price on something already specified. An RFI is market research and no award follows. An IFB is sealed bidding, where the lowest responsive bid simply wins.

The distinction that matters commercially is that an RFP lets you win on approach rather than price, and an RFQ does not.

Usually 30 days from posting, sometimes as little as 15. That is the single biggest practical problem in federal contracting: by the time you find an RFP for work you could genuinely do, a third of the window is gone. Firms that win consistently are watching sources sought notices months earlier, before the RFP exists.

A proposal that misses a Section L instruction, a page limit, a font size, a required form, can be eliminated without being read. This happens constantly and it has nothing to do with whether your solution was better. Build a compliance matrix from Section L before writing anything.