In This Week’s Newsletter:
- Opportunity Spotlight of the Week: DoD MDA SHIELD
- Four To Follow: Four Interesting Pursuits
- Pricing Insights: Back to Basics- Proposal Pricing Development
- Capture Corner: Two Common Pitfalls that Derail Pursuits
Opportunity Alert – DoD MDA SHIELD
Contact Katie: katie.clatterbuck@hinzconsulting.com
Department of Defense (DoD), Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) IDIQ.
MDA has created this $151B IDIQ vehicle to provide a sophisticated, multi-domain defense system that integrates advanced technologies to identify, track, intercept, and neutralize threats. The estimated release for this opportunity is during Q4 FY2025, with awards anticipated for Mid-2026. Reach out to Hinz Consulting for Price-to-Win, Competitive Intelligence, and Proposal support.
Four to Follow
- Defense of the Navy (DON), Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC), Washington, AE IDIQ Planning Services. On August 12, 2025, the Contracting Office released an RFI for planning services for Special Projects and Military Construction (MILCON) Projects, as well as facility investment and installation development decision-making support. Responses are due no later than 2:00 PM EST on August 26, 2025. The estimated release of the final RFP for this $30M effort is November 2025, with a projected award timeframe of April 2026. The competition type is unavailable at this time. Continue to monitor SAM.govfor updates on this effort.
- Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), 711th Mission Support Services. The AFMC 711th Human Performance Wing requires mission support services for various components, providing education, consultation, training, and technology development to enhance warfighter performance and combat casualty care. The estimated release for this 8(a) Set-Aside, $505M IDIQ is November 2025, with a projected award timeframe of May 2026. Continue to monitor SAM.gov for further information on this opportunity.
- Department of the Air Force, United States Space Force (USSF), Commercially Available Space Domain Awareness Sensing Data and Analysis. On August 14, 2025, the Contracting Office released an RFI with responses due no later than 10:00 AM MDT September 15, 2025. The USSF is requesting contractors to provide commercially available and developed sensing and data analysis capabilities aimed at improving tactical Space Domain Awareness (SDA) for the Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2) Combined Program Office (CPO). The contract value and competition type are unknown at this time. The estimated final release is December 2025, with a projected award timeframe of June 2026. Continue to monitor SAM.gov for movement on the solicitation timeline.
- Department of Transportation (DOT), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Program Management Office Technical Assistance Contract (PMO) (PTAC). On August 14, 2025, the FAA released an RFI and an updated SOW with responses due no later than 2:00 PM ET on October 13, 2025. FAA is seeking contractors to provide technical and professional services to support operations in the PMO of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO). This $1.3B effort is estimated to be released as a Partial Small Business Set-Aside in December 2025 under the eFAST FAA vehicle, with a projected award of May 2026. Continue to monitor your eFAST portals for updates.
Back to Basics- Proposal Pricing Development
Contact Tom: tom.hudgins@hinzconsulting.com
Developing pricing for proposals does not have to be an overly complex task. To create a compliant and competitive proposal, adhere to these steps for establishing a robust pricing model:
1. Define the Scope of Work. Begin by outlining the scope of work, segmenting the project into distinct tasks, deliverables, and timelines. This approach enables accurate estimation of required time, labor, and materials for each element.
2. Estimate Costs. Assess all associated project costs, including direct labor, materials, subcontractors, equipment, and travel expenses.
3. Choose a Pricing Strategy. Utilize your understanding of the client’s requirements and prevailing market conditions to select a pricing strategy that aligns with both the project specifications and organizational objectives. Options may include cost-plus or value-based methodologies.
4. Calculate Your Markup. The chosen margin should address all project completion costs while ensuring profitability.
5. Prepare Multiple Pricing Options. Where feasible, offer tiered or optional pricing packages. Providing clients with service levels tailored to varying budgets enhances flexibility and supports potential upselling of premium offerings.
6. Present a Clear and Transparent Proposal. Upon finalizing pricing, produce a comprehensive and transparent proposal document. Itemize costs and articulate the value delivered through each component to facilitate client understanding.
7. Review and Adjust Based on Feedback. Seek client feedback before proposal submission whenever possible. Insights regarding budget limitations or competitor pricing can inform refinements that bolster bid success.
Make these steps your own by adjusting them to your needs and your company’s processes. Your pricing specialist is there to guide and implement the pricing proposal process.
Two Common Pitfalls that Derail Pursuits
Contact Nick: nick.mccauley@hinzconsulting.com
Capture management is the cornerstone of securing competitive contracts in the defense contracting industry, where precision and strategy determine success. However, even experienced teams can falter by neglecting critical aspects like solution development and capability alignment. These missteps can transform promising opportunities into costly losses. This post explores two common pitfalls—poor solutioning and misaligned corporate capabilities—focusing on the need to align solutions with customer needs while ensuring they are executable, profitable, competitive, and deliver value beyond the status quo. Using publicly available examples from defense contracting, with sources cited, I’ll outline practical strategies to avoid these pitfalls and drive stronger, more winnable pursuits.
Pitfall 1: Misaligned Corporate Capabilities – Overlooking Feasibility and Value
Pursuing opportunities that don’t align with a company’s core strengths is a common trap. Misalignment occurs when firms pursue contracts that exceed their technical expertise, resources, or operational capacity, often driven by overly ambitious business development goals. Evaluators quickly identify gaps, which makes the bid lack credibility. Beyond capability mismatches, teams usually fail to assess if the solution is executable on time, profitable, competitively superior, or delivers value beyond maintaining the status quo. Use the gate review process to catch these items before making a Bid / No Bid decision.
A well-documented example is the 2018 U.S. Air Force T-X Trainer Program (now T-7A Red Hawk), where Lockheed Martin partnered with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) and lost a $9.2B contract to Boeing. Lockheed Martin’s solution didn’t align with its core strengths in legacy aircraft systems, and it underestimated the timeline for delivering a cost-effective, modernized trainer. The proposal projected high development costs, failed to differentiate from Boeing’s agile, purpose-built design, and offered minimal improvements over existing trainers. Boeing’s solution addressed the Air Force’s need for a transformative training platform, securing the win, Reuters, “Boeing Wins $9.2 Billion T-X Trainer Contract,” September 27, 2018.
Strategies to Avoid This Pitfall:
- Conduct Comprehensive Capability Audits: Assess technical expertise, resources, and operational capacity against customer requirements. Use tools like SWOT analysis to ensure alignment across execution, profitability, and competitive positioning. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should prime the bid. If your organization lacks strong proof that it has performed that work before, avoid pursuing this opportunity as the prime.
- Incorporate Feasibility Checks: Simulate project timelines and financial models to confirm the solution is deliverable and profitable. Address questions like: Can we execute this within budget and timeline, and how do we compare to competitors?
- Focus on Customer Improvement: Ensure the solution elevates the customer’s experience—e.g., by improving efficiency, reducing risks, or enhancing performance—rather than replicating existing systems. Use case studies or projections to quantify value.
- Use Data-Driven Decisions: Leverage platforms that analyze historical bid data and competitive landscapes to identify winnable opportunities. For instance, a contractor used predictive analytics to focus on contracts matching its competencies.
- Engage Cross-Functional Teams: Involve engineering, finance, and operations early to validate alignment across all dimensions, prevent overpromising, and ensure profitability. Include these teams in your gate reviews.
- Learn from Losses: Conduct post-mortems after failed bids to identify misalignments in feasibility, profitability, competition, or value creation. After losing a Navy radar contract, a firm realigned its pursuits to its signal processing expertise, winning a $150M deal with a profitable, innovative solution. C4ISRNET, “Lessons from Failed Bids,” August 10, 2020.
Align pursuits with corporate capabilities to ensure feasibility, profitability, competitiveness, and customer improvement. This alignment makes bids credible and resource-efficient, maximizing success. Address all items above throughout the gate review process.
Pitfall 2: Poor Solution Development – Failing to Align with Customer Needs and Feasibility
Solution development is the heart of capture management, where teams design technical, operational, or strategic approaches to meet customer requirements. A frequent mistake is delaying solutioning until the RFP stage or relying on generic proposals that fail to address the customer’s specific needs—such as their pain points, mission objectives, or operational challenges. Additionally, teams often overlook whether they can execute the solution within the proposed timeframe, generate profit, outperform competitors, or deliver meaningful improvements over existing systems.
For example, in the 2019 competition for the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Battle Command System (IBCS) contract, a top defense contractor in this space was among the competitors but lost to Northrop Grumman. The competitor’s proposal failed to fully align with the Army’s need for seamless integration across multiple platforms, proposing a system that didn’t adequately address execution feasibility within the Army’s aggressive timeline. The solution’s high development costs also risked profitability, and it didn’t differentiate sufficiently from Northrop Grumman’s modular, interoperable design, which offered enhanced command-and-control performance Defense News, “Northrop Grumman Wins $1.4B IBCS Contract,” October 24, 2019.
Strategies to Avoid This Pitfall:
- Align Solutioning to Customer Needs: Start by deeply understanding the customer’s requirements through stakeholder interviews, requirements mapping, and mission analysis. Ensure the solution addresses specific pain points, such as interoperability or cost efficiency, to improve the customer’s operations.
- Assess Execution Feasibility: Validate if the solution can be delivered within the proposed timeline by conducting schedule simulations and resource assessments. Account for risks like supply chain delays or technical challenges.
- Evaluate Profitability: Perform cost-benefit analyses to ensure the solution yields healthy margins. Ask: Can we deliver this without losing money while leveraging economies of scale or existing assets?
- Compare to Competition: Use competitive intelligence to benchmark your solution against rivals. Highlight differentiators, such as faster deployment or superior technology, to demonstrate a competitive edge.
- Go Beyond Status Quo: Design solutions that deliver measurable improvements, like reduced operational costs or enhanced performance. Quantify benefits with metrics like ROI or system uptime.
- Prototype and Test: Develop low-fidelity prototypes or simulations to validate alignment and feasibility early, incorporating customer feedback to refine the solution.
By prioritizing customer-aligned, feasible solutioning, companies can craft bids that resonate with evaluators, reduce rework, and increase win probability.
Call to Action: Capture managers and business development teams can start today by auditing current pursuits for solution alignment and comprehensive feasibility. Invest in tools like capture management software, prioritize early customer workshops, and establish metrics like win rates, profitability forecasts, and competitive differentiation scores. By addressing these pitfalls, your organization can boost pursuit efficiency by up to 50%, streamline resources, and secure more wins in the competitive defense contracting market.
- August 25th: National Homeland Security Conference in DC
- August 26th: 2025 Navy Summit in McClean, VA
- October 2nd: 2025 Intel Summit in McClean, VA