Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

Copyright © 1999 by Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

There are a number of things that the typical SBIR competitor can do to improve his or her proposal. This month, we’ll talk about one of the most important, which is improving the proposal work plan (or as it is referred to in some agencies, the research plan).

All too often, we see SBIR proposals that scrimp on the work plan. It’s not unusual for the proposal writer to spend many words and pages describing the significance of their technology, its nuances, and interesting tangents. But when it comes to the work plan, it is almost as if they are exhausted from that effort, and they hastily stumble through a few paragraphs that basically say to the reviewer "we’ll set up the experiment, we’ll run it, we’ll take it down, and we’ll write it up."

Is there a problem with that? Put yourself in the place of the agency representative who is deciding whether to award you up to $100k in Phase I and $750k in Phase II (or maybe more, in the case of some agencies). If they select you and you do a good job, then they are okay. But if you don’t use the money wisely (interpretation: if you don’t conduct solid R&D activities), then they are subject to the wrath of their boss, their agency, and maybe a Congressional committee that wants to know why taxpayer’s money was wasted on an SBIR project on which the winner was unable to perform.

How do you assure that the reviewer feels comfortable with your ability to carry out the R&D required in your SBIR project? You can’t rely on your reputation or good looks—you have to show them in the work plan that you know what has to be done and how to do it. Here are four tips on writing the sort of work plan that can help give that level of comfort to the reviewer.

Dedicate ample space in the proposal to the work plan. We consistently see work plans that are only a page or two in length. Contrast that to the agencies’ instructions that the work plan should be a "significant" part of the proposal. One agency even suggests that a Phase I work plan should consist of at least six pages.

Talk specifics. Vague hand waving doesn’t cut it in a work plan. You need to roll up your sleeves and tell the reviewer, in no uncertain terms, what you are going to do. Here are a couple of ideas for making sure that you provide enough detail. First, go back to the advice you got in your high school journalism class: every newspaper article should describe "who, what, when, where, how and why," and that is also good advice for what you should include in every task in your work plan. Second, the following excerpt from a Navy SBIR solicitation concisely indicates what you should include in a work plan:

The description of each task should include: an explanation of the work to be performed; the product of the task (report, hardware, etc.); the role (if any) of subcontractors and/or consultants; the use of material, software, special equipment, special tooling, and the like in the performance of the task; the period of performance in days; the number of hours to be allocated to the task by the principal investigator and other principal personnel (by name); other personnel (by labor category); and subcontractors and/or consultants (by name). Tables and charts may be used to clarify schedules, allocations of work hours, and the like.

Make sure your tasks achieve your objectives. It does not sit well with the reviewers if your proposal says that you will achieve one thing but your work plan does not include tasks that will clearly and logically show how you will achieve it. That’s why some agencies even ask you to show the link between your technical objectives and each task.

Prove feasibility in Phase I. Remember, Phase I is a feasibility study. State what you have to show or prove to demonstrate the feasibility of your innovative idea, and then include all of the tasks needed to accomplish this.

 

A strong work plan is not going to overcome a bad SBIR proposal, but it can make the difference between a good proposal that gets funded and one that gets left at the altar. Invest the extra time to develop a solid work plan. As a side benefit, it will also provide important guidance when the SBIR project is awarded to your firm.

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