Staffing

Ingredients

• How important is staffing to the overall success of the project?
• What depth and breadth of staffing is available from your company?
• What skills are required for the project and how you will allocate your firm’s skills sets across the project scope of work?
• What qualifications are required for each position or role on the project?
• What are the responsibilities and level of effort anticipated for each role?
• Who will the key personnel will be? 
• What are the backgrounds, qualifications, and experience of the key personnel?
• How do the staff you have selected distinguish your firm and will benefit the customer?
• How will replacement of staff be handled if necessary?
• How do you recruit new personnel?
• How are new project staff trained and oriented to your firm, the project, customer, and work site?
• What is your plan for retaining staff and achieving low turnover?
• How will staff performance be evaluated?
• Do you plan to hire staff from the client or incumbent contractor?

Approaches

If personnel will play a key role in the project, you should consider addressing staffing, whether or not it is required by the RFP.

If you already know what staff you will provide, consider:

• Providing a table that lists them by name, describes their roles/responsibilities, and shows how the customer will benefit from each.  
• Providing a matrix that shows how their skills/qualifications map to those required for the project. 
• Providing an organization chart to show reporting relationships.  
• Providing a timeline that shows when they will be involved with the project.

If any of the staff you plan to use are not current employees, then consider providing signed commitment letters from them regarding their commitment to you to work on the project. 

If you do not already know which staff will be involved, then describe your recruiting process, selection criteria, and schedule.  If you do not name the staff and provide resumes, it is important to establish that you have a credible capability to deliver the required number of staff on schedule. One approach to doing this is to provide figures or examples that demonstrate the productivity of your recruiting efforts, for example: the number of resumes your firm reviewed, interviews you conducted, and staff you hired over the past year. 

If you can, you might also provide examples of projects that were quickly staffed.  It may also be a good idea for your recruiting plan to demonstrate your familiarity with the market for the required type of staff at the required locations. If you plan to draw from other projects, you can provide a table showing the number of personnel and their relevant skills.

If your turnover rate is lower than the industry average or your benefits package better than industry average, you should provide the details and show how better staff retention lowers risks and costs while simultaneously reinforcing skills retention and the growth of project knowledge assets.  

On Government proposals, a distinction is usually made between key personnel and non-key personnel.  The RFP will generally contain language saying that you must name (and usually provide resumes for) all key personnel.  Then if you win the award, they expect you to actually deliver them!  There is usually a period in which they do not allow substitutions.  Non-key personnel are usually identified in proposals by position and not by name.  For non-key personnel, it may be a good idea to provide resumes of the type of people you would supply, as a representative sample. 

Strategies

It is almost always better to name names when you can.  Name the staff you will provide.  If you can’t name them, then describe what their qualifications will be.  When the customer doesn’t require you to name the staff, that is an opportunity to outperform the competition and name them anyway.