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Volume 139: Execution is a Winner’s Problem; EPA EARTH

Author

Kit Conway
August 20, 2026

In This Week's Newsletter:

Opportunity Alert – EPA EARTH

Contact Katie: [email protected]

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Environmental Analytical Research Technical and Hybrid Support (EARTH).

The EPA intends to establish a follow-on multiple award contracting vehicle for commonly purchased environmental services within the “management advisory” category as defined by the government-wide Category Management Leadership Council (CMLC). These services will support OAR in developing air and radiation-related national programs and administering air laws and regulations. The work will also include incidental IT-related tasks. This $5.78B BPA is set for release in February 2027, with an estimated award of June 2027. While the acquisition strategy has not been finalized, the previous effort was released via GSA MAS as a Full and Open/Unrestricted. Reach out to Hinz Consulting for any Capture Management, Competitive Analysis, Price to Win, or Proposal support, and continue to monitor SAM.gov for any updates in the procurement timeline.

Four to Follow

  1. General Services Administration (GSA), Seismic Retrofit of the Historic Union Station in Tacoma, WA. On August 14, 2026, the Contracting Office released a Sources Sought Notices for interested parties to submit a response to the RFI. This Design-Bid-Build project focuses on structural improvement to enhance the building’s seismic resilience. Duties include construction activities to meet the retrofit requirements. Responses to the RFI are due no later than 8:00 AM CT on September 14, 2026. The final $60M effort is expected for release in November 2026 with a potential award in March 2027. The competition type is currently unknown.

  2. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Situational awareness, Communications, and Advanced Networks. On August 13, 2026, the contracting office released an updated notice on APFS. This effort focuses on expanding the deployment, capabilities, and integration of edge-driven situational awareness, sensor, and communications solutions across CBP field units, operational centers, and headquarters. This $50-100M SB Set-Aside is estimated for release August 20, 2026 with an award in Q4 FY2026.

  3. Health and Human Services (HHS), Hybrid Cloud Operations Networking and Engineering Technology (CONETC). The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has need for a contractor to deliver hybrid cloud architecture, network engineering, security operations, Agile product management, and CCSQ CCOM workload support while maintaining operational independence, dedicated personnel, and SLA compliance across all functional areas in accordance with CMS policies and governance standards. The final solicitation for this $100M SB Set-Aside is set for release via GSA MAS in November 2026 with a potential award in January 2027.

  4. Department of Justice, Language Service IDIQ. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a requirement for a contractor to provide a wide range of interpretation services across all modalities, including in-person, remote, simultaneous, consecutive, and emergency response, supporting various environments such as legal, medical, technical, and classified settings. Translation services are also required, covering written documents, technical subjects, certified translations, localization, and expedited solutions. This $100M IDIQ has a potential release in April 2027, with a potential award in September 2027. The competition type is currently unknown.

Shaping Before the Draft Hits SAM

Contact Nick: [email protected]

Many capture teams treat the RFI or draft RFP as the official starting gun for shaping. By then, the real work is already half finished — or the opportunity has already been shaped against you. 

The highest-ROI capture activity happens earlier, in the quiet period before anything formal appears on SAM.gov. This is the window where you can still influence requirements, evaluation factors, and the customer’s view of risk without the entire industry watching. Done well, it raises PWin more than any post-draft strategy session. Done poorly (or ignored), it leaves you reacting to a solicitation written for someone else.

Why Quiet Shaping Matters

Formal RFIs are public and late. Customers have already formed opinions, drafted language, and often locked in key assumptions. Quiet shaping works upstream: identifying real pain points, inserting preferred language through trusted channels, and positioning your solution as the low-risk path before competitors even know the opportunity exists.

Practical Ways to Shape Before the Draft

  1. Map the real influencers, not just the KO. Contracting officers execute. Program managers, technical leads, and end users define the problem. Build a contact plan that prioritizes people who live with the current solution’s shortcomings. One well-timed conversation with a frustrated technical lead often moves more language than three formal white papers.

  2. Lead with insight, not capability. White papers and capability briefings that simply list your features get filed. Those that diagnose a specific operational or technical problem the customer is already feeling — and offer a clear, low-risk path forward — get discussed. Frame every early engagement around the customer’s unstated risks: transition, performance, schedule, or workforce.

  3. Seed preferred language early and often. Share sample SOW language, evaluation criteria, or performance metrics in informal settings. When the customer later drafts the RFP, familiar phrasing tends to stick. Document what you shared and when so you can track influence without overclaiming credit.

  4. Create internal alignment first. Quiet shaping fails when BD, capture, and technical teams send mixed messages. Establish a single shaping narrative and keep the circle small. Every external interaction should reinforce the same three or four points.

  5. Know when to stop. Not every opportunity is shapeable. If the customer shows no interest in dialogue, already has a preferred solution, or is locked into a recompete path with a strong incumbent, cut your losses. Continuing to invest in a closed system wastes B&P dollars that could go to higher-probability pursuits.

Common Failure Modes

  • Over-sharing solution details too early, giving competitors free intelligence.

  • Treating every informal meeting as relationship-building theater with no substance.

  • Failing to document shaping activities, so leadership later questions the value of the effort.

  • Continuing to push after clear signals that the customer has already decided.

The Bottom Line

Quiet shaping is not about lobbying or bending rules. It is about arriving at the formal process with the customer already seeing your approach as the logical, lower-risk choice. The teams that win more often are the ones that treat the pre-draft period as the real capture battlefield.

If your current process waits for the RFI or draft before serious shaping begins, you are starting behind. Hinz Consulting helps teams build disciplined early-influence playbooks that raise PWin without increasing risk. Reach out if you want to tighten this part of your capture process.

Execution is a Winner’s Problem

Contact Dr. Tom: [email protected]

There is a comfortable way to lose a recompete: build your price bottom-up, roll up the BOEs, add the risk dollars your program manager wants, and submit a number you know you can execute. Every hour is traceable. Then the award goes to someone eighteen percent lower in price.

Bidding to execute answers the wrong question. It asks what the work will cost you. The source selection asks who offers the best value among the offerors. Only one of those determines who wins.

Incumbents fall hardest, because they have actuals, and actuals feel like truth. They aren't. They are a record of how one contract evolved: staffing that grew organically, a labor mix that aged in place and got more senior, scope the customer added informally, indirect rates carrying overhead a lean challenger doesn't carry. Your competitor bids the RFP as written, not the contract as executed. Fresh labor mix, strategic fee, no institutional memory insisting the job really takes a certain number of  FTEs or LOE.

The irony is that your operational knowledge should push price down, not up. You are the only offeror who can credibly defend a leaner solution, because you know exactly which hours can be automated, consolidated, or restructured. Used badly, that knowledge just becomes the reason you can't imagine bidding below today's rates.

Additionally, on a mature recompete, technical scores converge. Everyone bids an acceptable solution; challengers hire people who used to do the work. When ratings compress, price discriminates, even under best-value tradeoff.

Price-to-win is not a buy-in. It is an evidence-based target built from competitor modeling, award history, and budget analysis, then met through solution shaping rather than arbitrary cuts. The sequencing is the whole point: execute-driven pricing produces its number at the end, when the only lever left is unsupported cutting. PTW produces it during capture, while you can still change the solution, the team, and the cost base.

The most executable bid in the world is worth nothing at a zero percent probability of win.  Price to win, not to execute.

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