BOE Development

Building a Compelling Story for Your Price Position

The Challenge. SMA’s rigorous Basis of Estimate (BOE) development process results in a well-substantiated price. With customer budgets shrinking, cost is becoming the deciding factor in most procurements: make sure your bid price remains competitive.
The Solution. BOE Development uses a detailed, repeatable process and SMA SMEs with both estimating and engineering experience to substantiate your cost estimate. Our BOE team works with the Cost Volume Lead to execute this process.
Following a proven process results in BOEs that effectively substantiate cost estimates and solution approaches, reducing the likelihood of risk adjustments to your price.
BOE Basis of Estimate
Tailored to meet your needs. Since you don’t always need an end-to-end BOE Development solution, we tailor each engagement to meet your needs. Our typical BOE Development engagement comprises:
  • BOE Team Lead: Lead client team in development, review, and submission of BOEs in coordination with the Cost Volume Lead
  • BOE Authoring: Under direction of the team lead, execute the SMA BOE Development process
  • Cost Model Development: Development of a estimating model mapped to the CLIN structure
  • Just In Time Training: Training delivered to authors at various points in the process to introduce and reinforce best practices and improve quality
  • Quality Assurance Reviews: Review of completed BOEs using SMA’s quality assurance standards to ensure they are complete, reasonable, consistent, and properly documented
  • Cross Volume Consistency Reviews: An examination of consistency between the BOEs and other proposal volumes to eliminate disconnects, ensure consistency, and reduce an evaluator’s perception of risk
Have you ever bid a low-price solution and lost because your cost was deemed unrealistic? There’s nothing more disappointing than working diligently throughout the Capture Management and Proposal Development phases to create a vetted, low-cost, fully responsive solution and then have the cost deemed unreasonable, thus losing the competition. One leading factor for this outcome is a poorly substantiated cost estimate. When an effective estimate isn’t well supported, the results can be costly. Whether you’re bidding a services contract or building the next satellite constellation, make sure your estimate’s accuracy isn’t lost in translation and your price remains an asset, not a liability.