Every proposal you submit ends the same way: a win, a loss, or an elimination before the award. Whatever the outcome, the government owes you something most new contractors never claim — an explanation. A government debrief is a formal meeting, usually by phone or video, in which the contracting officer tells you how your proposal was evaluated: your strengths, your weaknesses, your ratings, and where you stood against the winner. It costs nothing, takes less than an hour, and over time it is the single best teacher in federal contracting. The contractors who win consistently are not the ones with the biggest teams; they are the ones who listen carefully after every competition and fix what the evaluators told them was weak. This guide explains how to request a government debrief after a win or a loss, what to ask, what the agency can and cannot tell you, and how to turn what you learn into a stronger next proposal.
What a Government Debrief Is — and Is Not
A government debrief is a post-competition briefing the agency gives to an offeror that was not selected — or, on request, to the winner as well. It is not a negotiation, not an argument, and not a second chance to sell your solution. Its purpose is transparency: the government explains, in general terms, how it evaluated your proposal against the criteria in the solicitation. You will typically hear your ratings or scores by evaluation factor, a summary of the significant strengths and weaknesses the evaluators found, and, for the winner, why the awardee’s proposal was seen as better value. You will not be shown the winner’s proposal, the winner’s prices in detail, or other offerors’ proprietary information. The debrief is about your proposal, measured against the standard the government set in the solicitation.
There are two kinds. A pre-award debrief is available when you are eliminated from the competition before award — for example, after a competitive-range determination that excludes your proposal. A post-award debrief happens after the contract has been awarded to someone else. The rules and timing differ slightly between them, and the post-award debrief is the one most contractors use most often. Both are governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR 15.505 for pre-award and FAR 15.506 for post-award), and for most negotiated procurements the agency is required to provide one when you ask in time. For simplified acquisitions and some other small purchases, a debrief may be offered at the agency’s discretion rather than as a right — but it never hurts to ask, and many contracting officers will give you a useful conversation even when they are not strictly required to.
When and How to Request a Government Debrief
Timing is the one thing you cannot afford to get wrong. For a post-award debrief, you should request it in writing — email is standard — within three days of receiving notice of the award (or of your elimination, for a pre-award debrief). Three days is the key window: requesting within it preserves your right to a debrief and, importantly, can affect the deadline for filing a bid protest, because the protest clock in some cases does not start until the debrief is held. Do not wait a week to decide whether you want one. The day you learn the outcome, send the email.
Your request should be short and professional. Address it to the contracting officer named in the solicitation, state the solicitation number and your company name, say whether you are requesting a pre-award or post-award debrief, and ask for the earliest convenient date. You do not need to justify the request or explain why you want it — it is a standard step, and contracting officers expect it. Keep a copy of the request and the date you sent it; if the agency is slow to respond, a polite follow-up a few days later is appropriate. If you are also considering a protest, remember that the debrief and the protest clock are connected, so request the debrief first and get legal advice before the meeting if a protest is a real possibility. You can read more about what happens around award in our guide to what to do after submitting a proposal, which puts the debrief in the context of the other steps that follow submission.
How to Prepare for the Debrief
A debrief is only as useful as the preparation behind it. Before the meeting, re-read your own proposal — not the version you remember writing, but the version you actually submitted. Re-read the solicitation’s evaluation factors, because the debrief will be organised around them: technical approach, past performance, key personnel, and price. Then write down the questions you want answered. Good questions are specific and open-ended: “What was the biggest weakness in our technical approach?” “How did our past performance rating compare with the awardee’s?” “Where did our price fall relative to the winning price?” “Which part of our proposal did the evaluators find least convincing?” Avoid yes-or-no questions; they produce yes-or-no answers.
Decide who will attend. The person who led the proposal should be there, along with someone who can take notes — ideally a different person, so the lead can focus on listening and asking follow-ups. Bring the proposal, the compliance matrix, and your question list. If you planned your proposal writing schedule carefully, you will already have these materials in one place, and pulling them out for the debrief takes minutes. Do not bring a lawyer unless you have already decided a protest is likely; a lawyer in the room changes the tone from a learning conversation to a legal one, and the agency will respond accordingly. If you do bring counsel, tell the contracting officer in advance.
What to Ask During the Debrief
During the meeting, listen more than you talk. Start by letting the contracting officer give their prepared remarks — they will usually walk through your ratings and the main strengths and weaknesses first. Then work through your questions. The most valuable questions are the ones that produce specifics rather than generalities. Instead of “How did we do on technical?”, ask “Which section of our technical approach received the lowest rating, and what was missing?” Instead of “Was our price too high?”, ask “How did our evaluated price compare to the awardee’s, and was price the deciding factor?” Ask about each evaluation factor in turn, and ask the contracting officer to name the one weakness that hurt you most — that single answer is often worth the whole meeting.
Ask also about the winner, in the terms the agency is allowed to answer: “What did the awardee do better than we did?” The contracting officer cannot reveal the winner’s proprietary details, but they can describe the awardee’s strengths in general terms, and that description tells you what the evaluators valued most. If something in the debrief surprises you — a weakness you did not expect, or a rating that seems inconsistent with your proposal — ask for the reasoning, calmly and specifically. Take detailed notes, including exact phrases where you can. If the debrief is by phone, it is usually acceptable to ask whether you may record it for your own notes, but do not record without asking. A government debrief is also the moment to check your understanding of the RFP evaluation factors — if the evaluators weighted something differently from how you read the solicitation, that is a lesson about reading the next RFP more carefully, not about arguing with this one.
What the Agency Cannot Tell You
There are limits, and knowing them in advance keeps the meeting productive. The agency will not show you other offerors’ proposals, their prices, their technical solutions, or their past performance records. It will not reveal the identities of the evaluators or the details of the source selection deliberations. It will not disclose information marked as proprietary or source-selection sensitive. And it will not re-evaluate your proposal on the spot or change the outcome because you disagree. If the contracting officer declines to answer a question, do not push — note it, and move on. The information you can get is more than enough to improve: your ratings, your strengths, your weaknesses, and the general reasons the winner won. Contractors who waste a debrief arguing about a declined answer leave the meeting with nothing; contractors who accept the limits and mine the allowed answers leave with a plan.
Debriefs After a Win
Most contractors only request a debrief when they lose. That is a mistake. If you win, request a debrief too — the agency will usually provide one, and it tells you what the evaluators thought you did well and where your proposal was thin despite winning. That is valuable for two reasons. First, it tells you what to protect in your next proposal: the strengths the evaluators noticed are your competitive advantages, and you should keep building them. Second, it tells you where you were lucky. A proposal can win with a weak section if the competition was weaker still, and the debrief will show you that weak section before the next competition exposes it. A win debrief also strengthens the relationship with the contracting officer: it signals that you care about doing better work, not just about collecting awards, and that impression matters when the next requirement comes around.
Turning the Debrief Into a Better Proposal
The debrief is worthless if it stays in someone’s head. The same day, write up what you heard: the ratings by factor, the strengths, the weaknesses, the price comparison, and the one change that would have mattered most. Share the write-up with everyone who worked on the proposal, and file it with the proposal record so it is there when you bid on a similar requirement. Then turn it into action. If the evaluators said your technical approach lacked detail on staffing, add a staffing detail template to your proposal library. If they said your past performance was thin, plan the next few months around building stronger references and documenting them. If your price was high, review your pricing build against the mistakes in our guide to bid pricing mistakes and check whether your indirect rates or your estimating method put you at a disadvantage. If the weakness was compliance — a missed requirement or a misunderstood instruction — revisit your compliance process before the next bid, because a compliance miss is the most fixable weakness there is.
Over time, the write-ups accumulate into something more valuable than any single debrief: a pattern. After three or four debriefs you will start to see the same weakness named again and again, or the same strength praised each time. That pattern is your company’s real profile as the government sees it, and it is the most honest market intelligence you will ever get — straight from the customer, free, and specific to your work. Companies that collect and act on debriefs improve measurably from bid to bid; companies that skip them repeat the same mistakes and wonder why they keep losing. Request the debrief every time, prepare for it, listen in it, and write it down after it. It is the cheapest competitive advantage in federal contracting, and it is available after every single competition you enter.
Related Guides
Government Debrief: Turn the Answers Into Your Next Win
A government debrief only helps if you treat it as homework, not a courtesy call. Write up the answers the same day, while the contracting officer’s words are still fresh, and file the notes with the proposal so the next draft starts from what the evaluators actually said. A government debrief that ends in a forgotten email is a wasted hour; one that ends in a written list of fixes is the cheapest consulting you will ever get.
Pair the notes with the next steps they point to. If the debrief said your price was high, rebuild the pricing with evidence before the next bid; if it said the approach read as generic, rewrite it around the evaluators’ own words. A government debrief tells you what happened in one competition — read it next to why you lost the bid, and the value of a government debrief becomes the list of fixes it produces for the next one.
Start with the official rules: FAR 15.506 sets out what a post-award government debrief must cover, and the contracting officer’s own words are the best guide to the next proposal. Then work through our guides on why you lost the bid and what to do after you submit a proposal, so the next submission starts from evidence.