The United States’ federal executive department, the Department of State—responsible for the international relations of the United States—has streamlined its performance work statement within the video program office with Jetbuilt’s Request for Proposal features. With Jetbuilt, the video program office can now create proposals for new or renovated AV room designs to constituents at United States embassies, consulates, posts, and administrative offices throughout the world in a more efficient and standardized process.
Partly due to previous incurred data breaches, the Department of State has many restrictions for heightened security. This creates an extensive and timely approval process for adopting new software applications for use on government computers. It often takes years, and many plans never come to fruition. Jetbuilt’s software, being a cloud-based platform, made the adoption process easier.
“The only reason why we have been able to quickly integrate Jetbuilt was through bypassing a download or plugin, usually required by most software applications,” said John Reeg, senior systems engineer from U.S. Department of State’s video program office. “The cloud-based platform was able to cut our approval process to a marginal timeframe, allowing us to focus more on developing solid proposals. Performance work statements, or proposals, are a very important part of my role for the Department of State and with Jetbuilt, I’m able to create solid proposals for new or renovated AV rooms throughout the country and throughout the world in a much more efficient manner.”
The video program office creates performance work statements, consisting of equipment recommendations with costs estimates, as well as for installation, programming, project management, and other labor costs. With Jetbuilt, “we can also include written documentation of the project scope, overview, customer and contractor requirements, security requirements, and bid clarifications and assumptions with equipment recommendations and estimated costs, all within one professional proposal,” Reeg said. “Once the proposal has been approved by our customer, we strip away the estimated costs and develop an ‘approval memo’ from the video program office and return it to the customer. The customer submits it to the acquisition management bureau, which manages the distribution to the IDIQ, and our approved lists of AV integrator contractors are then able to submit bid proposals. We’re able to streamline our entire process by incorporating Jetbuilt, which has allowed us to create standardized systems for our AV rooms across the world.”
Jetbuilt has removed the need for antiquated spreadsheets while providing increased ease of collaboration with Request for Proposal. Paul Dexter, president and founder for Jetbuilt, designed the Request for Proposal feature to “allow consultants, facility managers, and technical directors to utilize the intuitive software to easily go from building rooms and systems, to define the scope of a project. Spreadsheets are outdated and our new technology allows the RFP process to be a living, breathing journey for our users and their clients, partners, and subcontractors.”
As Jetbuilt users create their Request for Proposals, they can manage photos, drawings, and documents associated with the project and drop in products from the Jetbuilt database before budgeting their projects and finally creating and delivering a high-end, comprehensive RFP. Then, the project can be shared with vendors to allow for straightforward and immediate collaboration. Users can chat as they work together to refine their project, while the original project version remains saved. This allows the project to evolve while working with a selected vendor.
