Filling Out Standard Form 33 (SF 33)

Next, let's look at the Standard Form 33: Solicitation, Offer and Award. This is the form that is used to solicit offers and award contracts. It is referred to as a bi-lateral or two-signature document. You sign the form in Block 17, and the government signs the same form in Block 27. That establishes a binding contract.

Among the Business Tools is Standard Form 33. It is in Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf), and you will need the free Acrobat Reader to view and print the file.

Before you start going through our line-by-line explanation, this may be a good time to go back to the section on reviewing the bid , where we showed you how to read a contract and included an explanation of the general layout of the SF 33. The top portion, Blocks 1-11, is the Solicitation area and is filled in by the government with information about the solicitation. Blocks 12-18, the Offer area, are filled in by you before returning the offer to the buying office. The last portion, Blocks 19-28, is the Award area and is completed by the government and sent back to you, if and when you are awarded the contract.

Work Smart Note the paging format "Page 1 of ##." Check your page numbers and if there are any missing, call the buying office immediately. You can't submit an accurate bid if there is information missing. More than one company has been caught in this situation. When sending out millions of bids a year, as the government does, these things can happen.