About David C. Hilnbrand, Principal Consultant

Dave offers a proven ability to lead successful proposal efforts by drawing on his experience as an award-winning Direct Marketing Specialist, Technical Writer, and Software Developer. An expert in process improvement and tools that cost effectively increase proposal team productivity, he is considered a resourceful problem-solver and excellent listener. He also understands the importance of following established processes, while remaining flexible enough to get the job done under changing conditions. Clients return to Dave for his proposal know-how, diplomatic leadership style, and genuine interest in helping each team build the most effective proposal possible.

Capabilities and Experience

Proposal Management and Development

  • Specialize in leading teams to build extremely competitive proposals that are fully compliant, easy to evaluate, and highly professional.
  • As primary Proposal Manager for one client’s IDIQ responses, helped exceed their revenue targets by over 70 percent for each year from 2008 to 2011.
  • Managed over 200 proposal efforts, including strategic Government contracts and smaller Army, Air Force, Navy, DOS, and DOJ task orders through vehicles such as ITES-2S, ITSS, NETCENTS, SeaPort-e, CIOSP, and Alliant. Includes managing schedules, creating annotated outlines, tracking progress, conducting reviews, and guiding content development throughout.
  • Known for maintaining strict compliance with solicitation instructions throughout the proposal development process and preparing responses that are as easy to evaluate as possible.
  • Focus on maximizing quality and responsiveness of proposals throughout the organization by designing tools and processes that apply proposal management best practices. For example, developed semi-automated templates that reduced proposal setup efforts by as much as 60 percent, especially when collaborating with partners or subcontractors.
  • Created repositories of pre-defined proposal content (smart boilerplates) that authors can snap together to develop first drafts at least 25percent faster than starting from scratch, allowing more time to tailor responses to customer interests.

Quality Initiatives and Training

  • Chaired a Quality Management Board (QMB) that approved all corporate processes.
  • Received an Appreciation Award from the Department of State (DOS) for managing a 17-person effort to obtain a CMM Level 2 assessment, the first Government agency to do so.
  • Regularly train personnel in timesaving techniques for use with MS Office and SharePoint.

Process Automation and Team Collaboration

  • Designed and implemented Microsoft SharePoint sites that greatly improve collaboration by centralizing document libraries, boilerplates, announcements, calendars, and reviewer comments.
  • Used Visual Basic to create several time-saving applications including:
    • a pricing template that saves analysts several hours per proposal,
    • a database that finds in-house skills to meet project requirements, and
    • a sales tracking application that cuts data reporting time in half.
  • Created a software development utility that enabled over 14,000 programmers around the world to add required comments to their source code faster; received Division Award.

Technical Content and Graphics

  • Created hundreds of technical documents and PowerPoint presentations, including detailed user guides, systems plans, designs, programming specifications, flowcharts, and user interfaces for clients such as the U.S. Department of State, EPA, and Census Bureau.
  • Authored a technical handbook that saved IBM over $2 million per year by measurably improving productivity for thousands of company professionals that relied on it throughout the world; received $150,000 award for this effort.

Marketing

  • Designed and executed direct mail, advertising, training, and partner communications that contributed to 250 percent annual growth in third-party sales.
  • Delivered monthly IBM Document Publishing seminars in cities throughout the East Coast that were consistently rated Excellent or Outstanding by over 95 percent of customer attendees.