Applying General Advice for Winning Government Work to GPO

Level 1 – Best quality, highest quality, tightest tolerances (examples: art books, medical journals and meat grading charts) Onsite inspection is required for this level.

Level 2 – Better quality, prestige quality, library quality (examples: yearbooks, recruiting materials and illustrated professional papers)

Level 3 – Good quality, above average quality (examples: annual reports, general process color work, court decisions, budget reports, catalogs and textbooks)

Level 4 – Basic quality, informational quality, utility quality (examples: telephone directories, indexes, project reports and technical manuals without process color and with only occasional halftones)

Level 5 – Functional quality, lowest usable quality (examples: Interoffice forms, line-only information handouts)

If you qualify for Level 1 work, you also can bid on jobs in the other four levels. If you qualify for Level 2 work, you also can bid on levels 3, 4 and 5… and so on.

5. Be realistic about your capabilities. Past performance influences whether a printer will win additional GPO work. Don't get off on the wrong foot by missing a deadline, mislabeling a shipment, not acknowledging a job change order or incorrectly submitting an invoice. Start with a smaller project you know you can do well and prove yourself.

6. Do your homework. The most successful GPO print suppliers rely upon data from the only database in the country that maintains an archive of GPO jobs, dating back more than 20 years. Analysis of this data, such as how past GPO work has been priced, allows printers to make an educated bid for work that can be profitable.

7. Don't assume it's automatically in the bag. Keep in mind that competition for GPO work can be fierce, especially for jobs in the $2,500 to $5,000 range. Large, difficult, specialty or fast turn-around jobs tend to have limited competition. Don't assume you can bid and win based on guesstimates. You need to be very careful and specific when evaluating job specifications and determining whether your equipment and staff can handle the work within the required timeframe. Paper is another important consideration, and you must know when you can substitute stock and when you cannot. Miscalculating on just one aspect of a job can cost you the bid, rejection of the completed job and worse.