Cutting down

Posted by Jon
Providing peer review support for a client over the past couple of weeks. On day one, I checked with the account manager: “Is there any limit on the length of our answers? It doesn’t specify one in the ITT…”
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“This came up in the bidders’ conference. There is. It’s 2,000 words.” A good day of critiquing rough-cut first drafts followed, and we kicked the material back to the contributors with encouraging comments as to how they could sharpen their answers.

Fast forward to the start of the following week, when I rolled up on site to work on the next drafts of their material. But something was nagging me about the responses: such an important limit being mentioned in the bidder Q&A but not elsewhere? Despite the robust assurances I’d been given: odd.
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I made the account manager call the client, just to double check. He turned ashen-faced.

“It’s not 2,000 words. It’s 2,000 characters.”

Fortunately, we were still nearly two weeks away from submission, with decent drafts in hand or due within a day for each of the 33 answers. An intense burst of decimating their answers – many of which at this stage were over even the 2,000 word target – duly followed over the next 36 hours, cutting them down to much nearer the acceptable size. And then it was back to the subject matter experts to review the newly-scythed drafts, check them for accuracy, and spend the final week of the bid polishing up the content still further.
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“Excuse me writing you a long letter: I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” Indeed…