130 Appendix A: Proposal Preparation
• Progress meetings during the fact- nding task
• Analysis and draft report/ deliverables preparation start and end dates
• Final report/ deliverables delivery
• Final presentation delivery
It is important to ensure that the prospective clients know when the engagement
can be started and how long it will take to nish. You should estimate a kick- off date
in the proposal both (1) to assure the client that you are available relatively quickly
after the proposal is accepted and (2) to manage your schedule for this and other cli-
ent work. You might want to write this up as a tentative start date or an assumption
that the client will approve the proposal within a certain time period (e.g., two weeks
or a month ...