Project proposal woes and opinion

Question

Last week I submitted a proposal for update work on a website that I originally wrote 11 years ago. Apparently, the CIO hired college students over those years to maintain the site and now it needs more of a professional touch. I had met with the team, discussed in depth what the site needed and the technologies I would use to do the work (ASP.NET MVC2). Part of the team that I met with was the CIO's IT "go-to" who was a recent CS college grad who works two days a week.

I wrote up an excellent proposal and quote a very fair rate. Three days later, I received an email from the CIO stating that he was assigning half of the items to his "go to" guy and that I should re-write the proposal excluding the items that he had decided to re-assign and re-calculate the bid. Needless to say, I was miffed.

My question to the herd, is has anyone had this happen to him before and what did they do to remedy the situation? Or, am I just over-reacting?

Thanks, Andy

Answer 1

I'd say that he didn't assign the whole thing to his "go to" guy because he doesn't trust him to deliver.

Itemising on the proposal level proved a bad idea to myself as well. It's a good thing on the invoice though.

Do not change the price (or just symbolically) and explain that the collaboration will likely cause an overhead that you needed to factor in. If the client continues to be silly, I'd just leave it to float (for another 11 years).