Salient Characteristics

When you're writing a solicitation, you need to describe what you're buying without simply naming a brand. That's where salient characteristics come in. These are the essential physical, functional, or performance features that define what makes a product or service suitable for your needs—the attributes that truly matter for getting the job done.

How It Works

The Supply Manual Section 6B—Defining the Requirement lays out how PSPC approaches this. Instead of saying "we need a Xerox model 5000," you identify what actually matters: print speed, paper capacity, duplex capability, network compatibility. These distinguishing features become your requirement definition.

Here's the thing: identifying these characteristics requires you to understand your operational needs deeply. You're not just listing every possible feature—you're pinpointing which ones are essential versus merely nice-to-have. A military vehicle might require specific load capacity, terrain capability, and environmental tolerances. Office furniture might focus on ergonomic adjustments, weight ratings, and dimensional constraints. The characteristics you select must be measurable, verifiable, and directly tied to how you'll actually use the item.

This approach serves two masters. It keeps your procurement competitive by avoiding sole-source situations where only one brand could possibly meet artificially narrow requirements. But it also protects your operational effectiveness by ensuring suppliers can't offer something functionally inadequate just because it's cheaper. The Standard Acquisition Clauses and Conditions Manual reinforces this balance in supply arrangements, where general service definitions rely on characteristic-based descriptions rather than proprietary references.

Key Considerations

• Brand names can appear as examples only: You can reference a specific product to illustrate what you mean, but you must add "or equivalent" and clearly state the salient characteristics that define equivalency. Otherwise, you're creating an unfair competitive advantage.

• Over-specification kills competition: Listing every minor feature as essential when only a few truly matter will narrow your supplier pool unnecessarily. Your program area might want the moon, but you need to challenge whether each characteristic genuinely affects operational success.

• Documentation matters for challenges: If a supplier protests that your salient characteristics unfairly favor a competitor, you'll need to demonstrate why each one is operationally necessary. The Supply Manual's guidance on requirement definition helps build this defensible position.

• Technical expertise is non-negotiable: You can't identify the right characteristics without subject matter experts. Your end users know what failures look like in the field—that knowledge translates into meaningful specifications.

Related Terms

Statement of Work, Technical Specifications, Statement of Requirements, Brand Name or Equal, Performance-Based Contracting

Sources

• Supply Manual Version 05-02 (2005), Section 6B: Defining the Requirement

• Standard Acquisition Clauses and Conditions Manual (Archived), General Conditions 2020

The shift from "I know it when I see it" to documented, defensible characteristics takes effort up front. But it's what separates procurement that delivers operational value from procurement that just buys stuff.