Most technical proposals are honest, but few are neutral. Whoever wrote it was optimizing for something — a sale, a margin, a standard bundle — and that's worth remembering before you approve it. Here's what's worth checking, regardless of the technology involved.
Trace every line item back to a requirement
For each major component in the proposal, ask which specific requirement it satisfies, and where in your RFP you asked for it. Anything that can't be traced back deserves a direct question — not necessarily rejection, but an explanation.
Separate "required" from "included"
Mandatory requirements and vendor-standard inclusions get bundled together by default. Ask the proposing team to explicitly mark which is which. A proposal that can't make this distinction cleanly is worth extra scrutiny — it usually means nobody has actually made the distinction internally either.
Read the operational model, not just the architecture diagram
A design can be sound on paper and still be unrealistic for the team that has to run it day to day. Check who owns changes, who owns incidents, and what happens when it needs to scale. An architecture diagram won't tell you any of that.
Ask what a simpler version would look like
A useful, low-effort test: ask the proposing team, or an independent reviewer, to describe the simplest architecture that would still meet every stated requirement, then compare it line by line against what was actually proposed. The gap between the two is where the real conversation starts.
None of this assumes bad faith. It assumes that the person who wrote the proposal isn't the person who has to live with its operational and financial consequences — and that someone who does have to live with it should be the one checking it before it's signed.