Intro to RFP’s

So we've talked about RFQs, RFPs, RFSs sort of generally. Now let's take a look at an actual RFP. So this is the request for proposal. An RFP is essentially an RFQ with a proposal attached to it. So, RFP is much more extensive than an RFQ. An RFQ is already qualified. So it's all the information that's needed for somebody, some entity, a potential client to be able to say, here's a team of people that they seem to be qualified. We can go to them for a project, or this is a group that we can pre qualify so that we, when we're in the heat of the moment of trying to choose somebody we don't have to go oh, and look through their resumes and all that.

We will have already understood that they are a qualified group. The RFP has the proposal attached to it and so that's very specific. So that's, here's a situation, here's a particular need. This is a real project, and we want not only to know if your team is qualified, but we wanna know how you're going to approach it.

What's your design concept? What are you going to propose that we would move forward with for this particular project? So it could be very design focused, where the actual activity of the project is quite well understood, but then the question of proposal is really, no, we think it should be a high rise, or we think it should be a low rise, or we think it should be spread out, or we think it should be very congregated, that the different proposals might have to do with design issues, but the different proposals could also be about different approaches.

We're gonna suggest that we do this as design build. Somebody might suggest that we do it with a construction manager system or a design bid bill. So the idea of the proposal could have lots of different flavors to it. So, this particular example is a city that has an ill used building, a building that hasn't been used for a number of years, and they're trying to redevelop that neighborhood. They don't have any idea what they want to have happen. They just know they want some economic development.

They want the building to be resurrected in some way. They wanna keep the historic nature of that building. We'll take a look at where that shows up, but they want something to happen, and so this is a request for proposals. In this case they're saying come with any ideas that you have and if you have a good idea and you can make it financially work, we will sell you this building for a very reasonable price in order to help you make this happen and regenerate activity and generate jobs and generate economic activity in this particular neighborhood.

So, RFPs can be about lots of different things. They can be about design issues. They can be about scheduling issues. They can be about something big like this where you're just sort of open to any different set of possibilities, and that's kind of the nature of the word proposal, because it's saying give us a proposal. Tell us what you think would be best. We are not saying that we know exactly what we want to do. We are saying we're looking for guidance as a way to help us make a decision about who we're gonna choose to do this project.

Now, you'll find if you ask around that there's a lot of people who find the RFP system a bit controversial because essentially what you're asking is a whole series of different architects to come up with design ideas. So intellectual property, kind of having them go through a design process, even if it's a limited and fast paced one, but to go through some sort of design process and then give that proposal back to the client, without getting paid.

Most RFPs are unpaid. Some are paid, but most are unpaid, and even the ones that are paid are usually not paid very well. It's just a little stipend that kind of helps the firm be able to pay for printing and things like that, and there's sort of a reasonable question about whether this is a reasonable thing to do for the architects. Should architects be willing to sort of give away all their design ideas on the off chance that they might get chosen on an RFP, or should you only do things like RFQs where you say yes, I'm prepared and ready to do this project, and then if you hire me I will give you a proposal, but either way, it doesn't really matter at this point.

RFPs are sort of the lay of the land, and many, many projects are put out as RFPs and then multiple entities, either architects or developers or contractors, will put in for that RFP and if they get it then they will make sure that they sort of put the whole team together, do all the work that needs to happen, and create a new contract that is specific to them and this situation for this particular project.

So it's a way to get a project going. We're not really sure exactly what we wanna do. We have a pretty good idea. And then we're gonna use your responses to our question, to our request, and we're gonna use those responses for our team of decision makers to look at all those proposals and say, wow, that's the one that I really like. Now, interestingly they don't actually have to use the proposal of the team that's proposed it.

So they could say, I really like the qualifications of this team, of team B, but team C had the best proposal. So we're gonna hire team B and then tell them about team C's proposal, so that they can then sort of take that on as theirs. So there's some tricky stuff here. It's a little bit complicated to say whether this is a good thing for architects or not. But like I said, either way, it is sort of how it works at this point.

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