Technology Advisory & Systems Engineering
RFP Development & Vendor Evaluation
Solicitations that attract good proposals and evaluations that compare them fairly.
What this covers
A well-constructed request for proposals defines the problem, states the requirements, explains how proposals will be scored, and sets contract terms that protect the agency. HQT helps procurement and IT staff develop the technical content and run evaluations.
Typical activities
- Market research and requests for information
- Statement of work, requirements, and technical specifications
- Evaluation criteria, scoring guides, and demonstration scripts
- Proposal review and scoring facilitation
- Reference checks and technical due diligence
- Contract exhibit development, including service levels and acceptance criteria
What you receive
Solicitation documents, an evaluation plan and tools, evaluation documentation, and recommended contract exhibits.
Considerations for public agencies
HQT does not participate in evaluations for solicitations it intends to bid on. Independence is documented in the engagement agreement.
Signals that the solicitation needs work
Most solicitation problems are visible before proposals arrive.
- The requirement list tracks one product. When the specification uses a vendor's feature names, module names, or screen labels, other firms cannot respond cleanly and the award is harder to defend.
- The last round drew a single responsive proposal. A field of one often points to something in the requirements, schedule, insurance terms, or payment structure that pushed the rest of the market out.
- Prices varied more than the scope explains. A wide spread suggests bidders priced different work, which points back to ambiguous scope.
- A sole source justification keeps getting renewed. Each renewal is harder to support, and the underlying requirements have often never been tested against the market.
- The evaluation file is a spreadsheet of totals. Without a written basis for each score, the record will not support a debriefing, an audit, or a protest response.
- You are replacing the system that already replaced this system. Repeat failures often trace back to requirements that described the outgoing software rather than the work the agency does.
Where evaluations break down
Trouble shows in recognizable patterns, and each one is cheap to correct before release and expensive afterward.
- Weights set after proposals are opened. Weights and the method for turning price into points belong in the published solicitation.
- A mandatory pass or fail list that screens on trivia. Every mandatory item can remove a firm from consideration, so each one should tie to something the agency can verify at acceptance.
- Experience criteria only the incumbent can satisfy. Qualifications are better described by the work performed than by resemblance to the current contract.
- Vendor-led demonstrations. A demonstration run from the vendor's script shows strengths. One run from the agency's own scenarios shows fit.
- Consensus by averaging. Averaging individual sheets hides disagreement. A consensus score reached by discussion, with written rationale, survives review.
- Reference calls with no standard question set. Asking every reference the same questions, including questions about change orders and schedule, is what makes the answers comparable.
Fitting the solicitation to the systems you already run
The incumbent knows your data and your interfaces, and every other bidder is guessing. Narrowing that gap is a design goal of the solicitation. Publish an interface inventory, record layouts, and a sanitized or synthetic sample extract with the documents, and state which conversion work the agency will perform and which the vendor must. Name each integration by function and by the system on both ends, and require it through documented interfaces rather than direct database access.
Where a published exchange standard applies to the domain, name it and require conformance to be demonstrated rather than asserted. Examples include NIEM for justice and public safety data exchange, NENA i3 for next generation 9-1-1, HL7 FHIR for health data, and GTFS for transit schedule data. Read the outgoing contract before the new one is released, because migration timing depends on what data the current vendor is obligated to return, in what format, and how long its assistance continues after termination. Where local rules allow a purchase through a cooperative or state term contract, the comparison work moves to the quote or mini bid stage, and the base contract deserves a close read for what it does not cover.
Judging the result after award
A solicitation is judged by what happens after award, not at the opening. Useful checks include whether more qualified firms competed than in the prior round for comparable scope, whether the question period exposed real ambiguity that an addendum fixed, whether a protest could be answered from the evaluation record without reconstructing it, whether the awarded scope needed a change order before the first milestone, and whether acceptance could be run as written. Service level language deserves its own test: confirm that credits can be computed from data the vendor actually reports. Record what the market could not meet, so the next cycle starts from evidence rather than from the last set of documents.
Working with HQT on this
HQT scopes this kind of work as a fixed-price or time-and-materials engagement with a written statement of work, named staff, and a defined acceptance process. We are candid about what we can take on and prefer a well-run project to an oversized one. Contact us to discuss a requirement, a draft scope, or an upcoming solicitation.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a technology RFP stay open for responses?
State statutes and local purchasing codes set minimum advertising periods, and those minimums are often shorter than a complex software procurement needs. Build the schedule backward from the work a bidder has to do: read the requirements, price integration and data conversion, line up subcontractors, and clear your contract terms through legal review. Leave room for a written question period and published answers well before proposals are due, since the answers often change how firms price the work.
Should we publish our budget or a not-to-exceed amount in the solicitation?
Practice varies and some purchasing codes address it directly, so start with your own rules. Publishing available funding or a range tends to produce proposals the agency can actually award, and it reduces responses that are technically strong but unaffordable. Where the appropriation is already public record, withholding the figure gains little. If you choose not to publish a figure, publish the quantities, user counts, and transaction volumes that drive price.
Can we score vendor demonstrations, or are they only for information?
Demonstrations can be scored when the solicitation says so before proposals are due, describes what will be demonstrated, and explains how the results factor into the award. Use the same scripted scenarios, the same time limits, and the same evaluators for every finalist, and record scores with written rationale rather than impressions. Scoring a demonstration that the solicitation never announced is a common ground for protest.
How should price be scored against the technical factors?
Publish both the weight given to price and the formula that turns a price into points, because the same weight behaves very differently under a lowest-price ratio than under a straight-line scale. Require price on a common basis: the same contract term, the same assumed quantities, and the same cost components, including implementation, licensing or subscription, integration, training, and exit assistance. Decide before release whether optional items and hourly rates for future work are scored or collected for reference only.
What should we do if only one vendor responds to our RFP?
First establish whether the response is responsive and whether the price is reasonable, which normally calls for a documented cost or price analysis rather than a comparison against competing bids. Then find out why the rest of the market stayed out, usually by contacting the firms that took the solicitation but did not propose. Those answers decide whether to award, negotiate, or cancel and re-solicit with corrected terms. Procurements paid for with federal award funds carry additional documentation expectations when competition is limited.