Know which projects need an engineer, before the RFQ.
See public projects while the owner is still planning them, and know which RFQs are worth your team’s time.
Suspension bridge stiffening truss and anchorage, San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. HAER CAL,38-SANFRA,141-178.
The RFQ is the last thing to happen.
By the time a city posts a request for qualifications, it has usually planned the project for a year: in a master plan, a capital budget, a grant application, a board vote. The firms it shortlists are often the ones who were in the room then.
Finding those moments means reading agendas and budgets from every owner you work for, every week.
One project, read for you.
Where it stands, who decides, and the page that says so.
Treatment facility expansion
Regional utility district, in the capital plan.
- Stage
- Facility plan adopted, design not yet procured. Board minutes, page 6.
- Funding
- State loan application filed for design and construction
- Selection
- Qualifications-based, RFQ expected next quarter
- Teaming
- Needs process, structural and electrical design
- Owner
- The district’s engineering manager presented the plan
Worth a visit to the district before the RFQ is written.
See the projects that will need design.
Capital plans, master plans, grant awards and board votes, read for the projects that will need an engineer, and how far along each one is.
- Projects before procurement
- The owner and the person behind each one
- Kept current as it moves
Know which RFQs are worth a response.
Every request for qualifications read in full: scope, selection criteria, required disciplines, evaluation weights and the deadline, each with the page it came from.
- Scope and selection criteria
- Disciplines and certifications required
- Every answer cites its page
Team before the shortlist.
Where a pursuit needs a discipline you don’t have, Capveon shows the firms with public awards for that work from the same owner, so teaming starts early.
- The disciplines a pursuit needs
- Firms with work for the same owner
- A first draft of the response
Questions engineering firms ask
- Where do the projects come from?
- The public record of cities, counties, utilities, state DOTs and federal agencies: capital plans, agendas, grant awards and procurement portals.
- Does it read RFQs and RFPs for engineering services?
- Yes. Scope, selection criteria, required disciplines and deadlines, each with the page it came from.
- Does it help with the proposal?
- It drafts a first response from your past work and the RFQ’s own requirements. Your team edits, approves and sends.
- What happens on the demo?
- Bring a few owners or pursuits you are working. We go through what is coming, what each one asks for, and what you would do next.
Bring the work you’re looking at.
Thirty minutes on your own projects. We go through what each one is, whether it’s yours, and what to do next.