Stop 2 of 8 · Weekly
RFP to scope and fee
An agency RFP becomes a scope narrative, a task list with assumptions, a fee table Leila fills, and the questions worth sending before the deadline.
What an RFP actually contains
Twenty-eight pages, and about four of them change what Leila will do. The rest is insurance language, the standard agreement and boilerplate about disadvantaged business participation. The four pages that matter are scattered: the scope of services, the deliverable list, the submittal requirements and the schedule, plus a paragraph on page 19 that quietly says the consultant supplies the counts.
Reading an RFP is not the slow part. Turning it into a scope she can price, with nothing missed, is the slow part, and it usually happens the evening before it is due.
The four outputs
Run one chat inside the pursuit's Project and get four things out of it, in this order:
| Output | What Leila does with it |
|---|---|
| Deliverable list with dates and formats | Checks it against the RFP page by page |
| Task list, one named assumption each | Adds the tasks the RFP forgot, cuts the ones it does not want |
| Fee table with blank hours | Fills every hour herself, by task and by grade |
| Questions for the agency | Sends the three that change the price |
The stamp rule reaches this stop too. A scope commits a licensed engineer to a method, a study year and a set of intersections. Claude can list what the RFP asked for and shape the rows. Leila decides the method and the hours, and the principal signs the transmittal.
[upload the RFP] Three lists, in this order. One: every deliverable the agency asks for, with its due date, its format and the RFP page it is on. Two: every requirement that costs money and is easy to miss, such as who supplies counts, how many review rounds are included, meeting attendance, and any software or data the consultant must provide. Three: every question the RFP leaves open. Quote the RFP language for each item rather than paraphrasing, and give the page number.
From the same RFP, draft the scope of services as numbered tasks in the agency's own task language. For each task give one sentence of what we do, the deliverable it produces, and one assumption the price depends on. Keep the assumptions specific: study year, count dates, number of intersections, number of review rounds, who supplies crash data. Do not estimate any hours or costs.
Build the fee table as rows for the tasks above and columns for principal, project engineer, engineer and technician, with an hours cell left blank in every position and a total column that sums across. Under it, list the direct costs this scope needs: count collection, travel, printing and any data purchase. Leave every number blank and name the unit next to each one.
From the RFP, write the questions to send before the question deadline. Only include questions whose answer changes the scope, the hours or the schedule. Three sentences each: what the RFP says, why it is ambiguous, what we are assuming if there is no answer. Order them by how much money the answer moves.