Proposals and scopes from an RFP: one requirements sheet and a draft scope for your project manager to write up and price.

A solicitation comes as a PDF with attachments: the scope of services, the instructions to proposers, the evaluation criteria, a sample contract with its insurance exhibit, required forms, and later the addenda and answers to questions. Before anyone writes, your project manager reads all of it, lists what the response must contain and what would knock it out, and sketches the tasks, deliverables and schedule the price will rest on.

For the test, AI reads copies of solicitations you already answered and drafts two things. The requirements sheet lists every submission rule, credential, insurance coverage, form, scored criterion and deadline, each with the page it came from. The scope outline lays out tasks, deliverables, assumptions and schedule, drawn from proposals your firm sent for similar work. Hours, fees and the decision to bid stay blank. Your reviewer holds both against the response that went out.

The scope outline starts from the buyer's own task list. In its October 2025 RFQ, the City of West Columbia, South Carolina, asked its brownfields consultant for up to twenty-four Phase I ESAs, one generic quality assurance project plan, up to ten Phase II ESAs with site-specific sampling and analysis plans, four analyses of brownfield cleanup alternatives, two visioning sessions and one revitalization plan. It also stated that Davis-Bacon prevailing wages would not apply, since assessment work generally involves no construction, repair or alteration. The City of Ravenswood, West Virginia, in January 2026 named ASTM E1903-19, the Phase II practice, and asked for field sampling plans under the state's Presumptive Conformance Program, site health and safety plans, asbestos, lead paint, mold and radon surveys, and quarterly reporting through EPA's ACRES system. The outline carries every count, standard and deliverable as written, and marks the tasks that are ordered only as needed.

How price is weighed depends on who is paying. Under the federal grant rules at 2 CFR 200.320, an RFP must name all its evaluation factors and their relative importance, and selection on qualifications alone, with price left out, is allowed only for architectural and engineering professional services, not for other work an engineering firm might do. The federal definition at 40 U.S.C. 1102 lists studies, investigations, tests and evaluations among the incidental services architects and engineers may perform, so the sheet quotes how each RFP labels its own work. Ravenswood's RFQ calls itself a qualifications-based solicitation with a price component and says EPA's brownfields assessment grants require one, and West Columbia scores rates against competing offerors and market rates. In Massachusetts, chapter 30B, section 6 has evaluators rate each proposal on each criterion as highly advantageous, advantageous, not advantageous or unacceptable, with price submitted separately and opened out of their sight. The sheet records the method each solicitation states and where price goes.

Credentials are named down to the license and the training hour. The Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's 2023 RFP set quality requirements a response had to meet before any comparative scoring, among them five years of Phase I and II work including hazardous building materials surveys, and a Licensed Site Professional licensed by the state's Board of Registration of Hazardous Waste Site Cleanup Professionals. Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, building a pre-qualified list in 2024, required 40-hour HAZWOPER training for field staff, a Maine Licensed Geologist on staff, a Maine-licensed Professional Engineer for some tasks, three projects from the past five years, and, for brownfields work, a generic QAPP approved by EPA Region 1 and the department that is less than five years old. OSHA's rule at 29 CFR 1910.120(e) sets 40 hours off site plus three supervised field days for general site workers, 24 hours and one day for workers on site only occasionally for a limited task, such as ground water monitoring, who are unlikely to be overexposed, and an eight-hour refresher each year. The sheet lists each credential with its clause and leaves whether your people qualify to your project manager.

Submission rules sink responses before the content is read. West Columbia wanted five copies in a sealed envelope and refused electronic-only submissions, and any page meant to stay confidential had to be stamped CONFIDENTIAL in bold, at least 12-point, in the upper right corner, or be open to disclosure under South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act. Ravenswood wanted one PDF by email with a set subject line. Maine wanted four separately named files, at most 25MB per email, no links to file-sharing sites, no encrypted mail that needs a login, a list of litigation, and an ACORD certificate showing general and professional liability. Where EPA money pays for the work, 40 CFR 33.302 has the prime include EPA Forms 6100-3 and 6100-4 in its bid or proposal package. West Columbia's insurance section named contractor's pollution liability and an excess or umbrella policy alongside general, automobile and workers' compensation coverage. The sheet lists every such rule, form and coverage by type, with its page.

Addenda and conflict rules change the answer after the RFP is out. The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority's first addendum to RFP 2026-01, issued February 6, 2026, told proposers to include resumes the RFP never asked for and to fit them inside a 20-page limit that also counts cover pages, tables of contents, figures and appendices. The same addendum said tasks would generally run on time and materials, one firm would be selected, and proposed contract changes could lower a score. The grant rule at 2 CFR 200.319(b) bars a firm that drafted a solicitation's requirements or scope from competing on it, and Ravenswood's RFQ says the same of anyone who helped write it. The sheet folds each addendum into the requirement it changes, with the addendum's date. Your reviewer will check every rule, credential, coverage, task and date against what your team submitted, and confirm the draft priced nothing, chose nothing and read no contract term as legal advice.

When your reviewer says yes, each new RFP or RFQ your firm considers gets the same sheet and outline for about 30 days.

Every draft goes to the project manager who writes the response and the principal who prices and signs it. Whether to pursue, what to charge, and what goes to the buyer stay with them, and your firm submits the way it does today.

Your reviewer keeps comparing each sheet with what the team found on its own. A second job starts only after the month, and only if you choose one.