Arlen Solochek, FAIA mentions that some agencies offer pre-approved contract opportunities for on-call services. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a process for qualifying "House Doctors" that can work with agencies as needed and the contracts can be active for multiple years.
Firm principals often attend the DSB deliberations to research the process of awarding these contracts prior to deciding to respond to the solicitations. And House Doctor contracts are a great pipeline for small and mid-size firms to work on manageable projects and establish a portfolio of state project work. The evaluation factors are clearly stated, and there is a preference for firms with creative sustainable design portfolios as well as diversity factors.
Original Message:
Sent: 10-07-2024 09:31 PM
From: Arlen Solochek
Subject: Can Small and Mid-Size Firms Compete Successfully for Public Sector Projects?
Excellent discussion everyone. For private firms reading the discussion, the place to start is a meeting and discussion with the person (s) who run the selection process. Public architects are bound by their procurement rules. Sometimes these are set locally, at the agency, and some come from on high out of state statutes. In some cases, "we can just select…" is allowed and in some cases, as I had to work in, there is a very regimented set of rules and format that we have to use.
Another avenue that may be available is to see if the agencies that you would like to work for have an on-call, annual services, or pre-qualified list that you can qualify for. Once on this list , the selection for a project is very streamlined, and often can be "we just select one…" These types of lists often are oriented to smaller and medium projects because public architects understand the cost and effort involved with a larger, formal RFP process. These lists also often tilt to small and medium firms to give them experience in public work.
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Arlen Solochek, FAIA
Owner/Principal/Founder
Arlen Solochek FAIA, Consulting Architect
Phoenix, AZ
ArlenSolochek@gmail.com
Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2024 10:28 AM
From: Michael Katzin
Subject: Can Small and Mid-Size Firms Compete Successfully for Public Sector Projects?
I was a public architect leading a county capital projects program. We had many small community based projects for libraries, senior centers, aquatic centers, art centers, fire/EMS stations and more. We simply would select small firms since they had examples of work better relating to the size of the projects we were developing. For larger projects such as, health, courts and detention we would select medium or large architectural firms since those size firms could show better expertise and successful experience in those types of projects.
In the city and county world, the leader of the capital program, hopefully a licensed, AIA member architect, should make an effort to advise and guide the other selection team members from other departments as to the appropriateness of the submitting team specific to the project size and type.
Also, the city and county selection process and procedural guard rails can be very different to state and federal selection processes since you have the elected officials in the same building every day.
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Michael L. Katzin, AIA
e| mlkatzin@gmail.com
Member | City of Johns Creek Planning Commission
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Original Message:
Sent: 10/4/2024 2:38:00 PM
From: Arlen M. Solochek FAIA
Subject: RE: Can Small and Mid-Size Firms Compete Successfully for Public Sector Projects?
I worked for a couple of decades on the owner's side, large public higher ed institution, including the RFP's and selection process for project teams.
This is an interesting discussion and common problem. We often had small and medium firms come to us and complain that they couldn't compete for small and medium projects against the big firms, both because of the wider expertise and experience of the big firms, and more limited marketing and other resources in the small and medium firms. In a pure sense, they were absolutely right. A firm like our local SmithGroup or DLR offices easily could have been a top rated firm in nearly every project that we did.
Our solution was to try to make some advantage adjustment in our scoring and ranking matrix when selecting firms. We were very strongly a "select the best qualified firm to do the work" organization, but we were able to add a small amount of points that a small or medium firm could get (you decide- based upon personal? based upon revenue? You need to ask for that info in the RFP response) for what we considered to be small or medium size projects. We placed this under Other Criteria in our RFP's and scoring matrix, calling it "Firm Size Matching Project" and it was worth about 10 points maximum addition on a 175-200 point total. We had a similar additional line for firms that had done projects for us recently (a small number of deductive points) to try to spread the work around to more firms, again, all other things being equal, we took a firm that hadn't done our projects recently.
We had a total open book review system and discussion with our firms and never received serious objections to either of these added criteria.
In our minds, this created a situation that all other things being equal in other qualifications and criteria, a small or medium firm could get a very slight points and award advantage over the large firm.
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Arlen Solochek, FAIA
Owner/Principal/Founder
Arlen Solochek FAIA, Consulting Architect
Phoenix, AZ
ArlenSolochek@gmail.com
Original Message:
Sent: 10-03-2024 01:41 PM
From: Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham
Subject: Can Small and Mid-Size Firms Compete Successfully for Public Sector Projects?
The Public Architecture Committee is presenting a live AIAU Course on November 5, 2024 at 2:00 - 2:30 pm EST on Leveraging Public Sector Projects for Small & Mid-Sized Firms. We believe that there are significant opportunities to hire excellent design firms for publicly funded projects that improve the civic space. But navigating the public procurement process can be daunting and time consuming, and the public sector design landscape is mostly dominated by large architectural and engineering firms. To address that challenge we have assembled a group of experts to demystify the process and offer a road map for how to qualify for and succeed in winning public contracts.
We are also interested in hearing from you - what has been your experience in responding to public requests for design services, at the federal, state, municipal or institutional level? Have you had success - or experienced difficulty - when working with public agencies? Please let us know - we would like to help.
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Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham FAIA
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA
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