We speakyourdiscipline.
engineering-rfp.com is proposal and RFP support built for engineering firms and nobody else. Your PEs solve hard problems; we turn that work into a technical proposal an evaluator can actually follow and score. Civil, structural, geotechnical, water resources, transportation, electrical, mechanical, or environmental, we write to your discipline and to the criteria. It runs as one part of BD-AEC’s business development practice, so the proposal is built the way work is won, not typed up the night before it’s due.
A BD-AEC service · Proposal development inside a business development practice
Where AEC pursuits go wrong
Engineering firms rarely lose because the engineering was wrong. They lose because the proposal got written by the very engineers who bill by the hour, in the last few days before it was due, and it reads like a report instead of a case for selection. Here’s what we run into most.
Engineers writing the proposal
Your licensed staff burn billable hours on narrative while the projects that actually pay for the firm sit and wait.
A technical report, not a pitch
The approach reads like a deliverable handed to a client, not an argument for why your firm should be the one picked.
Dense, unreadable narrative
Paragraphs packed tight with detail bury the point, and a reviewer scoring against the clock never digs it back out.
Resumes not mapped to criteria
Your PEs look qualified in general but not for this project, because nothing ties them to the stated evaluation factors.
Nobody running the proposal
No one owns the compliance matrix or the schedule, so the deadline ends up running the pursuit instead of a plan.
Approach recycled from the last one
A reused methodology tells the panel you didn’t read this scope, and they can spot it inside a single paragraph.
The deadline scramble
The solicitation posts, the clock starts, and the whole response gets thrown together in a rush that shows on the page.
A proposal is never free
A professional AEC proposal commonly consumes 50 to 100 hours across leadership, technical, marketing, design, and administrative resources. That time bills to overhead instead of a client, and it comes out of exactly the people you most need on projects.
Per pursuit, produced in house
A proposal is never free when it is produced internally.
| Resource | Hours | Burdened rate | Illustrative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principal / seller-doer | 8 to 15 | $225 to $350 | $1,800 to $5,250 |
| Project manager / technical lead | 10 to 20 | $125 to $175 | $1,250 to $3,500 |
| Marketing / proposal coordinator | 20 to 35 | $75 to $110 | $1,500 to $3,850 |
| Graphic design and production | 6 to 15 | $80 to $125 | $480 to $1,875 |
| Executive review and admin support | 6 to 13 | $50 to $400 | $700 to $2,560 |
| Total | 50 to 98 | — | $5,730 to $17,035 |
Illustrative fully burdened cost, including compensation, benefits, payroll expense, overhead, software, and indirect resources. Actual hours vary by pursuit.
A selection panel already assumes you’re competent; that’s the price of making the shortlist. The work goes to the firm that tells the clearest technical story, the one that proves it understands this project and can be trusted to deliver it.
What a winning submission actually needs
A compliance matrix maps every requirement to a response. This is the one that decides most selections: the gap between how a firm usually submits and how a pursuit should be run.
A proposal manager who owns the pursuit
A go/no-go before you commit
An approach written for this scope
Resumes mapped to the criteria
Diagrams that carry the technical story
An outside red-team read
Delivered on time and to spec
The full scope, one shop
One engineering proposal shop, whether you hand us the full pursuit or the single piece your team can’t get to before the clock runs out. Every service below is built for the way engineering work actually gets selected, public and private.
Technical Approach & Methodology
We interview your PEs and turn how you’ll really execute the work into an approach section a reviewer can follow and actually score.
Engineering SOQ / SF330
Statements of qualifications and SF330 packages shaped around how engineering teams get shortlisted for public work.
RFP / RFQ Responses
Complete responses to engineering solicitations, mapped line by line to every technical and management evaluation factor.
Engineering Staff Resumes
We rework each PE and EIT resume to speak straight to the selection criteria, putting the discipline experience that matters where a reviewer looks first.
Relevant Project Descriptions
Project descriptions that set your closest past work beside this scope, with the site conditions and constraints the owner is weighing.
Proposal Management
One manager holds the compliance matrix, the schedule, and every deadline, which keeps your engineers on their projects instead of buried in the document.
Compliance Review
We read the solicitation line by line and test the draft against each rule, so a page-limit or formatting slip never knocks a strong team out before scoring.
Proposal Graphics & Diagrams
Process diagrams, project schedules, and org charts that turn a dense engineering approach into something a reviewer grasps in seconds.
Interview Preparation
We prep your technical leads for the room: what to present, how to hold the message, and how to field the panel’s hardest questions.
Capture Strategy
The positioning we lock in before anyone drafts a word, the themes that make your firm the clear choice and the discriminators that set you apart.
Not on the list?
If it touches a pursuit, it's in scope. Tell us what the solicitation needs.
One strategic standard. Two levels of finish.
Every engagement is built around responsiveness, persuasive content, and a submission-ready final document. What changes between the two is how far the production goes.
Professional
Word-based production
- Best fit
- Straightforward SOQs, on-call selections, qualifications packages, and time-sensitive pursuits.
- Production
- A polished Microsoft Word layout, delivered as a submission-ready PDF.
- Compliance matrix and pursuit strategy
- Writing, editing, and QA/QC
- Resumes and project descriptions
- Photographs, tables, and basic graphics
Timing
Available at every schedule tier, subject to capacity.
Reviews
Two review cycles
Signature
Creative production
- Best fit
- High-value, highly competitive, brand-defining, or shortlist-critical pursuits.
- Production
- Custom Adobe InDesign production by our creative team.
- Everything in Professional
- Custom visual concept and information design
- Infographics, diagrams, and image treatment
- Agency-level production quality
Timing
Best with 30 or more days. Generally available at 15 or more days.
Reviews
Content and design reviews
The production level changes. The strategic discipline does not.
Engage early
The best time to prepare for a proposal is before the opportunity is released.
Options and cost both reflect the time available to do the work responsibly. Engaging early preserves every production format, a full review cycle, and the most flexible footing. It is also why a reusable foundation, a case study library, current resumes, and a project image library built before the RFP posts, pays for itself across every pursuit that follows.
What a foundation builds
- Case study library
- Resume development
- Personnel and project image library
- Reusable marketing materials
How a pursuit runs
We run the same disciplined sequence on every pursuit, keyed to the submission deadline. At any point you can see what’s in progress, who has it, and how close the engineering proposal is to ready.
- 1
Opportunity Evaluation
An honest go/no-go first. We weigh discipline fit, the likely competition, and your real odds before anyone burns engineering hours on a solicitation you should pass on.
- 2
Capture Strategy
Before drafting, we settle the storyline: why your firm is the right pick for this exact scope, in the owner’s own words, and which discipline strengths to lead with.
- 3
Proposal Planning
We lay down the compliance matrix, an annotated outline, the schedule, and clear assignments. Every technical and management requirement gets pinned to a section and to the person who owns it.
- 4
Technical Content
We sit down with your PEs and turn methodology, means, and sequencing into narrative a reviewer reads easily, in your firm’s voice, answering each criterion head-on.
- 5
Graphics & Design
Engineering diagrams, project schedules, and org charts, drawn so the strength of your approach reads instantly instead of hiding in a dense block of text.
- 6
Quality Review
A compliance sweep, an outside red-team read, and one last scoring pass against the evaluation criteria, all before the proposal leaves the building.
- 7
Submission Support
Final formatting, production, and delivery on time and exactly to the submission instructions, whether the owner wants it uploaded or printed.
Owners we write for
These are the engineering disciplines we write for. Each is evaluated a little differently, and we write to the way owners in your field actually score a submission.
More than a proposal writer
Hire a proposal writer and you get someone to polish your words. Bring in BD-AEC and you get someone to run the whole pursuit. Because proposal work here lives inside a business development practice tuned to engineering firms, every submission comes together the way engineering work is genuinely won.
Business Development
We work your pipeline and your positioning, not only the one document that happens to be due this week.
Proposal Strategy
We build the win themes and discriminators out of your genuine discipline strengths, and they steer the draft from the first outline on.
Technical Writing
We pull the substance out of your PEs in interviews, then write it so a non-technical reviewer can follow every point and hand it full marks.
Industry Experience
Engineering, full stop. Civil, structural, geotechnical, transportation, and MEP selections all score differently, and we write to each one.
Capture Planning
Everything we do to position your firm ahead of the solicitation, so you are already the name they expect when it finally posts.
Relationship Development
A proposal reads warmer when the owner already trusts the people signing it, and building that trust is the heart of the BD-AEC practice.
Most of the score is qualitative. We build the proposal to win the parts that are not price.
Straight answers
How much does an engineering proposal cost?
Scope and calendar drive the number. A standalone engineering SOQ runs a fixed, modest fee; a full technical RFP response with diagrams and interview prep is quoted by the effort it takes. Either way you get that number in writing before you say go, so nothing on the invoice catches you off guard.
Do you actually understand technical engineering disciplines?
Yes. Civil, structural, geotechnical, water resources, transportation, electrical, mechanical, and environmental work are what we handle day in and day out. You don’t have to dumb it down; we interview your PEs and translate the methodology into language a reviewer can score.
Can you manage the whole engineering proposal?
Yes, and most firms use us exactly that way. We take the manager’s seat for the entire pursuit, holding the compliance matrix, the schedule, the writing, the graphics, the reviews, and the final submission. Your engineers supply the technical substance and otherwise stay on their projects.
Do you handle SF330s and SOQs for engineering firms?
Yes. Engineering SF330 and SOQ packages are core work here, project sheets, resumes, and org charts shaped to the way public owners rank a field. If a pursuit is pure qualifications with no technical proposal attached, aec-soq.com goes even deeper on the SOQ mechanics.
Can you write our staff resumes and project descriptions?
Yes. We rebuild PE and EIT resumes around the selection criteria and write relevant-project sheets that tie your past work to the exact scope being procured. That’s usually where an engineering proposal quietly gains or loses the most points.
Do you help prepare for the shortlist interview?
Yes, and it pays off more than almost anything else we offer. We build the presentation, tighten each speaker’s message, and run mock panels on the technical questions engineers really get asked. Since the interview often settles an engineering selection, walking in rehearsed is a genuine edge, and too many firms skip it.
Can you review a technical draft our team already wrote?
Yes. Hand us the draft plus the solicitation and we send it back marked up against every evaluation factor, with a prioritized list of fixes to make before submission. We are reading for compliance, for whether a busy reviewer can follow it, and for whether the approach answers what the owner actually asked.
Tools we bring to every pursuit
A few of the working tools behind every engineering pursuit we run. Point at any one of them on a call and we’ll open it up against a live solicitation with you.
Discipline Go / No-Go Scorecard
How we score fit and win probability before your engineers commit real time to a pursuit.
Technical Approach Blueprint
The structure that turns raw engineering methodology into an approach section a reviewer can actually score.
Engineering SF330 Checklist
Every section a competitive engineering SF330 needs, laid out so nothing gets left off the package.
Resume-to-Criteria Map
A worksheet that ties each PE’s experience straight to the specific evaluation factors written into the RFP.
Project Sheet Template
A relevant-project format that connects past work to the scope, conditions, and outcomes an owner is looking for.
Production Schedule Template
A working calendar built backward from the due date, so no piece of the proposal ends up rushed.
Ask for any of these on a discovery call. Request one →
§ Contact
Have a pursuit on the clock?
Send us the solicitation and your deadline. Scott Mann responds within one business day with a straight read on the pursuit, a go/no-go take, and what a winning submission needs.
Discovery call
A straight read on the pursuit and whether we should chase it.
Proposal assessment
A compliance and win-strategy review of a draft you already have.
Opportunity review
A go/no-go on a specific solicitation, scored before you commit.
Request a proposal assessment
AEC firms only. We'll never share your details.
One shop, seven front doors
engineering-rfp.com is where engineering firms step into the BD-AEC proposal network. The other sites below each go deep on a different kind of pursuit, and the same team stands behind all of them.