the signal shows up before the rfp
I wouldn't chase RFPs. By the time there's an RFP, somebody's already in the room.
If you build a model around chasing RFPs and RFQs, you're coming at the very end of the game. So much of the bond money is already committed. I just don't want to submit a bunch of RFQs halfheartedly without knowing any of the details. I want to be in the conversations before that.
The better move is to go upstream and find the people who are 100% movers in the space. The signal shows up in three places, in order, and each one comes later than the last.
a. the broker, still underwriting the site
The earliest one is a broker sitting on land. A lot of them say the same thing- I don't know what I should put on this. So I do a little test fit. What the site can hold, how it lays out, what the code lets you put on it. Then in return- can you just give this to the people that are coming to go buy that land? That's an introduction to architecture.
A test fit answers a design question. What the land is worth stays the broker's call.
Bankers and title companies work the same way. They know who is doing what, where, and who they're working with- usually before anybody calls a design firm.
b. the bond vote and the capital plan
Public owners say what they want to build before they ask anyone to design it.
Manor ISD put a $400 million bond on the November 3 ballot- $391.5 million in Prop A, $8.5 million in Prop B. Its public bond page listed what the money was for.
And when the RFQ does come, the window is short. The A/E RFQ for STAR Park Two at Texas State, a multi-tenant research building with an estimated $32 million construction cost limitation, went out February 5 and closed March 2. Under a month. The STAR Park Three research building (estimated $20.3 million construction cost limitation) went out as a design-build RFQ, March 10 to April 7. Both show as awarded on the Texas State University System's July schedule. If the RFQ was the first you heard of either one, you had a few weeks to meet everybody who mattered.
So build relationships with the land brokers and the public side- the cities and econ-dev people deciding where growth and money go. Follow what the municipalities are deciding, so you're in the picture well before bond money goes out.
c. the state registry
The last place is the state. Texas projects of $50,000 or more register with TDLR for accessibility review, and the record lists the owner, an estimated cost and the design firm. By the time it's there, the design team is usually picked. Too late to pursue.
It is still worth watching. I'd watch the state's TDLR filings to see who's winning the work and learn from what they're doing.
One example- on September 30, a building was registered in Williamson County. A one story core and shell building, a data center of about 844,300 square feet with an attached office of about 20,000, estimated cost $550 million, with the design firm already listed. A registration is not an award, and that is only the estimate on the filing, but it tells you who is already in the room and what they're drawing.
the point
None of this replaces the old rule- the best next client is the one you already got. It just puts you in the conversation earlier with the next one.