Finding up public work.

[Curtis J. Boney]

Does anyone have ideas on ways to locate public work, RFI’s, and RFP’s?  Are there listings of public work that one can submit interest in?

[Mark Di Lucido]

If you’re looking for local work most cities have a bid opportunities page that lists RFPs under the ‘Business’ menu on their website. ‘Find RFP’ and ‘Bid Contract’ are two of many websites that list LA RFP work across the nation. Note that many listings are categorized as civil engineering projects so even though they contain landscape architecture work, it’s as a sub-consultant meaning you generally need a relationship w/ local civil engineers. ‘Envirobidnet’, and others have many listings w/ LA as the prime consultant but you have to subscribe (pay).

[Anonymous]

Onvia requires a paid subscription. 

[Curtis J. Boney]

Thank you! Just what I needed. I am assuming that a person can get good at this process?  I want to move out of residential work and into the public realm.  I do have a good Civil Engineer that will team with me, and it will be good for the relationship to bring these to him.  Thanks again. Curtis

[nca]

I stopped by thinking this was a weird topic, and discovered envirobidnet..Thanks Mark.

[Anonymous]

Nope, it’s a crap shoot.  I worked at two employers as a planning consultant working on behalf of public sector clients.  It’s not a money maker, and in the end I lost those two jobs due to lack of work during the recession.  Public sector work does not pay the bills.  From a landscape architecture perspective, the exception might be if you are sole sourced to a park district and you are building multiple parks and sports complexes.  Even then, it’s boom and bust.  All it takes is one mayor who prefers your design build competitor and then you are back sending out RFQs and RFPs.  Don’t do it!

[Chris Whitted]

To offer a counter point, many of the firms (LA/Planning/Engineering) around here had a very high percentage of private clients. The ‘crash’ happened, and of course places started closing left and right. As things began to recover, I spoke with several different firms and noticed a common trend. Those that were still in business either had one or two very dedicated clients who fed them just enough work to stay alive (after slimming down of course), or they’d been ‘fortunate’ enough to get a reasonably steady stream of public work from colleges, municipalities, states, and some federal. Public sector was the only thing paying their bills.

For the record I started out at a firm that was very much equally balanced between commercial and public work. I then moved to a firm that was more than half residential (developer, not owner) and some commercial – almost zero public (we went after it sometimes but didn’t usually get it – there were some exceptions). Leading up to the recession, commercial seemed to dry up first and we were left with residential, which just collapsed.

I guess my point is that it’s all boom and bust to a degree. The best/safest client portfolio is a mix between the three so that they can balance each other out during cycles.

[Author]

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