RFP Support – New York Large-Scale Renewable Procurement

In response to New York’s substantial renewable energy initiative in 2020, a developer of utility scale renewable facilities in New York State was looking to participate in the state-run procurement with the goal of submitting a successful bid. 

Aside from the challenge of competing with other submissions, these state-run procurements are large and complex, have multiple and varying sections, include long-lead time items, and are evaluated based on scoring criteria specific to the RFP evaluation team. These documents require a large degree of coordination, and benefit from a strong working knowledge of procurement in New York State.

As we know, developers are always busy, so they contacted Compass Energy Consulting to hire them to act as the Bid Manager throughout the RFP process.

Successfully responding to an RFP presents a large number of challenges:

1. RFPs are notorious for having an overwhelming amount of information, multiple sections where requirements are listed, and small details that could cause huge delays in content development. RFP documents tend to be at least 100 pages long with attachments, schedules, and specific formatting requirements for the submission. 
2. Oftentimes RFPs have requirements or deliverables that could take weeks or months to develop and finalize. For example interconnection request applications are complex documents that require pre-planning and generally have a fee associated with the submission to the interconnecting utility. Another example, initial environmental screening of the facility site if often a requirement and would require collaboration with a local environmental consultant. 
3. RFP responses require collaboration between internal teams, back and forth communication to ensure requirements are met, and a dedicated resource to finalize and tie up any loose ends to complete the submission. 
4. Different sections of RFPs are evaluated differently. Outside of the bid price evaluation, some sections count towards scoring, while others may count towards minimum requirements. Where the client won’t be scored for going above and beyond the minimum requirements, it doesn’t make sense to spend additional time and resources developing those sections. Additionally, focusing on how to maximize scoring in those sections where more points are available is key.
5. All RFPs have custom submission logistics. Some require multiple hard copies to be mailed in, others may be an email with attachments, and others could require complicated sign-ups to portals with inputs and uploaded attachments. Each submission type comes with a different set of challenges.

Compass managed the bid submissions for multiple projects in NYS allowing our client to participate, while focusing on the development of the projects.  Our approach addressed the following:

1. Accurately and efficiently communicate to the client all requirements for the RFP through document sharing and conference calls. Compass developed a colour-coded tracker tool listing all requirements, details on submission type, lead person responsible, internal due dates, and colour-coded status. This document is shared between the team as we work together to finalize items. 
2. Scan the RFP and highlight long-lead time items. Highlight the need to have reached an advanced interconnection stage, initial environmental screening required, and minimum threshold of site control required. 
3. Alleviate upper management’s schedules by taking the lead on coordinating requests between different teams, working with them to build content that meets the requirements of the RFP, and continuously following up until the task is completed.
4. Strategically identify areas to maximize scoring during evaluation. Site control minimum requirement was that 50% of the facility was under binding site control. The developer intentionally signs more land than is required for the project for flexibility, however not all additional lands were under binding site control. Strategically highlight a greater percentage of binding site control by removing those parcels not under control and not necessary to build the project (without flexibility). 
5. Plan ahead the logistics for the submission of the bid package. One procurement required requesting access to a hidden section of a portal and signing up through there once the request was manually responded to. Another procurement required the use of a portal where all content was required to either be uploaded into text boxes on the portal, choose dropdown options, or upload specific attachments. With time and pre-planning the logistics of the submission can be handled accordingly.

Compass completed a comprehensive analysis of the RFP that allowed our client to meet and exceed the requirements of the RFP, focus on project development to optimize their projects, and successfully submit multiple projects to procurements in NYS.