Part 2 of The Solicitation Author's Handbook. The vehicle you choose is a statement about how much you know, and choosing wrong wastes months on both sides.
This is Part 2 of The Solicitation Author’s Handbook, a vendor-neutral series for people in offices of government who write solicitations. Part 1 covered the work that happens before drafting. This part covers the first structural decision on the document itself. As always, names and thresholds vary by jurisdiction; your procurement code controls.
The three vehicles differ by how much you already know about what you are buying. A request for information (RFI) asks the market to teach you when the solution space is unfamiliar. A request for quotation (RFQ), or an invitation to bid (ITB) for construction and commodities in many jurisdictions, asks the market to compete on price when the specification is already written. A request for proposals (RFP) asks vendors to propose approaches when you understand the problem and the outcomes but expect meaningful differences in method, quality, and risk.
Choosing wrong costs real time. An RFP for a purchase that should have been an RFQ buries you in proposals you must evaluate on dimensions that never mattered. An RFQ for a purchase that needed an RFP hands the award to the cheapest misunderstanding of the problem.
Work from three questions: do you understand the problem, do you already know the solution, and is price the main variable? If you only partly understand the problem, run an RFI first. If you know the problem but approaches will differ, use an RFP. If the specification is written and price is the deciding factor, use an RFQ or ITB. If only one source can genuinely perform, use the sole-source process your code provides rather than staging a competition.
| You know the problem | You know the solution | Price is the main variable | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partially | No | No | RFI first, then decide |
| Yes | No, and approaches will differ | No | RFP |
| Yes | Yes, specification is written | Yes | RFQ or ITB |
| Yes | Yes, and only one source can perform | Not applicable | Sole source justification, with the documentation burden that implies |
Two notes on that last row. A genuine sole source exists, but it is rarer than its paperwork suggests, and a disguised sole source dressed as a competitive RFP is the fastest way to a protest and a poisoned vendor pool. If competition truly is not available, say so through the sole-source process your code provides and carry the justification honestly.
Use a two-step process when a single document cannot do the work. An RFI followed by an RFP suits unfamiliar technology, because the RFI teaches you the vocabulary, the realistic price band, and the shape of the field before you draft. Qualifications followed by proposals shortlists on capability before price, which fits professional services and protects small evaluation teams from reading forty full proposals. A multi-step process with scripted demonstrations suits software purchases where written proposals alone cannot show whether the product works.
RFI then RFP is the standard pattern for unfamiliar technology. The RFI teaches you the vocabulary, the realistic price band, and the shape of the field; the RFP you write afterward is grounded in it. Say in the RFI that a solicitation may follow, and keep the RFI genuinely non-binding, since demanding effort-heavy answers at the RFI stage suppresses exactly the participation you need.
Qualifications then proposals (in many places a request for qualifications, or RFQ in its other meaning, which is why your definitions section matters) shortlists on capability first and prices second. It fits professional services where statute or practice separates qualifications from cost, and it protects small evaluation teams from reading forty full proposals.
Multi-step with demonstrations inserts scripted product demonstrations between written evaluation and award for software purchases. If you use one, publish the script’s scenarios in the solicitation itself so every vendor prepares against the same story.
Every jurisdiction ties vehicles to dollar thresholds: small purchases below one line, informal quotes below another, and formal sealed competition above a third. The discipline this imposes on an author is to estimate the value honestly, never split a purchase to duck under a threshold, and choose the more formal process whenever an estimate sits near a line. Most procurement codes prohibit splitting, and auditors routinely check for it.
This series cannot recite fifty state tables and will not try. What matters for an author is the discipline the thresholds impose: identify your estimated value honestly, resist the temptation to split a purchase to duck under a threshold (your code almost certainly prohibits it and your auditor almost certainly checks), and when an estimate sits near a line, run the more formal process. Nobody has ever been faulted for competing a purchase too openly.
Vendors read the vehicle as a signal of how well an agency understands its own purchase. An RFI that asks focused questions signals an agency worth teaching. An RFP with a clear problem statement and honest evaluation weights signals an award worth pursuing. An RFQ with a tight specification signals a buyer who knows the product. The reverse signals are just as loud, and experienced vendors respond by spending their limited response capacity somewhere else.
Read the same list the other way and the stakes get clearer. An RFI that asks focused questions signals an agency worth teaching. An RFP with a clear problem statement and honest evaluation weights signals an award worth pursuing. An RFQ with a tight specification signals a buyer who knows the product. The reverse signals are just as loud: an RFP that is really a price shootout, or an RFI that demands proposal-grade effort for free, tells experienced vendors to spend their limited response capacity somewhere else. You are competing for the attention of good vendors just as they are competing for your award.
Confirm five things before you commit to a vehicle: the choice matches what you actually know rather than the nearest template, the estimated value has been mapped against local thresholds without splitting, an RFI or market survey comes first when the solution space is unfamiliar, the sole-source process is used honestly when only one source can perform, and the definitions section states what your jurisdiction means by RFP, RFQ, and RFI.
Part 3 takes up the heart of the document, and the place where most solicitations are won or lost before a vendor ever responds: the statement of work.
The Solicitation Author’s Handbook is published by GovSoft as a public resource for offices of government. It is educational information, not legal advice.
