Procurement and RFP submissions

Procurement and purchasing teams, city and county administrators, agencies, higher education institutions, special districts, and nonprofit organizations issuing a solicitation for advisory, assessment, planning, or leadership development work.

It is also the right route for a project that is already funded and scoped, where a written response is what you need next rather than a conversation.

Solicitations for this kind of work usually share a shape. A decision has to be made, or a change has to be implemented, and the organization needs an outside party who can work credibly with executives and elected officials, produce findings that hold up to scrutiny, and stay to see the work land.

Often the scope grows over the life of the work: what began as a single assessment also includes leadership alignment, facilitation, or implementation support, and the buyer needs a partner who can hold more than one workstream.

• Principal-led delivery. The advisor who scopes the work is the advisor who performs it.
• Executive-advisory practice, not a general management consulting practice, with a public-sector record.
• Clearly defined workstreams with agreed deliverables, responsibilities, and timelines.
• Subconsultant and specialist workstreams for primes who need subject-matter depth on a specific scope.
• Written findings that executives and governing bodies can act on.

The capability areas ISA brings to a defined scope. Each is delivered by the principal advisor rather than assigned to a delivery team.

• Executive Counsel & Governance: Judgment and preparation for consequential decisions, organizational complexity, and policy.
• Resource & Investment Prioritization: Budget decision processes, planning, competing priorities, and investment criteria.
• Public Safety & Critical Services: Workforce, risk, service demand, and organizational alignment in critical-service organizations.
• Organizational Effectiveness: Systems, culture, governance, and leadership alignment across complex organizations.
• Data & Performance Intelligence: Measurement, reporting, and decision-support frameworks that turn evidence into action.
• Strategy, Policy & Change: Strategic planning, cross-functional execution, stakeholder engagement, and accountability.

Documented examples of prior professional work, set out as the challenge, the role, the approach, and the result, are on the Experience & Expertise page.

See documented work and experience →

On business eligibility: ISA confirms registration, insurance, certifications, and any codes or registrations your solicitation requires, in writing, against the specific requirement. State the requirement in your submission and ISA will respond to it directly.

Selected examples reflect work performed in previous professional roles, often in collaboration with government departments, executives, and technical teams. They should not be interpreted as completed ISA consulting engagements.

The next step is an email to ISA. Have the following ready where you have them:

• The solicitation or project title and the purchasing entity
• The submission deadline
• The services you are procuring
• The public solicitation URL, if there is one
• The procurement method, and any registrations or qualifications ISA must hold

If something does not apply to your solicitation, leave it out. ISA will ask if anything else is needed.

The button at the top of this page opens the address so you can copy it, or opens your own email app with the details above already laid out.

ISA reviews the solicitation and records a bid or no-bid decision before committing proposal effort. You receive a written response either way, generally within two business days. If ISA pursues the work, the response includes the submission plan and any questions about the scope.

ISA does not submit a response to a solicitation it cannot staff with the advisor who would actually do the work.