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Qualifications-based selection: how to win engineering work when price is not scored

Written by Ian, founder of Good Stuart. Reviewed September 2026. About the team

Qualifications-based selection is the procurement method public owners are required to use for architecture, engineering, surveying and related services under the federal Brooks Act and the mini-Brooks statute in most states. The owner ranks firms on competence and qualifications, without price, and then negotiates a fee with the top-ranked firm. If they cannot agree, the owner ends negotiations formally and goes to the second firm.

Firms coming from private work find this backwards, and it costs them. They put a rate table in the SOQ and are rejected. They write a firm history where the evaluators wanted project sheets. They treat selection as the win and arrive at negotiation without an overhead audit or a work plan. This guide is the sequence, the scoring, the document and the negotiation, step by step. It assumes the how to get government engineering and surveying contracts pillar as background.

On this page

The short version

QBS is statutory: 40 U.S.C. 1101 federally, 23 CFR 172.7 for federally funded highway work at the state and local level, and state laws such as Texas Government Code 2254.004, Florida 287.055 and North Carolina G.S. 143-64.31.
The sequence is announce, submit SOQs, shortlist, interview, rank, negotiate with number one, and only then contract. Price enters at negotiation and nowhere earlier.
Evaluators score comparable projects and the people who did them, tied together in the SF 330 Section G matrix. A project the named people did not work on scores nothing.
Florida requires evaluation of no fewer than three firms and ranking of at least three; most states require a shortlist of three to five and an interview.
Negotiation is where money is made or lost: FAR Part 31 overhead on federally funded work, a fixed fee normally at or under 15 percent of labor plus indirects, and an owner's independent estimate compared to your hours line by line.

The legal basis, and where it applies

The rule exists because Congress and state legislatures decided that design services bought on low price produce expensive construction. The statutes differ in detail but not in structure.

Jurisdiction	Authority	Key requirement
Federal agencies	40 U.S.C. 1101 to 1104; FAR Subpart 36.6	Select on demonstrated competence and qualifications; negotiate fair and reasonable fee starting with the most qualified firm
State and local, federal highway funds	23 CFR 172.7	Price shall not be used as a factor in evaluation, ranking and selection; cost proposals and rates prohibited as criteria
Texas	Government Code 2254.004	Select the most highly qualified, negotiate; if unable, formally end negotiations and go to the next most qualified
Florida	Section 287.055 (CCNA)	Public announcement; evaluate and rank no fewer than three firms; negotiate in order; continuing contracts capped at 7.5 million dollars construction cost and 500,000 dollars per study
North Carolina	G.S. 143-64.31	Select without regard to fee; local governments may exempt small projects by resolution
California	Government Code 4526	Demonstrated competence and professional qualifications at fair and reasonable prices; local procedures adopted under it

Two boundaries. Small purchases are often exempt: 23 CFR 172.7 allows a simplified procedure under the federal simplified acquisition threshold, and several states let local governments exempt projects under a stated fee. And services outside the statutory definition can be bought by ordinary RFP with price scored.

The sequence, step by step

Public announcement. The owner advertises the need, the scope, the evaluation criteria and their weights, and the submission requirements. Florida requires public announcement above its thresholds; most states require a newspaper or portal notice with a minimum period.
Statements of qualifications submitted. Usually an SF 330 or a state equivalent, with page limits. No price.
Evaluation and shortlist. A committee scores the SOQs against the published criteria and shortlists three to five firms. Florida requires no fewer than three.
Interviews or presentations. The shortlist presents to the committee, usually with a fixed time and standardized questions. Many owners rescore after the interview; some score it separately.
Ranking. The committee ranks the shortlisted firms in order of preference. The ranking is usually posted and, in many states, approved by the governing board before negotiation begins.
Negotiation with the top-ranked firm. Scope, hours, fee and terms. If the parties cannot agree, the owner formally terminates and moves to the second-ranked firm; it may not return to the first.
Contract execution. Board approval, insurance, notice to proceed.

Announcement to notice to proceed commonly takes four to seven months at a city or county and longer at a state DOT. And because the ranking is public before any contract exists, a second-ranked firm knows exactly how close it came and should request its scores; see how to request a debrief after losing a bid.

What the evaluators actually score

The federal factors in FAR 36.602-1 are the template: professional qualifications, specialized experience and technical competence, capacity to accomplish the work in the required time, past performance on cost control, quality and schedule, location, and any other criteria the owner states. State and local rubrics rearrange the weights. What the points reward in practice:

Criterion	Scores well	Scores poorly
Comparable projects	Same scope, similar size, same owner type, completed within five years, construction cost stated, the named team on them	Impressive projects in a different scope; projects the named team did not work on
Key personnel	Licensed in the state, role on the comparable projects, percentage available to this contract	A principal on every pursuit who will not do the work; unlicensed leads
Capacity	Staff count by discipline, current backlog, subconsultant commitments in writing	Assertions of capacity with no numbers
Past performance	Owner evaluations, references with phone numbers who answer, change-order rates on the comparable projects	Testimonials; references from private clients only
Approach	The owner's specific issues named and addressed: the permit that will be hard, the utility conflict, the funding deadline	A methodology that could have gone to any owner
Participation goals	Certified subs with named scope and percentage	A certified sub listed with no defined work

Evaluators score six to twelve SOQs in a few days by finding the answer to each criterion quickly. Use the owner's criteria as your headings, in the owner's order, with the dates, dollar amounts and names at the front of each section.

Building the SOQ

Work backward from the matrix. In an SF 330, Section G ties each key person in Section E to each example project in Section F, and evaluators read it first because it exposes a padded submission in seconds.

Choose the team for this owner, including subconsultants for disciplines you lack and for participation goals. Get written commitments.
Choose the ten Section F projects the team actually did that best match the scope. If the owner is a water district, a highway bridge is a wasted slot. Each sheet: owner, contact, year completed, construction cost, firm's role, and a paragraph on relevance to this scope.
Write the Section E resumes to the projects, with license numbers, and state each person's role on the Section F projects so Section G is consistent.
Write Section H to the owner's criteria, in order, with the specific issues of this project or this on-call program. If the owner published a CIP, name the projects in it you expect to be assigned and say how you would approach them.
Complete the forms: certificate of authorization, non-collusion, conflict of interest, DBE commitments, insurance, and every addendum acknowledged.

The interview follows the same logic: send the people in Section E, and bring the project manager who will run the work. Committees mark down a firm whose presenters are not on the resumes. See how to respond to an RFP and how to build an RFP compliance matrix.

The negotiation, and the cost data behind it

Ranking first entitles you to negotiate, not to a contract. The owner arrives with a scope, an independent estimate of hours, and on federally funded work a set of cost rules.

Overhead. Under 23 CFR 172.11, your indirect cost rate must comply with the FAR Part 31 cost principles and be established by a cognizant agency audit or a CPA audit the agency concurs with, updated to your annual accounting period. The owner must accept the cognizant rate and may not negotiate it down. A firm without an audited rate may be limited to a provisional rate or excluded from cost-plus work.
Fixed fee. The same section treats fee above 15 percent of direct labor plus indirects as requiring exceptional justification. Expect 10 to 15 percent.
Design fee cap. On federal work, the fee for producing designs, plans, drawings and specifications may not exceed 6 percent of estimated construction cost.
Hours. The owner's independent estimate is compared to your work plan task by task. A detailed breakdown by task, discipline and classification is the only thing that moves the owner's number.

Local lump-sum work is simpler: a scope, a fee, a not-to-exceed, hourly rates for extra services. Even there, come with a task-level estimate, because the owner's project manager has one and will use it. See Not-to-exceed (NTE).

When it goes wrong: protests and the second-ranked firm

Because the ranking is public before the contract exists, QBS produces protests, and most of them lose. Grounds that succeed are procedural: a scoring criterion applied that was not published, a conflict of interest on the committee, a firm ranked that did not meet a stated minimum, or price considered where the statute forbids it. Disagreement with the committee's judgment does not succeed. Timelines are short, often three to ten days from the posting of the ranking. See how to file a bid protest.

The more useful outcome of second place is the score sheet. Request it with the committee's comments and compare it to the winner's SOQ, usually a public record after award. The difference between first and second is often one criterion, and the sheet tells you which.

Common questions

Can the owner ask for fees at any point before ranking?

Not under a qualifications-based statute. North Carolina G.S. 143-64.31 says selection is without regard to fee, 23 CFR 172.7 prohibits cost proposals and rates as evaluation criteria, and Texas 2254.004 puts negotiation after selection of the most highly qualified firm. Some owners collect a sealed fee envelope that is opened only after ranking; read the instructions.

How many firms are shortlisted?

Usually three to five. Florida's CCNA requires evaluation and ranking of no fewer than three firms, and most other owners follow a similar practice with an interview round.

What happens if negotiation with the top firm fails?

The owner formally terminates negotiations and begins with the second-ranked firm, and may not go back to the first. In practice owners rarely terminate; they use the possibility to hold your hours to their independent estimate. Arrive with a task-level work plan you can defend.

Does QBS apply to a city spending only its own money?

In most states, yes, through the state mini-Brooks statute, although many allow local governments to exempt small projects below a fee threshold by resolution. Check the state statute and the city's own procurement code; if the project has federal transportation funding, 23 CFR 172 applies regardless.

Do I need an audited overhead rate to negotiate?

For federally funded cost-plus work through a state DOT, yes, under 23 CFR 172.11 and the AASHTO audit guide. For local lump-sum contracts, usually not. If you intend to pursue DOT work, start the FAR Part 31 audit a year before you need it.