When you need to find a contractor to complete a project, there’s no doubt that issuing an industry-wide RFP, or request for proposal, is one of the best ways to find those contractors. Any contractor worth its salt will be monitoring the industry for issued RFPs, and this is the best way to get a lot of service options in a short amount of time.

If you have a solar energy requirement and are trying to figure out how to write a solar request for proposals, then you’re in the right place.

In this article, we’ll teach you exactly how to do that in a few easy steps

Understand Power Requirements

The first and most important thing to keep in mind as you embark on this journey of writing an RFP is to ensure that you have a solid understanding of your power requirements. This will easily be the most significant parameter across the project.

Thus, you should have input from all of the stakeholders in the company who have a vested interest in the applied use of the collected solar energy. What is the wattage required? Will the wattage be required all day or only during the night? When should it be harvested? All these questions and more will need to be answered.

Find out All Parameters

Once you have a good handle on what the solar energy power requirements are, it’s time to get a good understanding of the other parameters that govern the project.

One such parameter may be the materials used in the solar energy collector. Some environments are sensitive to particular materials. So if a contractor only uses those materials to produce solar energy equipment, then they need to know that before they submit their proposal.

Another important parameter is the amount of space that will be allotted to the solar equipment. As you know, one of the most important factors in determining how much energy a solar collector can produce is the surface area of the equipment. The greater the surface area, the easier it is to collect more energy. If you have high energy requirements but low space availability, that will introduce additional complications that contractors need to be aware of.

Do Your Industry Research

Before you write your RFP, you should do some research into the industry, particularly if you don’t have a good understanding of the solar energy market already. You should know what the average cost is for a project like the one that you need completed, which will allow you to rank incoming proposals accordingly.

Know Your Target Audience

Once you have a good understanding of the industry, you’ll have a better understanding of the type of contractor that you’re looking for. in other words, you’ll be able to know who the target audience for your RFP is.

For instance, if you know that your type of project is typically done by small-scale contractors that have only one location in your area, then you know to write your proposal with that target contractor in mind. You’ll use language that will make it clear that you’re looking for a smaller contractor and that you don’t want to deal with a large corporation.

Provide Concrete Guidelines for Proposals

If you want to receive high-quality proposals, you have to issue a high-quality RFP. And the basic tenet behind high-quality RFPs is detail. The more detailed you can make it, the better that contractors will understand your requirements and be able to present proposals that are relevant to the project that you need completed.

That’s why it’s so important that you provide very strict, concrete guidelines as to what you want the output to look like. The contractor can get creative with how they deliver those requirements, but they need to know exactly what they need to deliver. Otherwise, they’ll never be able to accurately estimate cost or timeline.

Define Deliverables

The last thing you want to happen on a solar project is a sequence of massive delays. That’s why it’s important that you define deliverables and milestones within the RFP itself. That way, the contractor knows ahead of time what is expected of them at each date. This will enable the project manager to stick to deadlines in a more timely fashion.

Security and Compliance Requirements

If you work for a big corporation, chances are that your security and compliance departments don’t allow you to work with just anyone in the world. Your contractors will most likely have to undergo a stringent security review before they are allowed to be brought on board as a bu

By detailing your security and compliance requirements ahead of time on the RFP, you can save a lot of time and headache down the road. You can be sure that you won’t hire the wrong contractor that doesn’t meet those requirements, and the contractor you decide with gets extra time to start gathering documentation together to prove that they meet your requirements.

Revise and Edit

Before you send your RFP out into the world, it’s a good idea to get a second pair of eyes on it. Once you’ve converted it to PDF format (use this handy-dandy guide on how to convert PDF to Word), share it with colleagues who know about the project and let them give you their feedback.

They may say that a couple of parts aren’t very clear or that you need to include more detail somewhere else. You can make those changes before the RFP is irreversibly out on the market.

Write Your Best Solar Request for Proposals

There you have it — now you have a great understanding of how to write a solar request for proposals. As long as you follow the steps listed in this article, you should be able to knock out a detailed, high-quality RFP that will attract great proposals from contractors in no time at all.

For more business advice, be sure to take some time to check out the rest of the articles on the website!