7.1 Project & Program Management (RFP/RFQ/Contracts)

Why Project & Program Management Appears on AICP

Administration and Management is about 6% of the AICP exam—smaller than plan-making or ethics, but high-stakes in practice and in scenarios. A planner who cannot write a clean Request for Proposals (RFP), manage a consultant contract, schedule staff across concurrent plan updates, or track a grant budget will fail implementation even with excellent policy content. This section focuses on project or program management: RFPs, RFQs, grants, budget preparation, managing contracts, scheduling, and staff allocation.

Project management typically targets a bounded effort with a defined end product (neighborhood plan, zoning rewrite, corridor study). Program management stewards ongoing or multi-project workstreams (current planning operations, housing program administration, multi-year grant portfolios). Both require scope control, resource assignment, quality expectations, and transparent status reporting.

Core Project Controls

Strong planning project management answers six questions continuously:

AICP scenarios often ask for the most appropriate next management step—not the prettiest plan idea. Prefer answers that define deliverables, align resources, document decisions, and protect process integrity.

RFPs: Competitive Proposals for Professional Services

A Request for Proposals (RFP) solicits competitive proposals from consultants (or other vendors) for professional services. A well-built RFP typically includes:

1. Purpose and background — why the work exists and how it links to adopted plans or mandates.
2. Scope of work — tasks, products, meetings, data expectations, and exclusions.
3. Schedule — milestones, draft/final dates, and adoption or grant deadlines.
4. Budget envelope or fee structure — fixed fee, not-to-exceed, or cost-plus as policy allows (some jurisdictions prohibit stating a budget; know local procurement rules conceptually).
5. Minimum qualifications and required team roles.
6. Submission requirements — format, page limits, insurance, references.
7. Evaluation criteria and weights — e.g., approach, experience, key personnel, cost, equity/inclusion approach, local knowledge.
8. Procurement and ethics rules — contact limits during the process, conflict-of-interest disclosures, public records notes.

Purpose of the RFP process: define needs clearly, invite fair competition, document a defensible selection, and create a baseline for the eventual contract. It is not a tool to pre-select a favorite firm while performing theater, and it is not free community brainstorming—scope should be clear enough that proposals are comparable.

RFQs: Qualifications First

A Request for Qualifications (RFQ) emphasizes firm and team qualifications rather than a full technical/cost proposal. Agencies use RFQs when:

• They will shortlist firms before inviting full proposals (two-step procurement).
• Scope will be refined with the selected team.
• On-call or multi-project consultant benches are being established.
• Cost is secondary at the first stage under local procurement law.

Exam trap: Treating RFP and RFQ as interchangeable. On AICP, prefer the distinction: proposals respond to scope and method; qualifications packages establish capability and fit.

Grants as Project/Program Funding

Planning offices routinely manage grants (federal, state, regional, foundation). Management duties include:

• Matching scope to the award conditions (eligible costs, period of performance, reporting).
• Tracking match (cash or in-kind) if required.
• Submitting progress and financial reports on time.
• Documenting procurement and labor under grant rules (often stricter than general funds).
• Closing out with final products and residual property/data rules.

Grant-funded projects fail management tests when staff treat the award as unrestricted money, reallocate scope without amendment authority, or miss reporting deadlines that trigger repayment risk.

Budget Preparation for Projects

Budget preparation for a planning project links work breakdown to cost:

• Staff hours by role (project manager, analysts, GIS, engagement specialists) × loaded rates.
• Consultant / contractor line items tied to scope packages.
• Direct costs — printing, translation, venues, surveys, travel, software.
• Contingency sized to risk (public process volatility, data gaps, legal review).
• Phasing aligned with fiscal years and grant periods.

Budgets should match the scope and schedule. A six-month corridor plan with multilingual engagement and full traffic modeling cannot share the same budget as a staff-only policy memo. When elected officials cut budget without cutting scope, the professional response is to renegotiate scope or timeline—not silently underdeliver.

Managing Contracts

After selection, the contract (or professional services agreement) becomes the control document. Contract management includes:

• Confirming scope, schedule, fee, deliverables, and change-order process match the RFP and negotiation outcomes.
• Holding kickoff meetings that align expectations and data handoffs.
• Reviewing invoices against progress (percent complete, deliverable acceptance).
• Enforcing quality standards and requiring rework when products are incomplete.
• Documenting amendments when scope legitimately changes.
• Closing contracts with acceptance of final products and file retention.

Ethical and legal notes: Follow procurement and open-government rules; avoid unauthorized sole-source justifications; do not accept gifts that create conflicts; keep evaluation scoring documentation. Planners managing contracts act as stewards of public resources, not as passive recipients of consultant drafts.

Scheduling and Staff Allocation

Scheduling uses milestones tied to real decision calendars (commission packets, council agendas, environmental review clocks, grant deadlines). Tools range from simple Gantt charts to formal critical-path methods. What matters for AICP is judgment:

• Sequence dependent tasks (existing conditions before alternatives; legal review before adoption draft).
• Build review time for supervisors, attorneys, and partner agencies.
• Protect engagement windows—do not schedule the only public workshop on a major holiday without alternatives.

Staff allocation assigns people to projects based on capacity, skill, development needs, and risk. Over-allocating star staff to every project burns them out and underdevelops others. Under-allocating senior review on high-stakes rezoning or ethics-sensitive work invites error. Program managers rebalance when new applications surge or a plan update slips.

Worked Mini-Scenario

A city needs a form-based code for a station area within 14 months, funded partly by a regional grant requiring quarterly reports and a 20% local match. Strong management: write an RFP with clear tasks (existing conditions, form standards, zoning map, engagement, adoption support), evaluation criteria weighted for form-based experience and equity-centered engagement, select a firm, execute a not-to-exceed contract with monthly progress meetings, build a staff allocation matrix (project manager 0.4 FTE, planner 0.6, GIS 0.2), schedule legal review and hearing dates backward from the grant end date, and track match hours. Weak management: verbal “hire the firm we like,” no written scope, no invoice review, and discovery at month 12 that match documentation is missing.

Common Exam Traps

• Confusing RFQ with RFP
• Expanding scope without budget/schedule adjustment
• Treating grant funds as unrestricted
• Selecting consultants without documented evaluation criteria
• Ignoring staff capacity when accepting new projects

Bottom line for AICP: Project and program management is disciplined delivery—competitive, documented procurement; grant- and contract-aware budgeting; and honest scheduling and staff allocation that protect quality and public funds.