Sample issue
Assembled from The Pursuit's launch coverageThese examples come from The Pursuit's earlier strategy coverage. Each weekly email links to the articles published during the previous week, with a short introduction to help you choose what to read.
- Strategy
Most selections are settled before the RFP posts
Most public A/E work is bought on qualifications, not price. The Brooks Act has required it for federal work since 1972, and most states have QBS statutes of their own. Committees score confidence, and the firms they're confident in are the ones that were in front of the owner a year earlier.
Do you need to act? Pick the three owners you most want to work for and pull their capital improvement plans this month. What they'll build in the next two years is already published.
Our read: A better template won't fix a win rate. The work that decides it happens before there's anything to respond to.
What winning firms do before the release - Strategy
A go/no-go screen is a few honest questions
At most firms the biggest proposal problem isn't quality. It's volume: too many pursuits, qualified too loosely, with the best people spread across work the firm was never going to win. Every loss costs the fully loaded hours of everyone who touched it.
Do you need to act? Before the next kickoff, ask whether you knew it was coming, whether you know the owner, whether you've delivered this project type at this scale, and whether the right team is actually free. If most answers are no, pass.
The whole screen, and the debrief habit - Strategy
Referrals scale with a person, not a firm
The network behind a firm's first decade was usually one founder's career. Contacts retire, agencies reorganize, and a firm that's grown past twenty people carries a payroll that one network was never sized to feed.
Our read: Public work is the one market where a firm can earn its way into consideration without waiting to be referred. Rosters and registrations make you eligible. Reading the CIPs and showing up is what gets you picked.
How to add clients beyond the network