The average architecture firm spends 20 to 40 hours on a single RFP response. For smaller firms — 5 to 50 people — that's a principal or senior associate buried in proposal work instead of doing what they were hired to do: design.
And after all that effort, most firms win less than 30% of the proposals they submit. That means 70% of those hours produce nothing. No project. No revenue. Just a PDF that gets ranked third and filed away.
We've spent the past year talking to architecture firms across Ontario and the broader AEC industry about how they handle proposals. The patterns are remarkably consistent, regardless of firm size or specialization.
1. They miss the deadline — or never see the opportunity.
RFPs are posted across dozens of procurement sites — MERX, Biddingo, SAM.gov, municipal portals, provincial platforms. Most firms rely on one person checking one or two sites manually. Opportunities slip through, or they're discovered too late to submit a competitive response.
2. They start from scratch every time.
Architecture firms do similar work across projects — healthcare, education, municipal, residential. But when a new RFP lands, the response gets written from a blank page. Past proposals live in scattered folders, old Word docs, or a senior associate's memory. There's no system for reusing what worked before.
3. The response doesn't match the evaluation criteria.
RFP evaluation committees score against specific criteria — relevant experience, team qualifications, project approach, fee structure. Firms that bury their strongest points under generic boilerplate lose to firms that map every section to what the evaluator is actually scoring. It's not about who's the best architect. It's about who answers the question the evaluator is asking.
4. They pursue the wrong opportunities.
Not every RFP is worth chasing. If the scope doesn't match your expertise, the insurance requirements exceed your coverage, or the client already has a preferred firm, you're spending 30 hours on a submission you were never going to win. Most firms don't have a structured Go/No-Go process — they chase everything and spread themselves thin.
5. The proposal doesn't sound like the firm.
When proposals are rushed, they default to generic language. The firm's voice, its design philosophy, its unique approach to projects — all of that gets lost. Evaluation committees read dozens of submissions. The ones that stand out are the ones that feel intentional, specific, and authentic to the firm submitting them.
The solution isn't hiring more people to write proposals. It's eliminating the repetitive work that consumes most of the 20-40 hours:
This is what we built ArchFP to do. Not to replace the human judgment that wins projects, but to free up the time and mental bandwidth that your team needs to bring that judgment to every proposal.
We're currently in closed beta with architecture firms across Canada and the US. If your firm is spending too many hours on proposals and winning too few, book a 15-minute demo and see if ArchFP is a fit.