Facility Management RFP: Requirements and Scoring Template

The tender has to go out on Friday. Procurement forwards a template last used for a cleaning contract, the facilities director pastes in a list of features copied from three vendor websites, and the scoring sheet weights "ease of use" at 15% with no definition of how anyone will measure it. Six weeks later every vendor scores within a few points of each other and the decision is made on year-one licence price. If you are writing a facility management RFP for property operations software, that outcome is nearly guaranteed unless the requirements and the scoring are built to separate vendors rather than to collect brochures. This article is only about how to write that document. What the software category does, and why occupancy and footfall data sit at its centre, is covered in the complete guide to property operations software.

The template: six sections a facility management RFP needs

Keep the document short and put the length into the evidence you ask for. A structure that works for mixed portfolios:

• 1. Decisions in scope. The three to five operational decisions the platform must improve, written as sentences, not as features.
• 2. Portfolio context. Number and type of assets, existing sensors, cameras and access-control systems per site, and the BI, ERP, CRM and tenant POS environments you run.
• 3. Mandatory requirements. Pass/fail items. A vendor who fails one is not scored further.
• 4. Scored requirements. Each one testable, each one tied to a decision from section 1, each one with the evidence format you expect.
• 5. Commercial submission. A five-year cost model per asset in a table you supply, so bids are comparable line by line.
• 6. Pilot and reference protocol. How shortlisted vendors will be tested on your sites and which production customers you will call.

Writing requirements that discriminate

A requirement that every serious vendor can tick is not a requirement; it is a formality. "Provides occupancy dashboards" tells you nothing. Rewrite it as: "Demonstrate, on a live production account, hourly occupancy per entrance for a multi-entrance site, exported to our BI tool, and show how a customer used it to change a cleaning or security roster." Now the answer has to contain a named site, a screen and a story, and the weak responses become visible.

Anchor every scored requirement to a decision from section 1. Decisions that actually appear in asset management workflows include adjusting staffing schedules to measured hourly occupancy, supporting or challenging a tenant's turnover-rent declaration with independent footfall counts, prioritising capex using space utilisation trends, and renegotiating service charges with evidence of building load by day-part. If a vendor's response cannot connect a capability to one of those sentences, it carries zero weight.

Separate the mandatory list from the scored list and keep the mandatory list to things you genuinely would not sign without: device independence so existing counters and cameras can be retained, a contractual accuracy floor with an audit method, outright ownership of historical data in a documented export format, and a hosting option that satisfies your fund's data governance. Mandatory items are never scored, because scoring them lets a vendor compensate for a missing dealbreaker with a strong demo.

A scoring matrix that survives the steering committee

The weights below are an illustrative starting point, not a standard; adjust them to your decisions. What matters is that each category has an anchored 0 to 4 scale written before responses arrive, so evaluators score evidence rather than impressions.

• Fit to named decisions (25%). 4 = production evidence on a comparable asset for every decision; 2 = evidence for some, slideware for the rest; 0 = feature list only.
• Data accuracy and data health (20%). 4 = contractual minimum, audit method, remediation timeline and live drift monitoring demonstrated; 2 = best-case accuracy quoted, no audit method.
• Integration evidence (15%). 4 = three live integrations with the specific systems you listed, with customer contacts; 2 = API documentation only.
• Five-year cost (20%). Formula-scored: lowest compliant five-year total divided by this bid, multiplied by the available points.
• Portfolio consolidation (10%). 4 = a mixed-hardware portfolio shown in a single comparable view; 2 = per-site views only.
• Implementation, support and exit (10%). Named response times for recalibration after layout changes, out-of-hours installation terms, export without a services engagement.

Two rules keep the matrix honest. Scores must be written with a one-line justification pointing to the page of the response that earned them. And the operations team that will live with the system scores the fit and data categories; procurement scores cost. Mixing those roles is how "ease of use" ends up at 15% with nobody able to explain it.

Clauses to request in writing, not in the sales meeting

Ask vendors to confirm, in the response, which of the following they will accept as contract language. The answers are usually more revealing than the demo.

• Accuracy floor. "The supplier commits to a contractual minimum counting accuracy of [X]%, validated by manual count against sensor count across at least three day-parts per entrance, with remediation within [N] working days if a site falls below threshold." Vemco Group, for example, commits to a minimum of 96% in contract, with typical real-world performance of 98 to 99% where lighting, entrance layout and visitor behaviour allow. A vendor who will only quote the best-case figure is telling you where the risk sits.
• Device independence. The platform ingests data from existing counters, cameras and access-control feeds, and hardware for new sites is selected on merit and price site by site. This clause decides who holds the stronger hand at every renewal.
• Data health. Automated monitoring that flags drift after a tenant fit-out moves an entrance or a display appears in a doorway, with a defined recalibration process. Ask to see it on a live account.
• Integration. Named production integrations with your BI, ERP, CRM and tenant POS systems. Vemco's VemFusion layer connects counting and occupancy data into those environments; whichever vendor you evaluate, the test is production references, not documentation.
• Hosting. If a joint-venture agreement or fund policy requires data residency or a private cloud, the option appears on the order form.
• Exit. Historical data is owned outright, exportable in a documented format, without a professional-services engagement.

Making cost comparable before you score it

Licence fees are typically a third to half of true cost, so a scoring formula applied to year-one licence rewards the vendor who hides the most in later years. Supply a five-year table per asset with fixed rows: hardware, cabling and installation including out-of-hours access; commissioning and accuracy validation per site; integration build and the maintenance effort when your ERP or BI tool upgrades; recalibration after fit-outs and tenant churn; and exit costs covering export and de-installation. Require every row to be filled, with "included" written explicitly where it applies. Only the five-year total enters the formula.

The pilot as a scored exhibit

Write the pilot protocol into section 6 so every shortlisted vendor is tested the same way: your hardest site, not your easiest, with a shared lobby and multiple entrances; independent manual counts across different day-parts; and one report built end to end by your own operations team rather than the vendor's engineer. Pilot results feed the fit and data categories of the matrix. Vendors operating at genuine scale, such as Vemco counting more than 60 million people every day across 55,000+ installations, have had to solve drift and consolidation operationally, and the pilot is where that shows or fails to.

Frequently asked questions

How many requirements should a facility management RFP contain? Fewer than most templates suggest. Twenty well-written, decision-linked requirements with defined evidence will separate vendors far better than 120 features that everyone ticks. Put the effort into the evidence format and the anchored scale, not into the length of the list.

Should mandatory requirements also receive a score? No. A mandatory item is a gate: pass and proceed to scoring, fail and stop. Scoring them allows a vendor with a strong demo to outweigh a missing dealbreaker such as data ownership or an accuracy floor.

How do we score pricing fairly when vendors structure it differently? Supply the cost table yourself, with fixed rows across five years and one asset type, and refuse incomplete submissions. Then apply a formula to the five-year total only, so a low licence fee cannot mask hardware, integration or exit costs.

If you are drafting the requirements or scoring sheet for property operations software and want to see which clauses a vendor will accept in writing, from a contractual accuracy floor to sensor-agnostic deployment and BI and ERP integration, talk to the Vemco Group team at vemcogroup.com/contact-us and bring your draft document.