RFP Pilot — Win disaster-recovery bids faster

The disasters aren't slowing down — and the bid windows keep shrinking.

More events, on shorter fuses, means more solicitations your team has to answer faster than ever.

403

billion-dollar U.S. disasters since 1980

$2.9 trillion in damage

19/yr

billion-dollar disasters now (2015–24)

up from ~3/yr in the 1980s

19 days

average time between billion-dollar disasters

down from 82 days in the 1980s

$149B

average annual disaster cost (2020–24)

vs $22B/yr in the 1980s

Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather & Climate Disasters — 1980–2024 dataset.

More disasters means more solicitations — issued on shorter and shorter fuses. In disaster recovery, an agency often needs a vendor in days, not weeks. The firms that respond fastest and most accurately win the work; every blown deadline or non-responsive bid is revenue that walks out the door. A complex pursuit can cost $20–60K in proposal-team and SME labor, and a single recovery contract runs into the tens of millions. Against that, a tool that turns a raw solicitation into a compliant first draft in hours pays for itself on the first bid it helps you win — or even just get to bid on.

The money behind the RFPs is enormous — and it all gets procured.

Every allocation is just the starting gun: grantees then procure the firms that do the work.

$448B+

federal disaster appropriations

FY2015–FY2024

600+

open FEMA disaster declarations

recovery runs a decade-plus

$111B+

CDBG-DR appropriated since 1993

~$65B of it since 2016

655 days

declaration → CDBG-DR allocation

Puerto Rico earthquakes

Sources: GAO-25-108216; CRS IF13221 (CDBG-DR); Bipartisan Policy Center. Figures are public federal data.

We speak your programs

Built around the funding that drives recovery RFPs

RFP Pilot is tuned to the solicitations these programs generate — not just generic government contracting.

HUD

CDBG-DR

Long-term recovery block grants — the single biggest driver of recovery consulting procurement. Housing, infrastructure, and economic revitalization programs, each with its own RFPs.

FEMA

Public Assistance (PA)

Rebuilds public infrastructure and reimburses response costs. Categories A–G, plus §406 mitigation and §428 fixed-cost alternative procedures.

FEMA · §404

Hazard Mitigation (HMGP)

Post-disaster, statewide mitigation funded as a share of total federal assistance — a steady pipeline of planning and engineering scopes.

HUD

CDBG-MIT

The mitigation sibling to CDBG-DR — spending on reducing future risk: buyouts, drainage, resilient infrastructure, and floodplain planning.

See the FEMA PA glossary →

Where you come in

How recovery money becomes a consultant contract

Disaster declared

Presidential major disaster declaration under the Stafford Act.

→

Funds allocated

Congress appropriates; HUD or FEMA allocates to the grantee.

→

Grantee & subrecipients

States, tribes, cities, and agencies stand up programs.

→

Consultants procured

Each program is an RFP — where your firm competes.

And every one of those solicitations is compliance-heavy. A recovery response has to prove command of a stack of federal rules at once — 2 CFR 200 procurement standards, Duplication of Benefits (Stafford Act §312), Davis-Bacon prevailing wage, environmental review (NEPA / 24 CFR Part 58), and HUD's cross-cutting requirements (fair housing, Section 3, URA). Misstate any of them and you signal audit exposure to the evaluator. RFP Pilot surfaces these as requirements and drafts to them — grounded in your record, never invented. See the full compliance checklist →

How it works

From a 72-hour-fuse PDF to a submission-ready draft

One flow, from the moment the solicitation drops to the version your SMEs approve.

Ingest

Drop in the raw RFP, RFI, or questionnaire — exactly as posted, in whatever format it arrived.

Extract

Every requirement, question, and mandatory item is pulled into a traceable compliance checklist.

Draft

Grounded first responses are written from your own past proposals and content — never fabricated.

Review

Your team and SMEs sharpen and approve a strong draft instead of starting from a blank page.

Requirement extraction

Catch the gate that disqualifies you

Recovery solicitations bury pass/fail requirements deep in the boilerplate — a bond threshold, an affidavit, a proof of authority. RFP Pilot surfaces every one, loudly, before it costs you the bid.

Extracts requirements from FEMA/CDBG-DR and state formats
Flags mandatory, pass/fail gates as blocking — at the top
Handles the messy, inconsistent short-fuse PDF as-is

Compliance checklist — CDBG-DR services RFP

§3.2 Relevant CDBG-DR / recovery experience

Narrative · maps to Technical Vol. §2

§3.4 Program management & closeout approach

Narrative · maps to Technical Vol. §3

§5.1 110% performance bond Pass / Fail

Stated once · miss it = disqualified

§5.4 E-Verify affidavit Pass / Fail

Signed return form required

Drafted response — §3.2

§3.2 · Relevant recovery experience

"Following Hurricane Ida, our firm administered CDBG-DR housing recovery for a state agency, managing intake, eligibility, and HUD-compliant closeout across…"

Past Perf: Ida CDBG-DR housingCapability Statement v4

90% grounded

No direct experience with this specific program — flagged for review and pivoted to genuine adjacent recovery work, not invented.

Grounded drafting

Compliant, and true to your record

One fabricated claim can sink a bid — and your standing with the agency. Every drafted answer traces to the past performance it came from, with a confidence signal, so your team competes fast without competing loose.

Answers cite the real recovery work they're built on
A confidence signal points reviewers to the soft spots
Flags gaps honestly instead of inventing experience

The differentiator

It stays honest.

The fear with AI is that it confidently makes something up — and one fabricated claim can sink a bid and your standing with the buyer. RFP Pilot answers from your content or flags the gap. Where your firm hasn't done something, it says so and pivots to genuine adjacent experience. That's the whole point.

RFP Pilot answering a question honestly — it states the firm does not perform the requested work and recommends partnering with a specialist, instead of fabricating capability, and shows a source link and confidence score.

Real output from RFP Pilot. Asked about work the firm doesn't do, it answers "No… we recommend partnering with a specialist" — and shows its source and a confidence score, instead of inventing capability.

Questions

The things recovery teams ask first

Can it really keep up with a short fuse?

That's the entire point. RFP Pilot reads the raw solicitation the moment it drops and turns it into a requirements checklist plus grounded first drafts in hours — so your team spends the window sharpening a strong draft, not building one overnight.

Does it fabricate experience to make us look good?

No. It drafts only from your firm's real past performance, cites what each answer is built on, and flags gaps where your record is thin instead of inventing experience.

Does it understand CDBG-DR / FEMA requirements?

It's built for exactly these — the recovery-specific compliance gates, HUD cross-cutting requirements, and state emergency-procurement quirks that general-purpose proposal tools don't handle.

What happens to our data and past proposals?

Your content stays yours, under a mutual NDA, used only to ground your own drafts.

When the disaster clock starts, win the bid — not the all-nighter.