Choose SOQ projects by matching them to the evaluation criteria, not by picking your firm's largest or most recent work. Rank each candidate on scope, size, client type, and recency against what the RFQ actually asks for, then include only the projects you can prove are relevant.
That sounds obvious written down. It is not what happens under deadline, when the projects that make the cut are the ones someone remembers, the ones a principal is proud of, or the ones cheapest to produce. None of those is a criterion. Here is the procedure instead.
Start With the Criteria, Not Your Project List
The wrong order is to open the project library and ask which of these looks good. The right order is to read the evaluation criteria first, write down what the agency says it will score under relevant experience, and only then go looking.
Agencies are usually specific, and the specificity is the instruction. "Similar scope and complexity, completed within the last seven years." "Two projects demonstrating FHWA-funded design." Each sentence eliminates most of your library before you have opened it. Selection is subtraction.
This is a different decision from whether to chase the pursuit at all. Go/no-go asks whether you belong in the competition. Project selection assumes that is settled and asks which evidence you put forward.
What Actually Makes a Project Relevant
Relevance is not one property. It is four, and most candidates score well on some and poorly on others.
| Dimension | What the evaluator is asking | What weak looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | This technical work, or adjacent work? | A roadway project offered for a drainage scope |
| Size | Close enough in value and complexity to compare? | A $90M landmark offered against a $4M rehabilitation |
| Client type | Do they know how an agency like ours procures? | Private-sector work offered to a municipal client |
| Recency | Current standards, and mostly the same people? | A 2014 project under a seven-year relevance window |
The reason relevance outscores impressiveness is procedural rather than aesthetic. An evaluator scoring relevant project experience has to defend that score to a committee. A smaller project matching the scope gives them something defensible to write in the justification column. A large, famous project in another sector gives them nothing.
Score every candidate on all four. The one that earns the slot is rarely strongest on any single dimension. It is the one with no weak dimension.
How to Rank the Candidates
A method that takes twenty minutes and beats memory. Start by listing every plausible candidate, unsure ones included.
- Score each on the four dimensions, high, medium, or low. This is where the principal's favorite reveals itself as a medium on scope and a low on client type.
- Cut anything with two lows. It will not survive an evaluator's read no matter how well the sheet is written.
- Check the spread. If your top five share one client type, you are proving one thing five times and leaving a criterion unanswered.
- Confirm you can prove each one. A reachable reference, a defensible contract value, an outcome with a number. A project you cannot substantiate is a liability, not evidence.
- Check who is on them. Projects your proposed key personnel actually worked on outscore equally relevant projects staffed by people who have since left.
That last step is the one teams skip, and it is where a package quietly splits in two: the firm's experience and the team's experience become separate claims, and an attentive evaluator notices.
What to Do When Nothing Is a Perfect Match
Most of the time you will not have a clean match. This is where selection gets real.
Split the project instead of discarding it. A large mixed-scope project can be offered for its relevant component. If the RFQ wants stormwater and you have a corridor reconstruction that included a detention system, that is a stormwater reference with a roadway context. Say so in those terms.
Make the parallel argument explicitly. If your closest evidence is adjacent rather than identical, name the transfer: same permitting authority, same soil conditions, same phasing under live traffic. Evaluators will not build that argument for you, and an unexplained near-miss reads as a miss.
Prefer the smaller exact match. Given one project that is too small but exactly on scope and another that is the right size but the wrong work, take the exact one and address the size difference directly.
Notice when the answer is that you are short. If three of five slots are stretches, the pursuit sits outside your demonstrated experience. That is a go/no-go signal arriving late, and worth acting on rather than writing around.
Three Defaults That Cost Points
The biggest project. Size only helps when the RFQ asks for comparable magnitude. When it does not, a large project mostly demonstrates that your firm does other work.
The most recent project. Recency is one dimension of four. The newest project in the library often has the least outcome data, because it has not been finished long enough to have measurable results.
The project whose sheet already exists. This is the honest one, and it is a capacity problem wearing a judgment problem's clothes. When a tailored sheet costs three hours to build, the project with a finished sheet has a three-hour head start on every better-matched project in the library. Nobody decides to submit weaker evidence. It becomes the affordable option at 6 p.m. two days before the deadline.
That last default is the only one caused by process rather than judgment, which makes it the one worth engineering away. When project records are kept as reusable structured data rather than finished Word documents, the right project costs about what the convenient one costs, and selection goes back to being a judgment call. Your team still picks. The picking is no longer priced by reformatting.
From there the work shifts to writing each sheet so the relevance is visible rather than implied, and to keeping the specific evidence on the page an evaluator actually reads.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many projects should go in an SOQ?
Follow the RFQ exactly when it states a number, because exceeding it is a compliance risk and some evaluators score only the first ones listed. When the RFQ is silent, four to six works for most SOQs. A tight, highly relevant five outscores a padded nine.
Should you include a project that is not finished?
Yes, if it is relevant and you are transparent about status. Ongoing work demonstrates current capability and current staffing, which can be an advantage. State the completion percentage and the phase, and give a reference who can speak to performance so far rather than to a final outcome.
What if the same project fits several pursuits?
That is normal and expected. The underlying facts stay fixed while the emphasis changes for each pursuit, so the same corridor project can lead with drainage for one RFQ and with traffic staging for another. What must not change between submittals is the contract value, the dates, or your firm's stated role.