The SF-330, Section by Section

The SF-330 is the standardized form federal agencies use to collect qualifications from architect-engineer firms competing for federal A-E contracts. It exists because federal A-E procurement is governed by the Brooks Act (40 U.S.C. §§ 1101-1104), which requires agencies to select firms on the basis of demonstrated competence and qualifications and only then negotiate a fair and reasonable price with the most qualified firm. Price is not part of the initial selection. The SF-330 is the form that carries the qualifications evidence the evaluators use.

The form replaced the older SF-254 and SF-255 in 2004 and consolidated what used to be two separate submissions into a single document with two parts. Part I is contract-specific and carries the team, the projects, and the approach for the procurement at hand. Part II is firm-level and reusable across submissions. GSA, the Corps of Engineers, NAVFAC, the VA, the Department of State, and most other federal agencies that procure design services use the same form, with agency-specific instructions sometimes layered on top.

For a general contractor leading a design-build team, the SF-330 shows up in two contexts. On a federal A-E procurement directly, where the GC is not the bidder. On a federal design-build procurement, where the GC is the prime and the SF-330 is part of the bid response for the A-E partners on the team. The mechanics of the form are the same in either case. The reason it matters to a GC is that the SF-330 content has to come from the design partners and has to be assembled alongside the rest of the bid response under the same deadline pressure.

Section A is the first page of Part I. It carries the contract title, the contract number where applicable, the location, the prime firm’s information, and the names of any subconsultants on the team for this specific contract. It looks like a coversheet, and contractors sometimes treat it that way. It is more than that.

The contract title has to match the solicitation

The contract title field on Section A has to match the title the agency used in the solicitation, including punctuation and capitalization where the agency was specific about it. A submission with a contract title that drifts from the solicitation reads as carelessness on the first page the evaluator opens. It does not necessarily disqualify the bid, but it creates a bad first impression in a procurement where first impressions are weighted.

The team list defines the procurement

Section A lists the prime firm and every subconsultant on the team for this contract. The list is what the evaluator uses to calibrate the rest of the form. Section B (key personnel) has to come from the firms listed in Section A. Section D (resumes) has to come from the personnel listed in Section B. Section E (example projects) names the firms involved on each project, and those names have to match the Section A list.

The implication is that the Section A team list is not a starting point that gets refined as the submission is built. It is the structural commitment the rest of the form is anchored to. Adding a subconsultant after Section D resumes are drafted means revisiting Section A and Section B and rechecking the consistency. Removing a subconsultant means pulling resumes and project examples that were built around that firm.

DUNS, UEI, and current registration status

Section A asks for the firm’s identification, which now means the UEI rather than the DUNS number. Each firm on the team has to have a current SAM.gov registration. A firm whose registration has lapsed cannot be on the team for the procurement. This is one of the reasons the team has to be confirmed early in the bid window: discovering that a key subconsultant’s SAM registration expired six months ago is not something to find out the day before submission.

Section B is the key personnel list

Section B names the proposed key personnel for the contract, the role each will play, and the firm each is associated with. The personnel listed here are the same ones whose resumes appear in Section D. The roles are typically the ones the solicitation identifies as key (project manager, principal-in-charge, lead designer, lead engineer, technical specialists), though some procurements add agency-specific roles on top.

Section B is short on its own page, but it is the index the evaluator uses to navigate Section D. A clean Section B with role names that match the solicitation, firms that match Section A, and personnel that match the Section D resumes is the connective tissue that makes the rest of the form readable. A messy Section B (titles that do not match the solicitation, firms abbreviated differently than in Section A, personnel listed in one place that show up missing in another) signals that the submission was assembled in a hurry.

Section C is the organization chart

Section C shows the team structure for this contract, including how the prime firm and subconsultants relate to one another and how the key personnel from Section B fit into the structure. It is a one-page graphic. The graphic conventions vary across firms; some use a traditional org chart with reporting lines, some use a project-team layout with disciplines grouped, some use a hybrid.

The two things evaluators look for on Section C are clarity (the chart can be read quickly and the structure is unambiguous) and consistency with the rest of the form (every name on the chart appears in Section B, every firm on the chart appears in Section A, the reporting structure makes sense for the project type). Section C is also where some agencies expect to see specific subconsultant roles (DBE participants, specialty designers, commissioning agents) called out explicitly.

Section D is the resumes of the key personnel listed in Section B. Each resume sits on its own page and follows the standard format the form prescribes: name, role, firm, education, registration, years of experience with the current firm, total years of relevant experience, and a section for the relevant project examples. The format is fixed. The substance is where the scoring happens.

The relevant projects on the resume are not the most impressive ones

The resume’s relevant-projects subsection is the part evaluators read most carefully. The instinct is to list the most impressive projects the person has worked on. The projects that score best are usually the ones most similar to the contract being competed for, even if those projects are smaller or less prestigious than other work on the resume. The evaluator is reading the resume to assess whether this person has done work like this work, not whether this person has done impressive work in general.

Three to five projects per resume is the typical range. Each project should include the owner, the location, the project type, the role the person played, and the relevant scope. Generic descriptions (“provided architectural services on a federal building”) score worse than specific ones (“served as project architect on the GSA Region 5 federal courthouse renovation, leading the design team through the historic preservation review and the courtroom-acoustics specialty consultant”).

The years-of-experience numbers have to be defensible

Section D asks for total years of relevant experience and years with the current firm. Both numbers should be defensible against the resume’s stated career history. A person showing 25 years of relevant experience on a 30-year career has accounted for the 5 years that were not relevant; a person showing 30 years of relevant experience on a 25-year career is making a claim the evaluator can disprove with a calendar.

Registration matters where the role requires it

Some roles require professional registration in the state where the project is located. The evaluator looks at the registration line on Section D to confirm the listed person is registered in the relevant state. A lead architect on a project in Ohio whose Section D shows registration only in Texas is a problem. Reciprocity exists in many states, but the evaluator is not expected to research it.

Section E is the most important section on Part I. The form allows up to ten example projects, each on its own page. Section E is where the team demonstrates that the people listed in Sections B and D have actually done work like the work being procured. Most evaluation scoring on a Brooks Act selection comes down to Section E. The other sections matter, but Section E is where the procurement is won or lost.

Project selection is the central decision

The team picks up to ten projects that demonstrate qualifications for the specific contract being competed for. The selection is the central decision in the SF-330 production. The criteria the evaluator uses are written into the solicitation: project type, scale, delivery method, geographic relevance, agency, and timing. A project that scored well on a courthouse procurement may not be the right pick on a hospital procurement, even if both are federal and both are similar size.

Most procurements weight relevance heavily. A project that is exactly the same type and scale as the contract being competed for, completed within the past five years by the same team that is being proposed, scores higher than a larger project that is a different type or that was completed by a different team. Relevance is not just project type; it is also whether the people listed in Section B were the people on that project.

Each project page has its own structure

Each Section E page includes the project title, owner, location, completion date (or status if the project is ongoing), original construction cost, the role each team member played on the project, and the description of the relevant scope. The form prescribes the layout. The evaluator reads dozens of these in a single procurement, so consistency across the ten projects helps; an evaluator who has to recalibrate to a different layout on every page is harder to keep oriented.

The role-on-this-project field is high-leverage

The “role of the team member on this project” field is the connective tissue between Section E and Section D. It tells the evaluator that the people whose resumes appeared in Section D actually worked on the projects in Section E in the roles they are being proposed for. A Section E entry that lists three resume names with the role “team member” is less convincing than one that lists three resume names with specific roles (“project manager,” “lead designer,” “specifications writer”). Specificity in this field is what makes Section E and Section D reinforce each other.

Project descriptions should reference evaluation factors

Each Section E description is an opportunity to reference the evaluation factors the agency has called out. If the solicitation lists “experience with historic preservation” as an evaluation factor, the project descriptions should mention historic preservation explicitly where it applied. If the solicitation lists “experience with phased renovation in occupied facilities,” the descriptions should mention phased renovation in occupied facilities where it applied. The evaluator is mapping projects to evaluation factors. Making that mapping easier is part of the production work.

Section F is the experience matrix

Section F summarizes the team’s experience by mapping the projects listed in Section E to the work types or evaluation criteria the agency has called out. The format is typically a matrix: rows are evaluation criteria (or work types), columns are projects, and the cells indicate which projects demonstrate which criteria. Some agencies provide a template. Some leave the format to the bidder.

Section F is the page the evaluator uses to score Section E quickly. A clean matrix that maps to the solicitation’s stated evaluation factors makes the evaluator’s scoring job easier. A vague matrix with project descriptions instead of clean checkmarks slows the evaluator down. Section F is short on its own, but it is one of the highest-leverage pages on Part I because it determines how Section E gets read.

Section G is where agency-specific factors get answered

Section G is reserved for additional information specific to this contract. On most procurements, this is where the bidder responds to agency-specific evaluation factors that go beyond the standard SF-330 sections. USACE, NAVFAC, and other agencies routinely call out supplemental factors (small business participation, sustainable design experience, specific technical capabilities, geographic familiarity) that are weighted in the evaluation. The response to those factors goes in Section G.

On agencies that weight supplemental factors heavily, Section G can be the difference between a high score and a low one. A thin Section G response on a contract where the agency has called out specific factors leaves evaluation points on the table. The fix is to read the solicitation’s evaluation criteria carefully and respond to each supplemental factor explicitly in Section G, rather than assuming Sections D and E will cover them implicitly.

Section H is the signature

Section H is the authorized representative signature block. It is the last page of Part I. It carries the signature, the printed name, the title, and the date. The signature has to come from someone authorized to bind the firm. On most procurements the signing authority is the firm’s principal or an officer who has been delegated signing authority for federal proposals.

Section H is short, but a missing or incorrect signature voids the submission. The signature block has to be completed before submission. Wet-ink signature was historically required; electronic signatures are now accepted on most federal procurements but the solicitation should be checked to confirm.

Part II is the firm-level qualifications statement. It is reusable across submissions, which is the source of the most common Part II mistake. Each firm on the team has its own current Part II. The prime contractor includes the relevant Part IIs alongside the contract-specific Part I when assembling the submission.

What Part II contains

Part II covers the firm’s information at the firm level: legal name, address, ownership status, year established, type of ownership, professional services offered, total staff by discipline, total annual revenues, and a sampling of recent and ongoing work. The format is fixed by the form. The substance gets updated periodically as the firm’s headcount, revenue, and project list change.

The staleness problem

Part II feels reusable because the format does not change. The information inside it does. Total staff by discipline drifts as the firm hires and loses people. Annual revenues update each fiscal year. The recent-work list ages. A Part II that was current 18 months ago can be substantially out of date today.

Submitting an old Part II that does not reflect current capacity gives the evaluator a misleading picture of the firm and can hurt the score on capability factors. An evaluator who sees a Part II showing 80 staff at a firm that is now 40 staff is going to wonder which other facts on the submission are out of date. The fix is to keep Part II on a refresh schedule (annually at minimum, more often for firms with rapid growth or attrition) and to confirm currency at the start of every bid that uses it.

Coordination across team firms

On a multi-firm submission, the prime contractor includes the prime’s own Part II and the Part IIs of the subconsultants. Each firm is responsible for its own Part II currency. The prime’s job during assembly is to confirm that each subconsultant’s Part II is current as of the bid date. A subconsultant who has not updated its Part II in two years can hold up the whole submission while the firm scrambles to refresh.

On a federal A-E procurement, the SF-330 is the bid response. On a federal design-build procurement led by a general contractor, the SF-330 is one component of the response, alongside the contractor’s own qualifications, the technical narrative, the management plan, and the price proposal. In either case, the SF-330 has its own production sequence that has to be coordinated against the rest of the submission’s deadline.

The order operations actually run in

The functional order is roughly: confirm the team (Section A), draft the matrix Section F is going to use to map evaluation factors to projects, select the ten Section E projects against that matrix, draft Section E project pages, build Section D resumes around the personnel who actually worked on the Section E projects, draft Section B from the Section D personnel list, draft Section C around Sections A and B, draft Section G to respond to agency-specific factors, draft Section F to summarize Section E against the evaluation factors, refresh each firm’s Part II, sign Section H, assemble.

That ordering catches the consistency problems before the submission goes out. Drafting Section E first and then forcing Sections D and B to match what Section E claims is the discipline that prevents the most common SF-330 errors. Drafting Section D first and then trying to find Section E projects that fit the resume is the path that produces inconsistent submissions.

Where the SF-330 fits in the design-build bid

On a design-build procurement led by a GC, the SF-330 work is sometimes treated as a separate workstream that runs on its own clock. It does not have to. The compliance matrix the GC’s bid team builds for the procurement should flag every SF-330 section the solicitation requires, the supplemental instructions any agency has layered on top, and the page limits or formatting rules that apply. The action checklist captures the items that have to come from the design partners. Treated as a coordinated component rather than a separate workstream, the SF-330 lands at submission with the rest of the package and does not become the choke point on the deadline.

The ScalaBid Submission Packageon a federal design-build procurement integrates the SF-330 work into the broader bid response. The compliance matrix surfaces the form’s section requirements alongside the rest of the solicitation’s compliance load. The action checklist captures the design-partner items including current Part IIs, Section H signatures, and any registrations or certifications that have to be confirmed. The contractor’s bid team and the design partners work from the same source documents, which keeps the SF-330 production from running on a parallel clock that ends up colliding with the submission deadline.

The federal A-E procurement environment rewards firms that get the SF-330 production discipline right. Most of the discipline is mechanical: consistent team naming across sections, project selection that maps to evaluation factors, current Part IIs, clean Section F matrices. None of it is unmanageable. All of it benefits from being treated as production work that runs against a deadline rather than a one-time submission that gets thrown together at the end of the bid window.