For the City of St. Petersburg evaluation committee
A curated reading path for the City’s evaluation committee.
This portal accompanies House Strategies Group’s response to RFP 26-157, Consulting Services, Economic & Target Industry Analysis. Every page maps to a specific RFP evaluation criterion. Below is the order we recommend, sized to whatever time the committee has.
5 min
The conviction core
15 min
Approach & methodology
30 min
Full pre-engagement depth
RFP evaluation criteria · page map
Each scored criterion ties to specific pages.
Weight 40%
§1 Qualifications & Experience
Brad Dillman (LSE-trained Chief Economist with executed Cortland CIO PPQ) + Maurice/Kevin FAS Beijing co-tenure (5 named GAIN reports verifiable on gain.fas.usda.gov) + Florey Street current AI-native econometric advisory.
Weight 35%
§2 Project Approach
Six-phase architecture, Tier 1 + Tier 2 analytical framework, 50 interviews + 3 focus groups + 1 employer survey, AI-augmented production discipline with senior validation on every output. Four working method demonstrations on actual St. Petersburg data.
Weight 15%
§3 Cost
$100,000 firm-fixed-price for the full RFP § 4.4 scope — top of the City's published budget range ($25K–$100K per Q&A 1). No elective add-ons.
Weight 10%
§4 BE Outreach
HSG 8(a) SDB prime independently satisfies §5 SBE/MBE/SDB outreach. Two named small-business subs (Florey Street, Latner) + Florida-based 1099 specialists.
If you have five minutes — the conviction core
Read these three pages first.
Together they answer the two evaluator questions that matter most: what does St. Petersburg get? and can these people deliver it?
If you have fifteen minutes — add the approach
Then add these two for the methodology.
Six-phase project architecture, Tier 1 / 2 / 3 elective framework, and working demonstrations of every analytical method we will deploy on St. Petersburg data.
If you have thirty minutes — full pre-engagement depth
Finish with our St. Petersburg analysis.
Pre-engagement analysis we have already completed — economic baseline, 2014 cluster scorecard refresh, and four-city peer-benchmark playbook. Demonstrates that the City’s investment buys an already-engaged team.
The takeaway
Five things we want the committee to take away.
Brad Dillman is an LSE-trained Senior Economist with an executed Cortland CIO PPQ on file — LSE Regional Science MSc (Honors), 20-year corporate Chief Economist track, $17B HUD/FHA NPL pricing role at DebtX, $1.25B PURE Multifamily acquisition support at Cortland, and an AI-native econometric advisory practice today at Florey Street.
Maurice House and Kevin Latner make HSG’s federal target-industry pedigree real. They served together at FAS Beijing (2005–07), where Kevin drafted GAIN reports that Maurice approved as Minister-Counselor. Five of those reports are publicly archived at fas.usda.gov and verifiable in 30 seconds.
Our methodology is rigorous and AI-augmented. The FAS GAIN methodology — industry size, value-chain mapping, demand and trade-flow analysis, workforce assessment, peer-benchmarking, regulatory review, emerging-sector identification, stakeholder consultation, recommendations — maps section-by-section to RFP § 4.4.
The vision for St. Petersburg is concrete and quantitative: +13,500 jobs, +$2.4B private investment, −3.3 points poverty over 10 years, anchored to peer-city actuals (Chattanooga, Greenville, Asheville, Durham), not hand-waving.
We have already engaged with St. Petersburg. The pre-investment depth — economic baseline assembled, 2014 cluster scorecard refreshed, peer-benchmark playbook drafted — proves we are not generic.