Now Open: 2025 SF Partnering Award Applications
It’s Partnering Awards Application Season again and this year we have some new guidance to help you and your team optimize your scores! These best practices apply not only to the 2025 SF Partnering Award Application and the IPI Partnered Project of the Year Application, but to any other Partnering Awards Application you may be going for, be it Caltrans, ADOT, ODOT, or a regional one.
Check out www.sfpartnering.com or click the links to download the Application, and HOT OFF THE PRESSES – the new Application Guidelines and Tip Sheet.
In the tip sheet, the SFCPSC leadership team put together best practices and provided samples so you can benefit from award-winning team’s experiences. Below, I share a few highlights.
- Start Strong
- Tell the Story as a Team
- Focus on the Scored Portions
- Gather as you Go
1. Start Strong
The old expression is to never judge a book by it’s cover, but teams that start with a great photo on the cover and have a strong one description of the project scope and why it was important to invest in this infrastructure or building will perform better.
In the SF Partnering Guidelines, Tips and Examples, the team included sample covers of different types (pg. 6) and well written summaries developed by Award-winning teams (pp 8 – 10) where teams described how a project was planned over several years, then designed and implemented. This is the opportunity to talk about how much dirt was moved, concrete was poured, or how the team had to overcome supply chain challenges or technical problems to successfully complete the project as one team. I encourage you to glance through a couple of the stories then invest some time to set up a professional looking cover and tell your project’s story. Sure, it may not be as foolproof as Calvin’s hard plastic cover trick, but a strong, professional-looking start will set your application apart.
2. Tell the Story as a Team
In the application, there are two elements that are easy to underestimate. The first is the level of detail needed for the data collection. This data is important because it helps Partnering Programs determine whether Partnering is having an effect on projects.
If you believe your team is a candidate, get this portion started early – once you hit substantial completion, you are able to incorporate the Safety, Schedule, Budget, and Change Order numbers with a high degree of certainty.
Now to the Scored Potion…
When I’m supporting my teams with an application, I like to use partnering principles and prioritize our time together. Usually we have two – maybe three, 30-45 minute Teams calls. The first call is to delegate tasks (give the RE/CM the data, give the contractor’s PM the Issues Resolved and estimates, and identify who can complete the Project Summary and work on a couple of the questions). As the Facilitator, it’s pretty easy for me to knock out Question 1 (How did we partner this project?) and Question 2, where we enter the goals, talk about whether the goals needed to change through the project, and describe how the team performed against the goals. The rest of the time we use to brainstorm on issues resolved.
The best applications are written as a team! If you have engineers who aren’t the best creative writers, have them “talk the issues” to a marketing-type person who can turn the technical issues into a narrative form. We typically identify section “owners” and create interim deadlines. The Awards are due Oct 30th and I like to start no later than two weeks ahead. So, if you are going to loop in your Facilitator – schedule time in early October, now!
3. Focus on the Scored Portions
This suggestion on page 17 of the Tips is extremely valuable… the Goals and Outcomes and Issue Resolution combined are 60 of the 100 points in the Application! If you are short for time, focus your energy there! Also, if you want to win an award, recognize that your partnering structure matters. If you are on a small project, make sure to complete your two minimum sessions and complete two scorecards (through your Facilitator or on your own as a team) to get the maximum points!
As stated above, when I’m meeting with my team, I spend the vast majority of the time together focused on identifying issues resolved as a team. This really tells the most compelling story. The application is now set up for you to articulate how much the issue resolved was worth. Remember to calculate not only the value of the Change Order or Value Engineering Proposal, but also the value of the time savings. On projects, teams often have a time related overhead (TRO) a calculation of the daily rate for the GRs/GCs. Saving two weeks is an important consideration when tabulating the value of collaboration. Make sure to read some of the examples in the Tips Guide (pp. 24-5).
4. Gather as you Go
The last piece of advice is to gather photos, stories, press, and positive feedback as you go. I love it when teams state that they want to win a Partnering Award from the outset of a job. Then we can identify an Office Engineer or Assistant RE who can help gather these types of feedback during the project and save them in the Awards Applications Project Folder. Gathering the details as you go makes the application process work like clockwork!
Below are some examples from the Teamwork (pg. 27) , Innovations (pg. 29), and the Exhibits (pg. 33) sections for you to consider. In all cases, making it someone’s job on the project to remember this stuff and archive it, reduces the time to develop your Partnering Applications (and frankly all other Award Applications) substantially!
As stated at the beginning, I hope that if you and your City and County of San Francisco team reached substantial or final completion between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025 and effectively used partnering on your project, we encourage you to apply. And if not – I hope that you can use some of these best practices on your future applications. When we make the judges happy our teams are happy because they get the highest recognition level possible.
Please let us know your best practices or ideas you have learned along the way!
– Rob
Rob Reaugh is President of OrgMetrics LLC. He facilitates the City and County of San Francisco Collaborative Partnering Steering Committee and currently works with San Francisco International Airport, San Jose International Airport, BART, Caltrans, and others. He holds a Masters’ Degree in Alternative Dispute Resolution.
For more information please contact Rob Reaugh, RobReaugh@Orgmet.com / (925) 487-2404 (cell), or OrgMetrics, (925) 449-8300.
Rob Reaugh is President of