Most people who write a parking RFP are writing their first one and will probably never write another. Ownership decided parking goes out to bid, or legal found the auto-renewal clause, or the board voted after one too many meetings spent on it. The assignment landed on your desk.
The operators bidding on it have responded to hundreds.
That gap is the real problem, and it isn't a competence problem. It's a repetition problem. The document you write determines what you're able to compare, what you can hold someone to for the next three to five years, and whether the decision holds up when someone above you asks how you made it.
Here's what goes in it, what to leave out, and what to require so the proposals come back in a form you can actually score.
Decide what you're buying before you describe it
Three structures cover most of the market:
Management agreement.
The operator runs the facility. You keep the revenue, pay a management fee, and reimburse approved operating expenses. You retain rate authority, policy control, and visibility. This is by far the most common structure in the US, and it's the one that requires the most attention to contract language, because your costs sit inside the reimbursable expense category rather than inside the fee.
Lease.
The operator pays you rent and keeps the revenue. Your income is predictable and your downside is capped. So is your upside, and so is your control over service standards and appearance.
Revenue share.
The operator is paid a percentage of what the operation collects. Compensation moves with performance, which changes what the operator is motivated to do.
One caution worth understanding before you write anything: under a cost-plus arrangement, marked-up expenses are the operator's revenue. Nothing in that structure rewards holding expenses down. A low management fee attached to loose expense language usually costs more than a higher fee with tight expense language.
If you don't know which structure fits your asset, say so in the RFP and ask each bidder to price under two of them. That's a legitimate use of the process, and comparing the same operator's numbers under two structures will teach you more about your own asset than picking one blind.
Get your own numbers together before you ask for theirs
Operators price what they can see. When they can't see it, they price conservatively, and that padding comes out of your side of the deal.
Assemble:
Address, facility type, and space count by area
Space allocation — monthly, transient, reserved, tenant, staff, visitor
Current posted rates and validation programs
12 to 24 months of revenue history and occupancy data, ideally by hour or day-part
Current equipment: PARCS make and model, age, condition, service contracts, LPR or app-based payment if any
Current staffing by position and shift, and current wage rates
Existing labor agreements or union representation
Known problems — coverage failures, complaint volume, damage claims, equipment downtime
Any construction, redevelopment, or lease change that will alter demand during the contract term
If the reason you're bidding is that you don't trust the current reporting, put that in the RFP too. Then ask each bidder how they would independently verify what the facility collects in the first ninety days. The answers separate operators quickly.
Describe the problem. Let them propose the fix.
Prescriptive RFPs narrow the field to whoever already does it your way. Requiring experience with your specific PARCS platform, mandating a headcount, or specifying the equipment to install rules out approaches you might have preferred if you'd seen them.
There's a limit to that advice, though, and it's worth naming because it usually comes from operators whose own model happens to be the one a prescriptive spec would exclude. Don't dictate the answer. Do require every bidder to disclose theirs in a format you set. Otherwise you get eight proposals arguing for eight different things and no basis for choosing among them.
State the outcome you need. Coverage at peak arrival. Verifiable revenue. Fewer damage claims. A monthly report you can hand to ownership without editing it first. Then require the staffing, technology, and reporting detail that lets you judge whether their approach delivers it.
Make the Proposals Comparable
The most common complaint after bids come in isn't that the proposals were bad. It's that they weren't comparable. Every operator formats the numbers their own way, and there's no honest way to line them up.
Fix that in the RFP by requiring a fixed format:
Staffing plan as an actual schedule. Position, shift, days of week, hours, headcount, hourly wage, and payroll burden. Not "adequate staffing." Municipal buyers score this heavily for a reason — a staffing plan that doesn't identify committed personnel in sufficient number is the clearest early signal that the price is fiction.
Operating budget on your template, with line items you name, not theirs.
Management fee stated separately from every reimbursable expense.
An explicit list of what they treat as reimbursable and what they absorb. Payroll burden, insurance allocation, merchant processing, bad debt, corporate overhead, regional supervision, uniforms, office expense. Ambiguity here is where budgets drift.
Insurance shown as a line item, with carrier, coverage types, and limits.
Written assumptions. Rate assumptions, volume assumptions, event days, escalators by year.
If a bidder won't complete your format, that's information.
Put the terms in the RFP, not in negotiation
Owners negotiate the fee hard and skim the clauses that decide the outcome. Budgeting, capital approvals, system access, and audit rights routinely matter more to net operating income than the headline fee does.
Put these in the RFP so accepting them is part of the bid rather than a fight after selection:
Audit rights.
Access to financial records, cashiering activity, monthly parker files, validation activity, and raw system transaction data — at your discretion, with a defined look-back period.
Expense caps and variance thresholds.
Who prepares the annual budget, by what date, at what level of detail, and how variances are handled.
A capital approval threshold.
A dollar figure above which nothing is spent without your written approval.
System and data access.
You get direct login credentials, not a summarized PDF. The data is yours, in usable format, during the term and at exit.
Performance standards with teeth.
Observable standards, a cure period, escalation steps, and termination for cause.
Exit terms.
Notice period, records handoff, transfer of monthly parker files and historical data, credential turnover, signage removal, final reconciliation.
Audit rights matter more than they sound like they do. In one publicly reported case, a single convention center attendant diverted roughly $57,000 using a personal card reader, and it surfaced only after cameras went into the toll booths. Automation relocates leakage. It doesn't remove the reason to look.
Ask for the things that are hard to fake
Every proposal will say the operator is experienced, responsive, and committed to service. Ask for the items that can't be written into a template:
A redacted sample monthly settlement report from a live account. This single request does more work than any other question in the RFP. You'll see immediately whether their reporting answers ownership's questions or generates new ones.
Named references at genuinely comparable properties, with contact information — and call them. A logo wall isn't a reference.
The name and background of the manager who will run your site, plus how often a district or regional manager is physically on the property. Service is delivered by the local team, not the logo.
Their answer to how an open shift gets filled at 5:00 a.m. Recruiting pipeline, wage rates relative to the local market, call-out coverage, supervisor backfill. Coverage is a recruiting and retention problem, not a headcount problem.
A certificate of insurance with actual limits, including garagekeepers legal liability if vehicles will be in their custody.
A written transition plan with dates, including overlap staffing and who is on site during week one.
Regional realities to write into the scope
If your property is in the New York metro area, a few things belong in the RFP that a national template won't include:
Licensing. New York City requires a DCWP license to operate a lot or garage at five or more vehicles, and the city licenses more than 1,600 of them. Require proof of licensing, not a statement of intent.
Labor. Incumbent garage and valet staff in the region are often represented — Garage Employees Local 272 and SEIU 32BJ both appear in this market. Ask each bidder to address union recognition, successor obligations, and whether they intend to retain the incumbent workforce. Silence on this point in a proposal is not the same as absence of an issue.
Prevailing wage and certified payroll, if the property is public or receives public financing.
Local operating presence. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and South Carolina each carry different licensing, insurance, and labor conditions. A bidder with no people in your market will find that out after award, on your property.
Score it before you read a single proposal
Set your scoring weights before you open any proposal, because weighting decided afterward tends to bend toward the proposal you already liked, and that makes the decision harder to defend later. A workable starting point splits 100 points across six criteria:
Operational and staffing plan: 25 points
Financial proposal: 25 points
Relevant experience and reference feedback: 20 points
Reporting, revenue control, and audit approach: 15 points
Transition and mobilization plan: 10 points
Completeness and responsiveness: 5 points
Institutional buyers often use a split close to this, with the operational plan, staffing, and customer service weighted alongside the financial proposal rather than below it. Keep price at or under about 30 points. Low bids often rely on a staffing plan that won't hold, and the shortfall shows up as coverage failures within the first two quarters, after the savings are no longer visible.
Score interviews separately, and require the person who will actually manage your site to attend, not the salesperson.
A realistic timeline
Week 0. Confirm your notice and auto-renewal dates. Do this first. Missing the window locks you into another full term regardless of how good your RFP is.
Weeks 1–3. Assemble property data and decide on structure.
Weeks 4–5. Draft and issue.
Week 6. Pre-bid site walk and written Q&A. Publish every answer to every bidder.
Weeks 7–9. Proposals due.
Weeks 10–12. Scoring, interviews, reference calls.
Weeks 13–16. Award and contract negotiation.
Weeks 17–20. Mobilization and go-live.
Roughly four to five months from decision to a new operator on site. Compress it if you must, but not the mobilization window — that's where a rushed transition becomes visible to everyone who parks there.
Mistakes worth avoiding
Issuing the RFP without checking the auto-renewal date first
Negotiating the fee hard and the expense language not at all
Accepting staffing described in adjectives instead of a schedule
Letting each bidder use their own budget format
Selecting without reading a sample settlement report
Treating the transition plan as paperwork rather than a scored criterion
Writing a scope so specific it only describes the operator you already have
You can ask an operator before you write it
There's a version of this process where you spend six weeks writing a document based on a template, and a version where you spend an hour on the phone first, find out what's normal for a property like yours, and then write it.
Parking Systems operates valet, garages, surface and commuter lots, shuttle programs, and guest services across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and South Carolina. We're happy to walk through scope, structure, and what your asset should reasonably expect from the market — whether or not we end up bidding on it.
Contact us to talk it through.