Pursuing WELL across a portfolio is fundamentally different from pursuing it at a single location. WELL at scale offers significant opportunities to streamline documentation, reduce costs and amplify impact, but only when the scope of consultant support is structured to take advantage of those efficiencies.
The way you craft your RFP directly shapes the approach and fees you’ll receive. The guidance below will help you write an RFP that invites consultants to bring their best thinking on sequencing and streamlining your program.
Need help before you issue your RFP?
IWBI’s team can review and provide feedback on your draft before it goes out. Reach out to your coaching contact or contact the IWBI team to get started.
1. Consider Starting with a Roadmap Planning Service
Before soliciting proposals for full implementation support, consider whether you first need a consultant to assess your portfolio and develop an approach. A roadmap planning service is a short-term engagement yielding a customized strategy with options and timelines. It typically costs a fraction of the full engagement and produces recommendations that will significantly sharpen your implementation RFP.
A roadmap should include:
- A review of your goals and stakeholders.
- An inventory of existing policies that may already align with WELL.
- An analysis of consistency across your portfolio.
- A review of how existing certifications (LEED, Fitwel, etc.) can accelerate your WELL Score.
- A year-by-year implementation phasing plan.
Why this matters: The biggest driver of consultant cost is how much work needs to be done from scratch versus documented from what you already do. A consultant who has assessed your portfolio can price a scope that takes full advantage of shared documents and portfolio-wide policies. One who has not will price conservatively, often significantly overestimating the work required.
2. Include Detailed Information About Your Organization and Portfolio
Vague RFPs produce vague, high-contingency pricing. Make sure to include the following in your RFP:
- Your WELL goals: Start by outlining what you’re hoping WELL will accomplish (e.g., ESG reporting, talent and retention, building value, alignment with leading health practices). Then, layer in where you are targeting ratings and/or certification. Finish by outlining your preferred timeline and key internal deadlines.
- Internal capacity: Identify your primary point of contact and total estimated staff hours your organization will dedicate per week. Implementation works best when at least one person on the client side can dedicate some time to support coordination.
- Your portfolio: Identify the number of locations within your WELL at scale portfolio, as well as the geographies and typologies represented. If known, share which locations share the same HR policies and operational protocols (cleaning, emergency management, food programs); this is the single most important driver of documentation efficiency. Lastly, list any locations undergoing renovation in the next 1–3 years.
- Prior work with WELL and other certifications: Share any prior WELL scorecards, documentation, or completed review cycles. Identify any green building ratings held (LEED, BREEAM, Green Star, Green Mark, ENERGY STAR, etc.) at locations within your portfolio.
3. Ask for Multiple Scope Options at Different Levels of Investment
Rather than asking for a single scope, consider asking consultants to outline several options so you can see trade-offs between ambition and investment:
- Foundational: For low effort, high return, focus Year 1 on documenting what you already do and earning initial WELL Score points.
- Milestone-driven: To demonstrate progress early and often, focus Years 1-2 on targeting a specific WELL rating or concept across a defined subset of your portfolio, building toward Certification.
- Full-portfolio acceleration: For highly resourced organizations, aim for comprehensive support across all subscribed locations, prioritizing your WELL Score, and target Certification at prime locations.
Ask consultants to factor in the full range of milestones available under WELL at scale–WELL ratings, WELL awards, WELL Score benchmarking, and targeted feature achievement–not just Certification. Most organizations begin with an incremental approach and build from there.
Performance Verification: If you are targeting WELL Certification across any or all of your locations, Performance Verification (PV) will be required. While PV is a location-level process, efficiencies can be gained from coordinating verification across multiple locations at one time. Also, IWBI can help you to solicit and vet Performance Verification quotes from approved organizations.
Clearly define how you want your consultant involved in this process and set aside a budget accordingly. Consider whether you want your consultant to:
- Project manage the PV process.
- Be present on site during any testing.
- Provide advice for any non-compliant results.
4. Provide a Budget Range or Cap
Consultants can deliver excellent recommendations across a wide range of budgets, but only if you tell them what range they’re working within. Sharing a budget range is not a negotiating disadvantage; it produces better-fit proposals. If you’re unsure of appropriate benchmarks, IWBI’s team can help.
5. Specify Your Preferred Pricing Structure
Different fee structures work better for different organizations. Consider which of the following structures best fits your planning needs, and request that consultants structure their proposals accordingly — or ask them to propose alternatives:
- Fixed fee for roadmap + annual estimates: An initial fixed fee for the strategy phase, with estimated ranges for annual engagement thereafter.
- Milestone-based retainer: A baseline annual fee with add-ons tied to locations achieving certifications or ratings.
- Review-based retainer: A baseline annual fee with add-ons for each review cycle based on the level of documentation required.
- Hourly / time-and-materials: Best for organizations with variable activity levels or significant internal involvement.
6. Explicitly Request a Focus on Efficiency and Streamlining
One of the most powerful advantages of WELL at scale is the ability to submit shared documentation across multiple locations simultaneously. A single enterprise-wide policy (e.g., a smoke-free workplace policy, a nutrition standards framework) can be submitted once and applied to every location it covers. This is not an outcome that will necessarily emerge from a generic RFP. Ask explicitly for:
- An assessment and documentation of existing organizational policies that can be submitted as shared documents, covering as many locations as possible in a single review cycle
- A crosswalk of existing green building certifications against WELL feature requirements to identify documentation that may satisfy WELL without additional work
- A documentation strategy that prioritizes high-impact, shareable features first, reserving location-specific documentation for sites with unique conditions
- An evaluation of which features can be earned by documenting current practices before any new policies or programs are recommended
Organizations that take this approach consistently earn significantly more points at lower cost than anticipated — because they were already doing more of what WELL recognizes than they realized.
Documentation Responsibility and Effort: While many documents can be applied across multiple locations to create efficiency, it’s still important to understand who is creating the documentation and what role the consultant needs to play in this process. The level of effort will affect the consultant’s price, so e clear in the RFP which of the following applies:
- [least effort] The consultant will be responsible for collation of documents from different teams across the organisation.
- [medium effort] The consultant will need to annotate documentation compiled by teams within the organization.
- [most effort] The consultant will need to create new documentation (such as policy documents, operations schedules, or professional narratives) on behalf of the organization.
We’re here to help.
If you’d like guidance before or during your RFP process, IWBI’s team is available to review your draft, answer questions, and connect you with WELL Enterprise Providers. WELL EPs are consulting organizations that specialize in delivering WELL at scale.
Reach out to your IWBI coaching contact or contact the IWBI team to get started.
Quick Reference: What to Include in Your RFP
| Category | What to include |
| Organization overview | Industry, size, footprint, health and well-being priorities |
| WELL goals | Desired outcomes: ESG reporting, talent, certification milestones, etc. |
| Internal capacity | Primary contact; estimated staff hours/week available for WELL |
| Portfolio details | Number of locations, geographies, typologies; which share common policies/operations |
| Existing certifications | Prior work with WELL plus any other building ratings held (LEED, BREEAM, Greenstar, Fitwel, etc.) |
| Prior WELL work | Existing scorecards, documentation, or achievements |
| Scope options | Request multiple proposals at different levels of investment |
| Budget | A realistic range or ceiling for consulting fees |
| Fee structure | Fixed fee, milestone-based, hourly, or hybrid |
| Streamlining | Explicit ask to prioritize shared documentation and existing-practice documentation |