Define the requirement before naming facilities
Use the notes under each category as the minimum response structure for every provider. Add workload-specific requirements, then ask providers to state assumptions and exceptions instead of simply marking “compliant.”
Initial cabinet, cage or suite footprint; initial usable IT kW; circuit design; A/B topology; metering; growth by date.
Average and peak kW per rack; air or liquid method; water temperatures; CDU responsibility; sustained operating limits.
Required carriers, cloud on-ramps, diverse entrances, route diversity, cross-connect quantity, MRC and NRC.
Required reports and certifications; cage controls; visitor process; camera retention; audit evidence; data residency.
Power, temperature, humidity and network commitments; exclusions; service credits; maintenance rights; reporting.
Service-ready date; cage or suite build; delivery path; staging; cabling; burn-in; commissioning; change control.
Remote-hands rates and minimums; response times; 24/7 access; smart hands; spares; ticket escalation; after-hours work.
Separate every recurring and one-time charge. State power basis, taxes, utility pass-through, PUE, overages and assumptions.
Initial term, commencement trigger, escalators, renewal, termination, assignment, liability, insurance and force majeure.
Identify reserved adjacent space and kW, exercise deadline, future price, ramp dates and remedies for late delivery.
Download the RFP template
The checklist above, as a working Excel workbook. Six tabs: the requirement you issue, the checklist behind it, the response fields every provider returns, a cost normalizer that compounds escalators to term end, the weighted scoring model, and the ten questions providers find hardest. Column C is filled with a worked example so the format is obvious.
- Normalizes bids to cost per usable kW per month over the full term
- Scores technical compliance separately from price
- Yours to use and to share inside your organization
Provider response template
| Response field | What the provider should supply |
|---|---|
| Facility and option | Address or anonymized facility ID, room or phase, operator and option expiration |
| Capacity | Usable IT kW now, future kW, density limits and physical footprint |
| Delivery | Contractual service-ready date and every utility, construction or customer dependency |
| Technical exceptions | Requirement-by-requirement variance, proposed alternative and operating limitation |
| Recurring cost | Space, power, cross-connects, bandwidth, support, pass-throughs and taxes |
| One-time cost | Installation, cage, cabinets, distribution, cooling, cabling and commissioning |
| Commercial terms | Term, ramp, deposit, escalators, renewal, expansion and quote-validity period |
Normalize before you score
- Convert every proposal to the same usable IT kW and deployment period.
- Separate provider capacity from customer-responsibility equipment and work.
- Build a year-one and full-term total, including NRCs and escalators.
- Score technical compliance separately from price.
- Identify delivery dependencies and assign schedule risk.
- Resolve exceptions in writing before selecting a finalist.
Commercial pages to support the RFP
GPU and high density
Qualify 10 to 100+ kW rack designs, cooling and floor loading.
Private cages
Plan four to 20 racks, security and expansion rights.
Wholesale space
Compare 250 kW to 5 MW delivery models and terms.
Market pricing
Start with Ashburn, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago market context.
Colocation pricing
Published per rack, per cabinet and per kW figures to sanity-check responses.
Government contract rates
Federal per-cabinet, cross-connect and remote-hands rates by contract number.
Two of those are worth keeping open while you score. Federal contracts publish what the government pays for a defined cabinet specification, so the published GSA and EIS rates give you an outside benchmark for any response you receive, and the commercial pricing page shows the retail and wholesale bands that response should fall inside.
The scoring model
An RFP without a scoring model becomes a discussion about which provider was most persuasive. Fix the weights before responses arrive, so the decision is made against the requirement rather than against the last presentation.
| Category | Suggested weight | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverable capacity and date | 30% | Usable kW at the density you need, on a contractual date |
| Normalized total cost | 25% | Cost per usable kW over the full term, all charges included |
| Technical fit | 15% | Density, cooling method, redundancy topology, floor loading |
| Network and connectivity | 10% | Carrier choice, cloud on-ramps, diverse entrances |
| Commercial terms | 10% | Escalator, renewal, expansion rights, exit |
| Operations and support | 5% | Remote hands, response times, maintenance practice |
| Compliance and audit | 5% | Certifications in scope for your regulatory position |
Adjust the weights to your situation, but keep two rules. Capacity and date should outweigh price, because a cheaper option you cannot energize on time has no value. And commercial terms should never be zero, because the escalator and renewal clause often outweigh the opening rate over a full term.
Complete the scoring on the written responses first, then take meetings. Reversing that order lets presentation quality contaminate a technical evaluation, which is the most common failure mode in facility selection.
The questions providers find hardest to answer
Most RFP questions get a confident answer from everyone, which makes them useless for discrimination. These do not. A provider who answers them quickly and specifically has done this before.
- What is the maximum sustained kW per rack this specific hall supports today, with the cooling that is installed? Not the building design ceiling.
- Is the quoted kW usable IT load or allocated capacity, and how is overage billed? This single definition can move a comparison by double digits.
- Is this capacity energized today? If not, which substation serves it, what is the contractual date, and what are the remedies if it slips?
- What is the PUE, how is it measured, and will you cap it contractually? Without a cap, declining efficiency becomes your operating cost.
- What is the escalator, and if it is CPI linked, what are the floor and cap? Model it compounded to term end.
- How is renewal priced? Fair market value or a fixed strike. Digital Realty reported renewal rents up 25.4% on a cash basis in Q2 2026, which is what market can mean.
- What are my expansion rights on adjacent capacity, and at what price? Capacity you cannot grow into is a migration later.
- What is the total of every recurring charge outside space and power at my expected cross-connect and remote-hands volume?
- Who owns the cooling loop to the rack, and what is its redundancy? For liquid deployments this is a new failure domain.
- What does exit cost? Notice, early termination, restoration obligations and overlap during migration.
Normalizing responses onto one basis
Responses will arrive in incompatible formats. This is the sequence that makes them comparable, and it is the work that determines the quality of the decision.
| Step | Action | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Restate every price as cost per usable kW per month | Removes per-cabinet and per-square-foot distortion |
| 2 | Fix the power basis identically across bids | Allocated against metered is a real difference, not semantics |
| 3 | Add all recurring charges at your actual volumes | Cross-connects alone can rival space cost at small scale |
| 4 | Amortize one-time charges across the term | Install and build costs distort year one |
| 5 | Model escalators compounded to term end | A 2% and a 5% escalator diverge substantially over ten years |
| 6 | Price the ramp month by month, including any floor | Cash timing differs even when totals match |
| 7 | Value the renewal and extension terms | Frequently the largest single difference between bids |
| 8 | Add exit cost | Makes the term comparison honest |
Two bids with identical headline rates routinely differ by a double-digit percentage once normalized this way. Benchmark the result against published figures on the pricing benchmarks page to see whether the winning bid is actually competitive with the market or merely with the other bid.
Common RFP mistakes
- Specifying square feet instead of kW and density. Space is not the constraint; power and cooling are.
- Omitting the density figure. A 300 kW requirement at 8 kW per rack and at 40 kW per rack are different products in different buildings.
- Naming facilities in the requirement. This narrows the field before you understand the options and reduces price tension.
- Leaving the delivery date soft. A soft date invites optimistic answers you cannot hold anyone to.
- Asking for a rate rather than a total. You get the answer you asked for, and it will not be the invoice.
- Running too few bidders. Competitive tension is the mechanism that produces a real price. Two bids is not a process.
- Skipping the exit terms. Every deployment eventually moves, and the cost of that belongs in the decision.
Ready to issue the RFP?
A scout can turn this requirement into a targeted provider list, manage responses and normalize capacity, pricing and delivery dates.