Buy Better  ·  A procurement workshop

Buy what you can fix, not just what's cheap to install.

A working session for the public agencies and fleet operators who write and score EV-charging RFPs — built around how reliability is won or lost in the contract, long before the first charger is installed.

3-hour pre-conference session Multi-day full curriculum For municipal & fleet buyers

Why it matters

Most charging programs don't fail at installation. They fail at procurement.

A charger is a system of systems — hardware, firmware, networking, payment, data, and the people who keep it running, often owned by different parties. When an RFP specifies the box instead of the system, the network underdelivers and the buyer carries the consequences for years.

Reliability is decided in the RFP, long before the first charger is installed.

The kind of commitments a strong RFP learns to require

97%
Monthly uptime, measured per charger — not a network-wide average.
90%
Plug-in success, with the vendor required to define the formula.
2 hr
From a detected fault to a notice landing with named staff.
Real‑time
Critical faults pushed to you, not left to surface on a dashboard.

Who it's for

Built for the people who sign the contract.

This is not training to make you an engineer. It is training to make you a sharper buyer — so you know what to demand, how to read what comes back, and exactly when bringing in expert help will pay for itself.

You don't need to become the expert. You need to recognize when you're being sold a box, and ask for the system instead.

  • Municipal and public-agency buyers deploying public charging
  • Fleet operators electrifying depots and shared sites
  • Procurement and contracts staff writing and scoring RFPs
  • Fleet, facilities, and sustainability leads who own the outcome
  • Program managers accountable for uptime once the chargers land

What you learn

Five areas where reliability is won or lost.

Every charging procurement turns on the same five areas. We walk each one, then show how a real, anonymized municipal RFP turns it into language a vendor can be held to.

01

Program scope & site context

Sites, power, intended use, and expected demand — the conditions the vendor actually has to design for.

02

Hardware & functional requirements

Power, connectors, durability, and serviceability — with open standards in place of quiet lock-in.

03

CSMS — data & management

Who owns the data, how you get it, and whether you can manage the network you paid for.

04

Fault taxonomy

How failures are classified, reported, and surfaced — so “available” actually means working.

05

O&M structure

Maintenance models, response times, spare parts, and escalation — settled before the warranty lapses.

+

Read across all five

Cybersecurity, firmware, and evaluation design thread through every area — and decide whether price competes first or last.

The method

Every strong requirement does three things.

It's a simple test you can run on any clause in your own RFP. A requirement that does only the first is decoration — and most weak procurements stop there.

1

Define

Name the term precisely — uptime, plug-in success, OCPP — so it can't be argued away later.

2

Demand

Set the outcome, the target, and the remedy, each tied to how it will actually be measured.

3

Prove

Make the bidder show how — a compliance matrix, a proposed formula, named gaps — not just say yes.

Define, demand, prove. You'll leave able to spot which clauses in your next RFP do all three — and which ones a vendor can walk right through.

Two ways to take it

A focused preview, or the full build.

Both share the same backbone and the same throughline. The difference is depth — from sharpening your eye to drafting the language yourself.

The preview

3-Hour Workshop

A condensed, awareness-building session — ideal as a conference pre-session or a leadership briefing.

~3 hours Pre-conference or onsite Cross-functional groups

What it covers

  • Charging fundamentals — the system, the standards, and where it breaks
  • The five focus areas that decide reliability
  • What a good RFP looks like, walked through one real anonymized procurement
  • A self-audit and the honest map of where to get help

You leave with a sharper eye for reliability risk and a checklist to run against your next RFP.

Bring the 3-hour session

The full curriculum

Multi-Day Curriculum

The working version — it develops each focus area into procurement-ready RFP language with your own program in front of you.

Multi-day Cohort or single team Hands-on with your scope

What it adds

  • KPIs, SLAs, and remedies you can defend — and measure
  • Fault taxonomy, data ownership, and CSMS terms in depth
  • Firmware and cybersecurity written as obligations, not promises
  • O&M and spare-parts models, and evaluation that makes price compete last

You leave with a procurement-ready RFP framework, adapted to your sites, fleet, and program.

Plan the full curriculum

Outcomes

What changes after the room clears.

No certificate, no jargon to memorize — a working buyer's instinct for what good looks like.

  • A shared language for what actually drives charging reliability
  • The five areas where a procurement is won or lost — and how to weight them
  • A self-audit you can run line by line against your next RFP
  • A clear read on where standard language is enough — and where expert help pays for itself

Facilitators

Led by practitioners, not vendors.

The workshop is co-developed and co-facilitated by two independent advisors who sit on the buyer's side of the table.

Grayson Eady

Founder & Principal Consultant · EVision Solutions

Advises public agencies and fleets on EV-charging deployment strategy, fleet electrification, and charging-product development — with a systems-and-operations lens on what it takes to keep a network running.

Laolu Adeola

Founder & Managing Director · Leke Services

Brings a strategic mobility-and-energy perspective to infrastructure programs, helping buyers connect procurement decisions to the broader transition they are trying to deliver.

Bring Buy Better to your conference, agency, or fleet.

Tell us your audience and timing and we'll shape the session — the 3-hour preview for an event, or the full curriculum for a team about to run a real procurement.

Inquiries: grayson.eady@evision.world  ·  (678) 234-1414
Co-facilitated with Leke Services.