Now enrolling Virtual Workshop · Nov 10, 12, 17 & 19, 2026 The full curriculum in four 3-hour sessions · $999 first seat
Buy Better · A procurement workshop
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.
Next virtual cohort: November 10, 12, 17 & 19, 2026. The full curriculum in four 3-hour sessions.
Why it matters
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
Who it's for
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.
What you learn
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.
Sites, power, intended use, and expected demand. These are the conditions the vendor actually has to design for.
Power, connectors, durability, and serviceability, with open standards in place of quiet lock-in.
Who owns the data, how you get it, and whether you can manage the network you paid for.
How failures are classified, reported, and surfaced, so “available” actually means working.
Maintenance models, response times, spare parts, and escalation, all settled before the warranty lapses.
Cybersecurity, firmware, and evaluation design thread through every area and decide whether price competes first or last.
The method
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.
Name the term precisely (uptime, plug-in success, OCPP) so it can't be argued away later.
Set the outcome, the target, and the remedy, each tied to how it will actually be measured.
Make the bidder prove it with a compliance matrix, a proposed formula, and named gaps, rather than just saying 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
Both share the same backbone and the same throughline. The difference is depth, from sharpening your eye to drafting the language yourself.
The preview
A condensed, awareness-building session, ideal as a conference pre-session or a leadership briefing.
You leave with a sharper eye for reliability risk and a checklist to run against your next RFP.
Bring the 3-hour sessionThe full curriculum
The working version. It develops each focus area into procurement-ready RFP language with your own program in front of you.
You leave with a procurement-ready RFP framework, adapted to your sites, fleet, and program.
Next virtual cohort: November 10, 12, 17 & 19, 2026, delivered in four 3-hour sessions.
Reserve a seatNow enrolling · November 2026
Four working sessions, three hours each, across two weeks. The same material as the multi-day curriculum, paced so a working team can attend without losing a week to travel.
Takes about two minutes. Nothing is charged now. We collect billing details up front because most agencies need a purchase order and a W-9 in hand before an invoice can be paid.
Outcomes
No certificate and no jargon to memorize, just a working buyer's instinct for what good looks like.
Facilitators
The workshop is co-developed and co-facilitated by two independent advisors who sit on the buyer's side of the table.
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.
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.
Everything else
If November does not work or you want the 3-hour preview at your conference or the full curriculum delivered privately to your team, get in touch. Tell us the audience and rough timing and we will shape it around your program.
We reply to everything, usually within two business days.
Registering for the November cohort? Use the seat form above.