Government forms
The SF330, explained
Standard Form 330 — "Architect-Engineer Qualifications" — is how architecture, engineering, and related firms present their qualifications to the U.S. federal government. If your firm pursues federal A/E work, the SF330 is your résumé, your portfolio, and your first impression, all in one rigid package.
What the SF330 is
Under the Brooks Act, federal agencies select architect-engineer firms on qualifications rather than price. The SF330 is the standardized instrument for those qualifications. It replaced the old SF254 and SF255 forms in 2004, and it comes in two parts:
- Part I — Contract-Specific Qualifications. Prepared fresh for each solicitation. It describes the team you are proposing for this contract: the key personnel, their resumes, example projects, and how the team members worked together before.
- Part II — General Qualifications. A standing profile of a firm (or a branch office): size, disciplines, experience categories, and revenue ranges. Agencies may keep Part II on file, and it is typically updated annually.
Part I, section by section
Block numbers below are from the current edition of the form (Standard Form 330, Rev. 7/2021, OMB control number 9000-0157).
| Section | What goes there | What trips people up |
|---|---|---|
| A–B (blocks 1–8) | Contract information — title and location, public notice date, solicitation number — and the prime's point of contact. | Block 1 must match the announcement exactly as shown; the instructions say so verbatim, and evaluators sort stacks of these by it. |
| C (blocks 9–11) | Every firm on the proposed team — prime first, then each subconsultant with its role and, for firms with branch offices, the specific branch involved. | Section C must list every firm that appears anywhere later in the form — resumes and example projects included. Named subconsultants are a commitment: changing them later requires contracting-officer approval. |
| D | Organizational chart of the proposed team, presented as an attachment after Section C. | The chart must agree with Sections C and E. Reviewers check. Names that appear in one place and not another read as carelessness. |
| E (blocks 12–19) | Resumes of key personnel, grouped by firm with the prime's people first: name, role, years of experience (block 14a total / 14b with current firm), firm, education, professional registrations, other qualifications, and up to five relevant projects each. | Block 14b — years with the current firm — gets compared across competitors, and the five relevant projects per resume should echo Section F wherever honestly possible; that overlap is scored in Section G. |
| F (blocks 20–24) | Example projects that best illustrate the team's qualifications — ten unless the agency specifies otherwise — each with year completed, project owner, a point of contact with phone number, and a relevance narrative. | Blocks 23a–c name a reference the agency may actually call. Pick projects the proposed team worked on, not just the firm's flashiest work — Section G exposes the difference. |
| G (blocks 26–29) | The matrix mapping key personnel (in Section E order) to example projects (keyed 1–10 from Section F). | A sparse matrix is the quiet killer of SF330 packages — it says your proposed team has never worked together. |
| H (block 30) | Additional information the solicitation asks for — often where agencies request narrative on management approach, quality control, or capacity. | Read the synopsis carefully; Section H requirements vary by solicitation and are where page limits usually bite. |
| I (blocks 31–33) | Signature of an authorized representative, name/title, and date. | The signature attests the information is current and factual and that all named firms agreed to participate — inflated staff counts or stale data have cost top-ranked firms their selections. See the protest case law. |
Working with the SF330 in Microsoft Word
The government publishes the SF330 as a fillable PDF, but most marketing teams assemble it in Word because resumes and project sheets are living documents that get reused across pursuits. A few hard-won practices:
- Build each section as its own template. One Word template for the Section E resume block, one for the Section F project sheet. Assemble per-pursuit copies from those masters rather than editing last year's submission in place. (Our templates guide covers the style-based approach.)
- Use tables with fixed row heights to mirror the form's blocks, and keep the block numbering (e.g., "12. Name," "13. Role in this contract") exactly as the form prints it. Evaluators navigate by those numbers.
- Keep a master library. Maintain every employee resume and every project description in SF330 format year-round, in one folder, each in the several lengths you actually use (full block, one paragraph, one line). Assembling a pursuit then becomes selection, not writing.
- Check the current form edition before every submission. The form is revised occasionally; agencies note the required edition in the solicitation. The authoritative source is GSA's forms library (search "SF330" at gsa.gov/forms), which always hosts the current PDF.
- PDF the final package from Word and verify fonts, page count, and file size against the solicitation's instructions. Submissions get rejected on mechanics more often than anyone admits.
Looking for a ready-made SF330 in Word? This site is a reference resource and doesn't sell templates. The current official fillable PDF is free from GSA's forms library, and several commercial vendors sell Word conversions — search "SF330 template Word." The section notes above apply to any of them.
Part II in brief
Part II is a one-page firm profile: employee counts by discipline, experience profile codes with revenue index numbers, and the branch offices it covers. Three things matter in practice: keep it current — FAR 36.603 has agencies reviewing their files at least annually and discarding material not updated within three years; file a separate Part II for each branch office that seeks work or has a key role on a proposed team (the form's own instructions require it, and each firm on a Part I team submits its own Part II); and make sure the discipline and experience codes you claim are the ones your Part I packages actually demonstrate.
Why the form works this way
The SF330's structure isn't arbitrary — it implements the Brooks Act's qualifications-based selection, where price never enters the competition and the capability statement carries everything. The statute, the FAR Subpart 36.6 evaluation machinery, and two decades of GAO protest decisions about what gets firms downgraded (stale data, generic prose, phantom key personnel, careless capacity statements) are covered in the companion piece: The law behind the SF330.