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Where the 387 Days Go

Visuals in this post: From Study to Ballot Contract Timeliness Where the 387 Days Go Cycle Time by Agency Nonprofit Payment Streets and City Land Building Permits Rainy Day Fund
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Government Efficiency August 2026

A City RFP Takes a Median of 387 Days

The competitive sealed proposal, better known as the RFP, is how New York City buys human services, professional services, and design work. In FY2025 the median RFP took 387 days from the first draft to registration, longer than it took in FY2022. Evaluation and post-award review together account for 234 of those days.

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Evaluation and post-award review consume 234 of the 387 days a City RFP takes

Median days per phase for competitive sealed proposals, fiscal years 2022–2025. The end-to-end figure is the median of complete procurements, so phases do not sum exactly to it.

  • Pre-solicitation
  • Solicitation
  • Evaluation
  • Award
  • Registration
Source: Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, 2025 Citywide Indicators Report, Competitive Sealed Proposal Cycle Time by Phase Note: Medians, not averages, and each phase median is computed independently, so the five phases do not add up to the published end-to-end median.

The Charter reaches the short bars. Ballot Question 2 lets the Procurement Policy Board simplify the contractor questionnaire, makes the online notice-and-comment period permanent in place of a public hearing, and lets the Mayor delegate certain contract approvals to agencies. The Mayor's Office of Contract Services estimates the notice-and-comment change alone saves an average of 20 days. Those savings land in solicitation and award, which are not where most of the year goes.

The long bars are capacity. Evaluation is agency staff reading proposals. Award is the back-and-forth with the Office of Management and Budget, the Law Department, and the Mayor's Office of Contract Services. Both are questions of how many people the City employs and how fast its reviewers move, which is why COGE routed hiring and review-time commitments into administrative reform rather than a ballot question.

What is counted: 222 competitive sealed proposals registered in FY2025 across Mayoral agencies (213 in FY22, 362 in FY23, 206 in FY24). Phase boundaries are defined in PASSPort: pre-solicitation runs from draft creation to publication, solicitation to the final proposal due date, evaluation to the award selection date, award to submission for registration, and registration to the date the contract is recorded in the Financial Management System.

Competitive sealed bids are faster. The lowest-price bid method ran a 312-day median in FY2025, down from 357 in FY23 but up from 285 in FY22.

Sources: Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, 2025 Citywide Indicators Report.