What the SF 330 Form Is and How Firms Fill It

The SF 330 is the US federal form architecture and engineering firms submit to compete for design contracts. Its full name is the Standard Form 330, Architect-Engineer Qualifications, and federal agencies use it to score and rank firms under a qualifications-based selection process before any price is discussed. If your firm pursues federal design work, the SF 330 is the document that decides whether you make the shortlist.

This guide explains what the SF 330 is, how Part I and Part II differ, what each section demands - especially Section F, the example projects that usually decide the award - and how firms fill it efficiently by reusing a project database instead of rebuilding every submission from scratch. If you want the fillable structure now, jump to the SF 330 template and filled example.

On this page:

• What is the SF 330 form?
• Who uses the SF 330 and when
• SF 330 Part I vs Part II
• SF 330 Part I: the eight sections
• Section F: the example projects that decide the award
• SF 330 Part II: general qualifications
• How to fill the SF 330 from a project database
• SF 330 vs capability statement vs SOQ
• Common SF 330 mistakes
• FAQ

What is the SF 330 form?

The SF 330 is a standardized US government form that captures an architect-engineer firm’s qualifications in a fixed structure so that evaluation boards can compare competing teams on equal terms. It replaced the older SF 254 and SF 255 forms and is maintained by the General Services Administration; you download the current revision from the official GSA architect-engineer qualifications form page.

The form exists because federal design procurement does not work like most government buying. Under the Brooks Act and its implementing rules in FAR Subpart 36.6, agencies must select architect-engineer firms on the basis of demonstrated competence and qualifications - not lowest price. Firms are ranked on their qualifications first, and only the most qualified firm is invited to negotiate a fair and reasonable price. The SF 330 is the instrument that carries those qualifications into the evaluation.

Two facts shape everything else about the form:

1. It is evaluated, not just filed. A technical evaluation board reads the SF 330 against published selection criteria and scores it. Content that does not map to a criterion is wasted space.
2. It is contract-specific at the top and firm-general underneath. Part I is built for one advertised job; Part II is a reusable firm record. Understanding that split is the key to filling the form efficiently.

Who uses the SF 330 and when

The SF 330 is used whenever a US federal agency procures design or design-related professional services. Agencies advertise these opportunities as synopses on SAM.gov, and interested firms respond with an SF 330 Part I (plus a Part II for each firm on the team) by the stated deadline.

The firms that submit SF 330s include:

• Architecture and engineering (A-E) firms pursuing federal building, civil, environmental, and infrastructure design.
• Surveying, mapping, and geospatial firms and other design-related professional services covered by the Brooks Act.
• Subconsultants who join a prime firm’s proposed team - each named subconsultant provides a Part II and appears in the team sections.
• Firms responding to indefinite-delivery contracts (IDIQs), where an SF 330 wins a place on a multi-year design vehicle.

Selection typically runs in two rounds: an initial evaluation of all SF 330s to pick a shortlist, then interviews with the most qualified firms before the agency ranks them and opens negotiations with the top-ranked team. Because the form is the entire basis of the first cut, a weak or generic SF 330 ends the pursuit before an interview is ever offered.

SF 330 Part I vs Part II

The single most important thing to understand about the SF 330 is that it is two documents in one. Confusing their roles is the most common reason firms waste effort on the form.

	Part I - Contract-Specific Qualifications	Part II - General Qualifications
Scope	One advertised contract	One firm or one branch office
Reused?	Re-tailored for every submission	Maintained once, reused across submissions
Contents	Team, org chart, key personnel resumes, example projects, personnel-to-project matrix	Firm identity, UEI, disciplines and employee counts, revenue, profile codes
How many	One per submission	One per participating firm on the team
Who reads it for what	The evaluation board scores the team against the announcement	The board confirms firm scale, disciplines, and experience breadth

In practice a prime firm assembles a package that contains one Part I describing the proposed team for this job, followed by a Part II for the prime and a Part II for each subconsultant. Part I is where the pursuit is won or lost; Part II is the reusable substrate that should already exist before an announcement is even published.

SF 330 Part I: the eight sections

Part I is organized into sections A through H. Each has a defined job, and evaluators read them in order:

• Section A - Contract Information. The advertised contract title, the announcement number, and the firm submitting. Administrative, but errors here can disqualify a submission.
• Section B - Architect-Engineer Point of Contact. The named person the agency contacts about this submission - a real individual with a direct phone and email.
• Section C - Proposed Team. Every firm on the team (prime and subconsultants), with role and location. This is the roster the rest of Part I refers back to.
• Section D - Organizational Chart of the Proposed Team. A visual chart showing how the team’s firms and key roles connect, so the board can see who leads each discipline.
• Section E - Resumes of Key Personnel. One structured resume per key person: their role on this team, education, registrations, relevant experience, and the specific projects (from Section F) they worked on. Boards score whether the named people actually did comparable work.
• Section F - Example Projects. Up to ten projects that best illustrate the team’s qualifications for this contract. This is the heart of the form; it has its own section below.
• Section G - Key Personnel Participation in Example Projects. A matrix that cross-references each key person (Section E) against each example project (Section F), proving the team’s experience is real and connected, not a collection of unrelated credentials.
• Section H - Additional Information. The narrative section where firms respond to the announcement’s specific evaluation criteria - management approach, capacity, location, past performance, and anything the agency asked to see.

Sections E, F, and G are tightly interlocked: the resumes, the projects, and the matrix that binds them must all agree. An inconsistency - a person credited with a project in Section G that their Section E resume never mentions - reads as carelessness to a board that is looking for reasons to narrow the field.

Section F: the example projects that decide the award

Section F is where most SF 330 evaluations are actually won. It provides room for up to ten example projects, and each project occupies a structured box that asks for:

• Title and location of the project.
• Year completed - both professional services and construction, where applicable.
• Project owner and a point of contact the board can call to verify the work.
• A brief description and the relevance of the project to the advertised contract.
• The firms from Section C that worked on it, and in what role.

The projects you choose are a strategic decision, not a formality. Boards score relevance against the announcement, so ten large but unrelated projects lose to ten smaller projects that mirror the advertised scope, size, delivery method, and facility type. The point of contact must be current and warned that a call may come; a dead phone number on a Section F reference undermines the whole submission. Recency matters too - a project roster whose newest entry is five years old signals a firm that has drifted away from this kind of work.

Because Section F, the Section E resumes, and the Section G matrix all draw on the same underlying facts, firms that keep those facts in one place fill the form far faster. That is exactly the reuse problem the project reference manager is built for: each project is stored once - owner, dates, value, role, personnel, outcome - and assembled into a Section F box, a project reference sheet, or the past-performance block of a capability statement on demand.

SF 330 Part II: general qualifications

Part II is the firm-level form. One is completed for the prime and one for each subconsultant, and a firm with several offices may keep a Part II per branch. It records:

• Firm identity and codes - legal name, address, and the firm’s Unique Entity ID (UEI) from its SAM.gov registration.
• Point of contact for the firm.
• Former firm names, so that a firm’s history and prior work are traceable through mergers or rebrands.
• Employees by discipline - a table of how many staff the firm has in each design discipline, which shows the board the firm’s depth and capacity.
• Annual average revenue in defined ranges, indicating the scale of work the firm routinely handles.
• Profile of firm experience - codes and revenue that summarize the types of projects the firm performs.

Part II changes slowly, which is precisely why it should be maintained continuously rather than rebuilt under deadline pressure. A firm that keeps its discipline counts, revenue ranges, and UEI current can drop an accurate Part II into any submission in minutes; a firm that reconstructs it each time invites stale numbers and typos.

How to fill the SF 330 from a project database

The slowest way to complete an SF 330 is to treat every submission as a blank form. The fastest way is to recognize that the form is a view of data you should already hold - projects, people, firm facts - and to keep that data structured so each submission is an assembly job, not a research project.

1. Maintain Part II continuously. Keep firm identity, UEI, discipline employee counts, and revenue ranges current so Part II is always submission-ready.
2. Keep a project library, not a folder of old proposals. Store each project once with the fields Section F asks for: title, location, owner, point of contact, completion years, value, role, and the team firms and personnel involved.
3. Keep key-personnel records current. Each person’s registrations, education, and project history feed Section E resumes and the Section G matrix - the same records that keep a CV and skills profile current.
4. Select for the announcement, then assemble. For each new contract, choose the personnel and the up-to-ten projects that best match the evaluation criteria, and let the form assemble from the stored records rather than retyping them.
5. Verify the interlocks. Confirm that every project credited to a person in Section G appears in that person’s Section E resume and in Section F - consistency the board checks first.

This is the discipline behind the SF 330 template and worked example: map every field to a record you keep once, and the form stops being an archaeology project. Firms already comfortable with the broader federal document set pair it with a federal capability statement for the screening conversations that happen before a formal SF 330 solicitation exists.

SF 330 vs capability statement vs SOQ

Federal design firms juggle three related documents, and using the wrong one signals inexperience:

• SF 330 - a mandated, contract-specific government form with a fixed structure and an evaluated scoring process. Used only for US federal architect-engineer selection under FAR 36.6.
• Capability statement - a one-page firm summary for fast screening across many buyers and events. It carries UEI, CAGE, and NAICS codes but no Section F structure. It is what you hand out before a specific SF 330 opportunity exists.
• Statement of qualifications (SOQ) - a longer credentials package, common in state, local, and private A-E requests for qualifications. It is more narrative and flexible than the SF 330 but covers similar ground: firm profile, key personnel, and relevant projects.

The three overlap in source data and diverge in format and audience. A firm that keeps one project-and-personnel database can generate the Section F of an SF 330, the past-performance block of a capability statement, and the project narratives of an SOQ from the same records - which is the whole point of storing the data rather than the documents. For a side-by-side on the two most-confused of these, see statement of qualifications vs capability statement, and for the tender-side equivalent in EU and other public procurement, see project references for tenders.

Common SF 330 mistakes

The errors that cost firms the shortlist are consistent:

1. Generic Section F projects. Impressive but irrelevant projects lose to modest projects that match the advertised scope. Select for relevance, not size.
2. Broken interlocks between Sections E, F, and G. A person credited with a project in the matrix but not in their resume reads as carelessness.
3. Stale or unreachable references. A Section F point of contact with a dead number or no warning that a call is coming undermines every claim on the form.
4. Ignoring the evaluation criteria in Section H. Section H must answer the announcement’s stated criteria point by point; a boilerplate narrative that talks past them scores poorly.
5. Submitting an obsolete revision. Agencies reject superseded versions - always pull the current form from GSA before you submit.
6. Rebuilding from the last proposal. Copying an old SF 330 imports its stale data and its errors. Assemble each Part I fresh from current records.

Build your SF 330 from your project data

An SF 330 is only as fast and as accurate as the data behind it. Firms that store the documents redo the work every time; firms that store the data reselect and assemble. SUNAGO’s project reference manager keeps each project, reference, and person in one structured record, so Section F boxes, Section E resumes, and reusable Part II facts stay current and ready - and the same records feed every other credential document your firm produces. Start with the SF 330 template and filled example, then build these from your projects automatically - create a free SUNAGO account.