On January 16th, the Red Wing community hosted the Cities of Northfield and Lakeville for a seminar discussion on Feasibility Studies and RFPs. As the foundation is now providing funding for Open Access Feasibility studies, our Blandin team, including our Strategy Board, has spent significant time talking about what should be included in a feasibility study for it to enable critical decision making. The seminar was arranged to provide input to communities that we know are in the process of creating RFPs to hire consultants.

In the beautiful Indigo Building in downtown Red Wing, Eric Lampland of Lookout Point Communications and John Schultz of U-REKA Broadband shared their expertise on these critical topics. The presentations are available here. The seminar answered two essential questions:1) How do we design a Feasibility Study that will guide our decision makers to the best solution for our community, and 2)How do we design an RFP that will help us to select the best consultant/s to produce the feasibility study.

Each of the communities had a unique set of circumstances, including mix of providers, existence of public sector fiber networks, development patterns and community culture. Each community had taken a different approach to building community support for a community telecommunications initiative.

Throughout the seminar, there were active and ongoing discussions between our presenters and the participants and among the participants. As the program monitor, my clock watching became obsessive!

Some key messages that emerged:

1. Quality feasibility studies are created in a partnership between the consultant/s and the community. A quality study cannot just be delivered to the community; it is earned through active participation.
2. The only way to get what you want from a feasibility study is to know what you want out of a feasibility study. This needs to be conveyed to the prospective consultants through the RFP.
3. Knowing what is important should drive the RFP rating system and the RFP itself.
4. The pre-feasibility stage is critical to educating community leadership and should begin to eliminate some technology and operational alternatives.These early decisions, to be ratified through the feasibility study, can help to limit the scope of the feasibility study, thus enabling more in-depth considerations of remaining alternative.
5. The feasibility study, in essence, provides the business plan. It must cover the full range of considerations, including engineering, operations, marketing and more.

Thanks to Eric and John for the great work that they did in preparation and execution of our seminar!