Response Companion · Town of Vienna RFP 27-02, issued August 6, 2026

We started your study before proposing to do it.

This portal was built by House Strategies Group from the public record: the Town's own published pay plans, both of them, plus the 2024 study the RFP references and the Northern Virginia market Vienna actually hires from. It is a working preview of how we run a dual-track study rather than a brochure about how we would.

113
Unique job titles across 199 FT + 3 benefited PT employees (RFP §4.1)
2
Pay plans: civilian open-range + sworn step scale (FY23)
~41
Sworn positions, Officer through Chief, in Track B
Occupied civilian grades transcribed from the Town's own pay plan
12
NOVA/DC law enforcement agencies benchmarked on this portal, with dates
Dec 14
2026 final-report date this work plan is built backward from
Project Understanding

What the Town is actually buying

RFP 27-02 asks for one study with two distinct disciplines inside it, plus a joint product that touches every employee. The structure of this portal mirrors the structure of the scope, because that is how we would run it.

Track A · RFP §4.3

Civilian classification & open-range redesign

PDQs and desk audits across every civilian department, series with real career ladders, an open-range structure with defensible midpoints and grade differentials, updated hiring terciles, and the specific deliverables the Town named: a standalone Sewer Construction series, a standalone Water Construction series, the CDL hiring incentive, and Public Works Crew Chief extra-duty pay.

Track B · RFP §4.4

Sworn police compensation & incentive study

A total-compensation survey Officer through Chief against an agreed peer field, a step plan that stays competitive and sustainable, compression analysis, an audit of lateral bonuses, education and certification pay, FTO and specialty stipends and shift differentials, and career-ladder criteria with multi-year fiscal impact.

Joint · RFP §4.5

Pay equity, placement & implementation

Every employee's placement reviewed against tenure and experience, compression and inversion identified and priced, two peer lists where the operational reality differs, separate and combined multi-year implementation scenarios, and administrative manuals so HR can maintain both systems without the consultant.

Why HSG

Built for the shape of this study

Evidence before award

Every figure on this portal comes from a cited public document: the Town's published FY 24-25 pay plans, the February 2024 Bolton study presented to Council, agency budgets, and police recruiting pages across the region, each with its effective date. The Track B analysis is the level of work Vienna will receive throughout the study, and it existed before proposals were due.

Local, for once

The Town Green is a drive, not a flight. Desk audits, department-head sessions, the December delivery, and the January Council presentation all happen in person without a travel line item. Our proposal prices travel at zero and means it, because the labor market this study benchmarks is the one we work in.

Two tracks, two disciplines, one record

Civilian open-range design and sworn step-plan design are different crafts: different peer fields, different structures, different failure modes. The RFP scores them separately and so do we, with a distinct methodology page for each and a joint equity review that reconciles the two without flattening either.

December 14 is the design constraint

The final report is due December 14, 2026, and the RFP says so three times. Our work plan is built backward from that date: the platform absorbs the mechanical hours, senior analysts spend theirs on judgment, and the milestones that depend on Town calendars carry the float.

Innovation, and a new voice

The Town has commissioned classification and compensation studies from the established consulting circle roughly every six years: a 2014 study, Springsted in 2016, and Bolton's February 2024 report. Each produced useful work, and this RFP still asks for a redesigned structure, a formal job-evaluation method, and equity repair. That pattern is an argument for methodological diversity. HSG uses AI to accelerate document review, matching, and scenario development; credentialed professionals, led by a Certified Job Evaluator, reconcile and sign every substantive determination, and the reconciliation is logged. The Town sees the sources, the judgment, and the audit trail. Competition from an independent team is how new methods and checked assumptions enter this field, and the method is published on this portal before award rather than asserted after it.

The study is already staged on our delivery platform. A Town of Vienna workspace is provisioned at vienna.plumbline-hr.com: the Town's published classification schedule (111 records), a 12-agency law-enforcement market file with provenance on every datapoint, and a stored preliminary analysis run. Day one of the awarded study is judgment, never data entry. Platform demonstrations are HSG-operated walkthroughs.

A note on what this portal is not

Nothing here uses non-public Town data. Pay figures come from the Town's own published pay plans and budgets, the 2024 study report in the public Legistar record, and agency recruiting pages, each cited where it appears. Where a module demonstrates method on illustrative data, such as the Equity Lab, it says so. The real study runs on the validated employee-level data the Town provides at kickoff, and current-year figures are marked as estimates wherever the underlying document is the FY 24-25 plan adjusted by the COLAs the RFP itself documents.