Every number in your RFI responses was written by someone who wants you to pick them
That isn’t an accusation. It’s the structure of the process. Communities compete for projects like yours, they staff that competition with professionals, and the packet you receive is the most favorable defensible version of the truth.
We run the search from your side of the table — with the advantage of having spent years on the other one.
The problem is rarely the analysis. It’s who’s paying for it.
A location decision is one of the few capital commitments a company cannot unwind. Most companies run this decision one of three ways, and each has a structural problem that has nothing to do with competence.
The broker runs it
Real estate expertise is real, and you will need it eventually. But a firm compensated on the transaction is compensated on a transaction. Sites with listing relationships surface. Sites without them don't. The universe you evaluate quietly narrows to the universe that pays.
The incentives firm runs it
A contingent fee on captured incentives looks like free advice. It isn't. It aligns your advisor with the largest headline package, and the largest headline package is frequently not the lowest total cost of operating over ten years. Abatement is a rounding error against thirty months of delayed revenue or a structurally short labor market.
Your team runs it
Your VP of Operations is capable of comparing eighteen markets. It is not their job, they will do it alongside their actual job, and they will do it against communities represented by people who screen projects for a living. That asymmetry is the entire problem. You are the least experienced party in a process where you carry all of the risk.
We built this engagement to remove the conflict and close the asymmetry — paid a fixed fee by you, with no stake in which site wins, run by someone who has written the RFI responses you’re about to read.
Define it. Eliminate it. Test it. Recommend it.
Requirements are locked in writing before any geography is screened, and no site advances on a claim we haven’t independently confirmed. Fatal flaws are tested before cost, always.
Requirements & Decision Governance
Agreement on the question, before anyone answers it.
We work with your executive team to convert the project into testable specifications: footprint and configuration, power and water demand at peak and at growth, labor requirement by occupation and wage band, logistics and customer proximity, timeline to production, and the constraints nobody has written down yet. Then we build the weighted decision framework — criteria, weights, and thresholds — and lock it before screening begins. We also establish who decides what. Most searches stall not on data but on an unresolved question about whether Operations or Finance owns the tradeoff. Better to surface that in Week 2 than at the board presentation.
Signed requirements specification, weighted scoring model with documented thresholds, and a decision governance map with named owners and escalation paths.
Geography & Fatal-Flaw Screening
The wide net, then the honest cut.
We screen the full candidate geography against your locked criteria — typically dozens to hundreds of communities, depending on how open the search radius is. Then binary fatal-flaw filters run: utility capacity against your peak demand with headroom, labor shed depth against your occupation mix inside a real commute time, logistics access, site control and configuration, and entitlement path. Fatal flaws are pass/fail and they are not scored. A community either can host the project or it cannot. This is where a long list becomes a working list, and where we document why each elimination happened — because someone on your board will ask about the market you didn't shortlist.
Screened market roster with a documented elimination record, and a qualified shortlist ready to receive an RFI.
RFP / RFI Management
Your requirements, asked the same way, of everyone.
We build and issue the information request, manage the communities and utilities through response, and control the process so responses arrive comparable rather than merely enthusiastic. That means specific questions with no room to answer a different one — deliverable load and the date it's deliverable, wage data by occupation rather than by sector, the actual entitlement steps and who holds each approval, and what the incentive framework can support at your investment and job numbers. We also manage your confidentiality. Depending on your posture, we can run the search under a project code with your identity withheld until finalist selection — which is often the difference between a real answer on capacity and a marketing answer.
Managed RFI process, a normalized response set in one comparable format, and a scored shortlist advancing to diligence.
Finalist Due Diligence & Negotiation
Where the process either earns its fee or exposes its gaps.
Every finalist claim gets independently tested. Utility deliverability confirmed with the utility against your construction schedule, not nameplate capacity against your load. Labor validated by occupation — turnover sustainability at Month 18, not hiring feasibility on Day 1. Shovel-ready claims audited against your timeline, because rezoning and remediation surface here or they surface after you've closed. Site visits structured around the questions the RFI response avoided. Incentive negotiations run in parallel across finalists, benchmarked against comparable recent deals in that state rather than against statutory maximums. Parallel is the point: leverage exists only while more than one community believes it can still win.
Validated diligence file per finalist, a scored comparison matrix, a written risk register, and negotiated term sheets.
Recommendation & Execution Support
A decision your board can defend after the fact.
An executive recommendation with the reasoning visible: the scored matrix, the total cost of project model, the sensitivity analysis showing what would have to be true for the answer to change, and the risks you are accepting knowingly. Not a conclusion — an argument, with the workbook behind it. Then we stay through execution: LOI support, incentive documentation and compliance structure, and coordination through site acquisition. The engagement ends when the decision is made and papered, not when the deck is delivered.
Board-ready recommendation package, full risk register, executed term sheets, and support through LOI and closing.
We have no stake in which site wins
No transaction fee, ever
We take no brokerage commission, no tenant-rep split, and no referral fee from any site, developer, or landowner. When a site enters your consideration set, it's because it survived a screen — not because it was listed.
No contingency on incentives
We don't take a percentage of captured incentives. A contingent fee makes your advisor's compensation rise with the headline number, and the community offering the largest package is regularly not the community with the lowest ten-year operating cost. We'd rather be able to tell you the smaller package is the better deal.
We also advise communities — here's the firewall
Hyphen has an economic development practice. We're direct about it: we've built the site inventories, written the RFI responses, and structured the incentive offers you're about to evaluate. We know what's held in reserve. We do not take a fee from any community inside your active search. Conflicts are disclosed in writing at engagement, and if one emerges mid-search, you hear it from us first.
We’ve been the party you’re about to negotiate with. Most site selection consultants have only ever worked one side. Reading a community’s packet is a different exercise when you’ve written one.
$75M facility. 5 states. 200+ communities. 9 months.
A mid-market advanced manufacturer needed the optimal location for a new production facility inside a nine-month decision window — 150,000+ SF, a skilled machining and assembly labor shed, reliable utilities, and competitive incentives across a five-state geography.
Six finalists went to diligence, where one was eliminated because the utility’s capital improvement plan wouldn’t support the client’s load for thirty-plus months — caught before the client spent a day on a site visit. Two more had shovel-ready claims that concealed rezoning or remediation adding six to twelve months, undisclosed in the RFI responses.
Site closed inside the window, ground broken the following quarter. No post-decision timeline surprises.
Also: a $1B+ semiconductor fab search across seven states and eight MSAs, with 15-year NPV modeling inside the CHIPS Act window. Read Project Mars →
Structured for a decision you can’t reverse
Six operating principles that hold across every phase of every search.
Fixed fee, never hourly
You know the number before we start, and it doesn't move when scope clarifies. No timesheet incentive to extend a search.
Principal-led from kickoff to closing
The person in your first call is the person running your screen, sitting in your site visits, and negotiating your term sheets. No pitch team, no junior handoff.
Phase gates, not a black box
Each phase ends in a deliverable and a decision. Continue, pause, or stop — the work you've paid for stands on its own either way.
Confidentiality by default
Searches run under a project code with your identity withheld until you choose to disclose it. Where NDAs are appropriate, we manage them.
Every figure traced
Sourced, derived, and pending stay labeled. If a number came from a community, it's marked as a community claim until we've confirmed it independently.
You own everything
The model, the workbooks, the diligence files, the elimination record. If you run another search in three years, you're not starting over — and you're not renting your own data back from us.
This engagement fits a specific situation
It’s built for you if:
You're placing a capital-intensive facility — manufacturing, processing, distribution, or large-load — where the decision is difficult to reverse.
The search spans multiple states or a geography wide enough that screening is real work rather than a comparison of two known options.
Utility capacity, labor depth, or timeline is a genuine risk rather than a formality.
Your board or investment committee will require a documented, defensible basis for the recommendation.
You want an advisor whose compensation is unaffected by which location you choose.
An honest note on where it doesn’t fit
If you’ve already selected the site and need the incentive package negotiated, this is more engagement than you need — that’s Incentive Package Analysis.
If the real question is whether one specific site can support your load, start with Utility Readiness Advisory.
If your decision has already been made politically and you need an outside document that agrees with it, we’re the wrong firm. We’ve delivered recommendations clients didn’t want, and that’s the point of hiring us.
If your timeline is under sixty days, say so on the fit call. Sometimes we can compress. Sometimes the honest answer is that a real search doesn’t fit the window.
Frequently combined
Utility Readiness Advisory
→Deeper diligence on power, water, gas, and telecom deliverability when load is the binding constraint.
Incentive Package Analysis
→Standalone evaluation and negotiation support when the location is already set.
Workforce Due Diligence
→Occupation-level labor availability and wage testing for a specific operating requirement.
Data Center Advisory
→Power-first site strategy, interconnect queue position, and grid constraint analysis for large-load projects.
More on location decisions and site search
The Site Selector’s Playbook
A step-by-step guide to industrial location decisions — the validation-first methodology behind $50M–$3B+ engagements.
Stop Comparing Incentive Packages by Face Value
The conventional approach to evaluating incentives is the wrong analysis. A better framework built around timing, deliverability, and risk.
The Interconnection Wall
Why power timelines — not sites — now decide industrial location. How to read an interconnection queue and interrogate a utility capacity claim.
The cheapest time to find a fatal flaw is before the shortlist
Twenty minutes, no cost, no deck. Tell us the project, the geography, and the timeline. We’ll tell you whether a full search is the right instrument — or whether something narrower gets you there faster.
Or email [email protected]