Wildfire Partners Home Hardening Technical Consultant

Launched in 2014, Wildfire Partners is Boulder County government’s wildfire mitigation program. Wildfire Partners offers a long list of programs to help residents and partner organizations reduce wildfire risk and prepare for future wildfires. To learn more about Wildfire Partners, visit www.WildfirePartners.org. Successful bids will have a very strong understanding of Wildfire Partners.

This “Wildfire Partners Home Hardening Pilot Program” is designed to test a potential new program and service: The creation of a Wildfire Partners Home Hardening Contractors List and development of a Wildfire Partners Home Hardening Financial Award. For this RFP and pilot program, Wildfire Partners is looking to select three to five Home Hardening Contractors to complete approximately 100 home hardening pilot projects. Wildfire Partners will identify the pilot projects and divide them up between the three to five selected contractors. Each contractor selected through this RFP process will be offered a minimum of 20 pilot projects over the course of the project period. (Selected contractors may be offered more than 20 projects depending on the final number of contractors selected and other relevant factors.) Each pilot project will be unique and will be customized to fulfill the home hardening mitigation check-list requirements or priority items of the participating homeowners. Some of the pilot projects will be smaller, simpler and/or less expensive with fewer mitigation measures; others will be larger, more complex and/or more expensive with more items to complete.

The design of the Wildfire Partners Home Hardening Pilot Program is based on Wildfire Partners forestry efforts. Since 2014, Wildfire Partners has provided $2.3 million directly to contractors on its Wildfire Partners Forestry Contractors List. Wildfire Partners Forestry Financial Award is a 50-50 cost-share program with homeowners participating in the Wildfire Partners home assessment program; the Wildfire Partners share of the total project cost capped at $2,000. As a result, contractors on this list have completed projects totaling more than $4.6 million. Wildfire Partners has had lists of home hardening contractors in the past, but it has never had a home hardening cost-share program. Wildfire Partners is interested in the possibility of a home-hardening, cost-share program. Funding for a potential program is available from the Boulder County Wildfire Mitigation Tax. This pilot program is an effort to develop some of the other essential pieces of a permanent program, including experienced home hardening contractors.

What are Examples of Specific Home Hardening Measures to Reduce Wildfire Risk? Wildfire Partners Mitigation Specialists have performed 4,772 individual home assessments with participating homeowners as of January 2026. These assessments identify a home’s vulnerabilities to wildfire. Homeowners receive a customized assessment report with a checklist of required, recommended, or priority mitigation measures to complete to help reduce their wildfire risk. Wildfire Partners maintains a database of these mitigation measures. As of January 2026, the database had 40,701 required mitigation measures with an average of 11.17 required mitigation measures per assessment. A complete breakdown of these mitigation measures is included in Attachment A. A sample assessment report is included in Attachment C. It is important to note that the average of 11.17 mitigation measures per home include both home hardening and defensible space measures. This RFP is only focused on home hardening measures. The average number of home hardening mitigation measures is 3.82 per home. Again, the number of mitigation measures to be performed for this pilot program will vary with some above and some below this average number.

Submittal Instructions RFP-258-26