Do we need a consultant to update a hazard mitigation plan?

No. FEMA requires an approved plan, not a consultant. A county with a planner who has time, current GIS data and a tracked list of past actions can update in-house. Most hire help because the work arrives once every five years and needs risk analysis, facilitation and FEMA review experience at the same time.

What should a hazard mitigation plan consultant's contract require?

FEMA's Local Mitigation Planning Handbook says the final deliverable must be a plan with FEMA status of Approvable Pending Adoption or Approved. Tie the last payment to that status. Require all revisions the state or FEMA asks for at no added cost, editable plan files and GIS data, and support through each adoption vote.

How much should a hazard mitigation plan consultant cost?

FEMA's records of 1,171 local plan updates for fiscal years 2020 through 2025 show a median total cost of $54,444, with the middle half between $32,268 and $120,000. Those totals include staff time counted as local match, so the consultant's contract is usually somewhat lower than the grant budget.

Can we choose a hazard mitigation plan consultant on qualifications alone?

Rarely, when federal money pays. Under 2 CFR 200.320, selection without price is limited to architectural and engineering services. Other competitive proposals must weigh price with other factors and state each factor's relative importance in the RFP. Ask your State Hazard Mitigation Officer how your state classifies planning work.

Can the firm that helped write our grant application bid on the plan?

Possibly not. Under 2 CFR 200.319, a contractor that develops or drafts specifications, requirements or statements of work must be excluded from competing for that procurement. If a firm wrote the scope in your grant subapplication and that scope becomes the RFP, check with your grants office before you invite it to bid.

What is the biggest warning sign in a hazard mitigation plan proposal?

A finish line of draft submitted to the state. State and FEMA reviewers send comments, and a consultant paid in full at submission has no reason to answer them quickly. The second is a hazard section that could describe any county, which usually means the firm will reuse another client's text.

How to Choose a Hazard Mitigation Plan Consultant

Q: How do you check a hazard mitigation plan consultant's track record?

Ask for three plans the firm took to approval, then look each one up in FEMA's public plan status records. They show the date FEMA found the plan approvable, the approval date and which jurisdictions adopted. Ask for FEMA's review comments on one of them and call the client's emergency manager.

The Short Answer

Choose the consultant who will get every jurisdiction to adopt a plan FEMA approves on the first review, with an action list specific enough to fund. That is a narrower test than "experienced in hazard mitigation", and you can check most of it before you sign.

FEMA publishes the status of every local mitigation plan in the country. That means a firm's record is public: when its plans were found approvable, when they were approved, and whether the towns in them ever adopted. Few buyers look.

This guide is for emergency managers, planners and purchasing staff in counties, cities and towns. It covers who can lead an update, how to check a record, what to ask, what the contract should say and what a fair price looks like. For sample scope language and scoring weights, see our RFP guide for plan updates.

What You Are Hiring For

FEMA's 2025 Local Mitigation Planning Handbook puts it plainly: consultants do not own the planning process. The community decides its risks, goals and priorities. The consultant facilitates, analyzes and writes.

In practice an update needs four kinds of work, and few firms are equally strong at all of them.

Risk analysis. Hazard profiles, exposure and loss estimates, and mapping.
Facilitation. Running a planning committee, public meetings and a comment process across several towns.
Strategy. Turning findings into actions with an owner, a cost range and a named funding program.
Review and adoption. Answering state and FEMA comments and getting each council to vote.

Proposals tend to lead with the first. FEMA's records point to the third and fourth as the places plans stall: action tables that name no funding program, and towns that never adopt. Score proposals on all four.

Who Can Lead an Update

A national firm is one option among five. The right one depends on your staff, your data and how many jurisdictions take part.

Who leads	Best for	What to watch
Your own staff	A single jurisdiction with a planner who has time, current GIS data and a tracked action list	The work lands on top of a full job, and FEMA review experience is thin
Regional planning commission or council of governments	Multi-county regions where the commission already holds the last plan	Staff capacity; ask who will do the risk analysis
National or regional engineering and planning firm	Large or multi-jurisdictional plans that need heavy analysis	Template text reused across clients; senior staff who appear only at the pitch
Small specialist firm	Small and mid-sized counties that want one senior person throughout	Depth in GIS and loss modeling; ask what is subcontracted
University or extension program	Communities with a small budget and time to spare	Semester schedules, and who stays through FEMA review

A split approach is common and often sensible: a firm for the risk assessment and the document, and your own staff or a second firm for engagement and the action list. If you split the work, name one party responsible for FEMA approval.

Check the Record in FEMA's Own Data

FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Plan Statuses dataset lists each plan, each jurisdiction in it, the date FEMA found the plan approvable, the approval date and the adoption date. Our plan tracker reads the same records and shows each plan's status and expiration date by state and county.

Ask each bidder for three plans it took through approval in the last five years. Then look them up. Three things tell you most of what you need.

Did the old plan lapse before the new one was approved? A gap means the community spent time ineligible for FEMA mitigation project grants. Sometimes that is the client's late start. Ask which.

How long did the first adoption take? Across 3,401 local plans with both dates on record, the median gap between FEMA's go-ahead and approval is 44 days. A quarter took 84 days or more.

Did every jurisdiction adopt? This is where plans leak. Of 27,424 jurisdictions listed under approved, unexpired local plans, 4,090 (15%) still show as pending adoption in FEMA's records, as of November 11, 2026. A consultant who treats adoption as the client's problem leaves towns uncovered.

Then ask for two documents: FEMA's review comments on one of those plans, and the plan's action table. The comments show how clean the first submission was. The action table shows whether the firm writes actions someone can fund.

Eight Questions to Ask

Who will run our meetings, and how many hours are they in the budget for? Interview that person, not the principal.
Which of our hazards deserve detailed analysis, and which can stay at FEMA's minimum? A good answer shows the firm has read your current plan.
How will you document the status of every action in our last plan? FEMA requires it in an update, and it is the task weak updates skip.
Show us an action from a past plan that became a funded project. Ask which program paid for it.
How many rounds of state and FEMA revisions does your price include? The answer should be "as many as it takes".
How will you get each town to adopt, and by when? Look for draft resolutions, briefings and dates.
What will we own at the end? Editable plan files, GIS layers and exposure spreadsheets, which FEMA's Handbook tells buyers to write into the contract.
What would adding future conditions to the risk assessment cost? FEMA's 2025 Policy Guide no longer requires climate change in hazard probability. Whether to include it is now your decision.

What the Contract Should Say

Five clauses do most of the work.

The finish line is FEMA's. The Handbook says the final deliverable must be a plan with FEMA status of Approvable Pending Adoption or Approved. Hold the last payment until then. Worcester County, Maryland wrote that into its 2025 RFP.
Revisions are included. All changes the state or FEMA requires, at no added cost.
The schedule holds time for review. At least six months for state and FEMA review, shown separately.
Named staff. The people in the proposal do the work, and a change needs your consent.
You own the files. Editable documents, map data and spreadsheets, delivered with the final plan.

When federal money pays for the contract, the procurement rules at 2 CFR 200.320 apply. The RFP must state every evaluation factor and its relative importance, and price has to be one of them unless the work is architecture or engineering. Under 2 CFR 200.319, a firm that drafted your statement of work must be excluded from bidding on it. Our guide to what grants can pay for covers the purchase thresholds.

What a Fair Price Looks Like

FEMA's grant records are the best benchmark. Across 1,171 local plan updates approved or funded for fiscal years 2020 through 2025, the median total cost was $54,444 and the middle half ran from $32,268 to $120,000. Our cost and timeline guide breaks those figures down by plan type and lists twelve Maryland grants.

Published weights for price vary widely. Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania gave cost 10% of the score in its 2024 RFP. Worcester County gave it 30%. Routt County, Colorado received four proposals and awarded $69,965 in March 2025.

A low bid is not a warning sign by itself. A low bid with few hours for facilitation and none for adoption is. Ask every bidder for hours by task and by person, and compare those before you compare totals.

Warning Signs

Hazard text that fits any county. Or text that still carries another client's place names.

A finish line of "draft submitted". Revisions then become extra work at your expense.

Actions funded by "grants". FEMA's Policy Guide asks for funding sources more specific than "federal" or "state".

One public meeting at the end. The regulation requires a chance to comment during drafting, and a single hearing rarely changes a plan.

No plan for adoption. If the proposal ends at FEMA's letter, some of your towns may never be covered.

Principals on the cover, juniors in the hours. Check the staffing table against the people you met.

How Council Fire Can Help

Council Fire is a sustainability consultancy and certified B Corp in Annapolis, Maryland. We work with county teams and their consultants on the parts of an update that decide what gets built: the public engagement FEMA requires, ranking the actions, and lining up funding for the projects the plan names.

With the Resilience Authority of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, 18 months of engagement on the Annapolis Maritime Resilience Initiative produced 38 resident-identified sites of concern, and 10 advanced to preliminary design. Through Council Fire Labs we built Aptation with the Resilience Authority to rank projects and match them to funding.

We are a good fit when engagement and the action list matter as much as the document. We are not an engineering firm, and detailed loss modeling is not our work. See hazard mitigation planning in Maryland and stakeholder engagement consulting, or tell us when your plan expires.

Sources and Method

Plan records: OpenFEMA Hazard Mitigation Plan Statuses v1, queried November 11, 2026, limited to local plans with test records removed. Cost figures: OpenFEMA HMA Subapplications v2, queried the same day. This page uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency's OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. Rules: 44 CFR 201.6. This guide is general information, not procurement or legal advice.