Why House Strategies Group
This work needs new voices, and we intend to be one of them
A procurement disparity study asks a simple question: is this market open to every firm that is ready, willing, and able to do the work? The field that produces these studies should hold itself to the same standard. Today it largely does not, and that is the opening House Strategies Group is built to take.
The state of the field
A handful of firms, for a generation
Procurement disparity studies are produced by a small number of national firms that have led the field for decades. That concentration is well documented, and it shapes the methods, the prices, and the range of ideas a jurisdiction can choose from.
Source: Concentration documented by George R. La Noue, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Maryland shows the pattern at close range. The City's own 2020 procurement drew five responses, and the one Maryland-based respondent was screened out for lacking disparity-study experience; the City applied its criteria as written. Around the City today, a single national firm holds the current studies for the county next door, the State of Maryland, Montgomery County, Howard County, and the WSSC water utility, and a second holds the City's own 2021 baseline and Harford County's. That repeat selection reflects real, earned trust. It also means one methodological playbook now underlies most of the evidence in this market, and methodological monoculture is a documented risk in any evidence-driven field: shared assumptions go untested precisely because everyone shares them. A study about open, competitive markets is strongest when the market that produces it stays open and competitive too, and an open-merit selection is itself the inclusive competition the study advances.
The irony at the center of it
The barrier these studies measure also guards the field
A disparity study exists to find the requirements that keep capable firms out of public work. One of the most common is the experience requirement: a firm must have already done the thing to be allowed to do the thing. That same screen sits in front of the work of producing the studies. A capable firm cannot win its first study without prior studies, which is the precise barrier the work is commissioned to examine, operating on the firms competing to write it. A field built on that screen stays concentrated by design.
Appropriate gating, not over-gating
You do not have to lower the bar to widen the door.
When a peer jurisdiction advertised this same study earlier this year, only a firm that had already completed disparity studies could bid to do one. Measured against the study’s own purpose, that was a barrier of the exact kind the study exists to find. It tested incumbency, not capability, and it reserved the work for the handful of national firms that already hold the market. We raised the point, in writing to the contracting office and on the record at the pre-proposal conference. That jurisdiction examined its own criterion and opened the field.
The gate, as first written
- ×Two completed disparity studies, required as a threshold to bid
- ×A doctorate held as a minimum qualification
Field narrowed to roughly six national incumbents.
The gate, right-sized by addendum
- ✓No minimum qualification thresholds
- ✓Credentials disclosed, and may sit with a named team member
- ✓The field opened to every capable firm
The bar held. The door widened.
Nothing about the standard dropped. Inclusion and quality only look opposed when a requirement stands in for a capability it does not actually measure, and once that requirement is right-sized, nothing real is lost. That jurisdiction did not ask for less. It asked for the right thing, which is exactly what Frederick’s own commitments since the 2021 study, the availability-based MWBE goals and the Small Business Reserve, ask of the City, and exactly the discipline we bring to every bonding floor, experience minimum, and bundling decision in the City’s own contracts. Frederick has its own version of this moment: the 2020 procurement screened out the sole Maryland respondent under its criteria as written, and the forthcoming RFP (draft under review) is the City’s opportunity to decide, deliberately, what its criteria should measure this time.
House Strategies Group is what appeared when the barrier came down. In the most literal sense, we are the finding this kind of study exists to surface, and its proof.
The next break
Frederick can join the AI wave without handing judgment to a machine.
House Strategies Group adopted AI early. We use it to accelerate record review, map unfamiliar data, test code, surface exceptions, strengthen quality control, and make a complicated public record easier to navigate. We do not treat generated text as evidence. We do not let a model define availability, make a legal judgment, or decide whether disparity exists. Those decisions belong to named people, documented methods, and the City.
The harder choice is procurement. A genuinely modern method will not emerge from endlessly recycling the same national contractors and the same inherited playbook. Those firms built much of the field; they also hold an extraordinary share of it, in Maryland above all. Frederick can make a controlled break with the incumbent model: select a new prime, retain seasoned subject-matter reviewers, and insist on a source trail, reproducible analysis, and human sign-off at every consequential gate.
The control model
Review, reconciliation, issue spotting, code checks, and publication.
Every consequential output returns to the source record and a reproducible calculation.
Named analysts, reviewers, and counsel own findings, limits, and remedies.
Frederick receives the data, code, decision log, exhibits, and custody, not a black box.
Choose the next method, not merely the next incumbent.
Teaming partner
George Mason University, Center for Regional Analysis
Defining the relevant market, and estimating which firms are genuinely ready, willing, and able to compete for the City’s work, is a regional-economics question before it is anything else, and Frederick’s 2021 market area spans the Washington-Baltimore region where George Mason’s bench works every day. House Strategies Group has teamed with George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, a nationally recognized applied regional-economics bench whose portfolio includes disadvantaged-business availability work for DFW International Airport. The Center anchors the study’s market and availability analytics, a methodology that travels with the data rather than the address; a GMU responsible-AI scholar governs the study’s use of AI. National methods, applied to Frederick’s own market data, standing behind the numbers.
The case
Why new voices make the work better
This is not a complaint about the firms that built the field. It is a case that the field, and the jurisdictions it serves, are better with more qualified voices in it.
A field led by the same firms for decades tends toward a standard template. New entrants are free to control for capability, test causation, and report a null finding where the data warrant it, rather than repeat a familiar form.
A newer firm has every incentive to show its work. Published data, documented code, and a live, interactive platform make the analysis auditable, which is exactly what a defensible study needs and what too few have delivered.
A study of Frederick is better for being built from Frederick's own record, the City's contract data and the 2021 baseline, by people prepared to stand behind every figure in front of the City, rather than run from a national template.
A study about open, competitive markets is more credible when the market to produce it is open and competitive too. More qualified voices means better methods, fairer prices, and findings the public can trust.
Our claim
What we bring as a new voice
A new voice has to earn the seat. Here is what House Strategies Group brings to it, each shown on this portal rather than asserted.
A complete, public analysis of Frederick's own market, built from Census data and the City's published record, with every figure traced to its source and every limit stated inline.
Controls for capability, a procurement-funnel diagnosis, and targeted, race-neutral-first recommendations.
A cited framework of the barriers that keep capable firms out, paired with the method to investigate every one.
Regional economists, applied econometricians, qualitative researchers, and counsel who litigated the leading federal appellate disparity-study case.
Bring a new voice to the Frederick study
I am Jelani House, founder of House Strategies Group. The City's forthcoming RFP is still in draft, which makes this the right moment for a conversation about the work; our office is about 45 minutes away.
Talk to House Strategies Group