Outlaw Engineering offers funding procurement and grant writing for public-sector clients. We work with cities, towns, special districts, and tribal governments to identify the right programs, write the application, and administer the capital from award through closeout.
We pair two decades of engineering experience with deep fluency in the federal and state funding landscape, so your project doesn't stall at the budget meeting, and the application doesn't miss the deadline because the engineer was too busy drafting to write the narrative. We're the rare firm that speaks both languages: engineering and funding.
Funding programs restrict applicants to specific entity types. We structure our work around your legal eligibility, not around what we want to sell.
General-purpose local governments across Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho. Typical work: water, wastewater, streets, community facilities, public safety buildings.
County-scale infrastructure, roads, landfills, emergency services facilities, regional water projects. CIB-eligible and USDA-eligible.
Water conservancy, sewer improvement, fire protection, cemetery, recreation, and other single-purpose districts. Strong CIB and SRF candidates.
K-12 districts, postsecondary institutions, and public building authorities. CIB-eligible under specific activity categories.
Federally-recognized tribes accessing USDA Rural Development, BIA, HUD ICDBG, and state partnership funding. Separate eligibility track from state subdivisions.
Public water and wastewater systems pursuing SRF, USDA W&W, and state drinking-water grant & loan programs.
A four-phase practice that fits your capital improvement timeline, not the other way around.
We map your project against federal, state, tribal, and special programs, matching scope, eligibility, and timing. Most projects qualify for more than one source, and stacking them saves your local match.
Typically 1–2 weeksPhased submittals, match-fund coordination, predevelopment grants, board-hearing prep. We build a funding strategy that maximizes award probability and minimizes your cash exposure.
2–4 weeksWe write the application, prepare supporting engineering (PER, NEPA, environmental review), package exhibits in the format each funder actually accepts, and shepherd it through agency review.
4–8 weeks per applicationDavis-Bacon compliance, reimbursement requests, reporting, amendments, and closeout. We stay engaged through execution, most grant consultants disappear after award.
Duration of construction + closeoutNot a list copied from a government site, these are programs our team has real applications, awards, and administration experience in. If a program isn't here and you think it fits your project, ask us, we may still work in it.
The workhorse federal program for rural water, wastewater, stormwater, and solid-waste infrastructure. Direct loans, guaranteed loans, and grants for communities under 10,000 population.
Direct loans and grants for essential community facilities, emergency services, health clinics, libraries, public safety buildings, and town halls in rural areas under 20,000 population.
HUD block-grant funding administered through Utah's Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity. Infrastructure, economic development, and LMI-benefit projects with state-specific priority scoring.
Low-interest loans and principal-forgiveness subsidies for wastewater, stormwater, and non-point-source projects. Administered by Utah Water Quality Board.
State revolving fund for drinking water systems, focused on small-system compliance, source-water protection, and infrastructure upgrades. Administered by Utah Drinking Water Board.
Grants and low-interest loans for Utah communities impacted by mineral-lease development on federal lands, infrastructure, facilities, equipment, and planning. Trimester deadlines.
Utah's fund for transportation and throughput infrastructure that supports the movement of oil, gas, and mineral resources. Oil-and-gas-adjacent projects welcome.
Pre-disaster mitigation funding for capital projects that reduce risk from flooding, wildfire, drought, and other hazards. Annual cycle with state-level scoring.
Utah Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity rural grants for economic development, tourism, and community projects. Quarterly application windows.
Most firms pitch you the big-ticket award and skip the easy on-ramp: USDA-RD's Predevelopment Planning Grants cover up to $30,000 for the engineering studies, PERs, and environmental reviews you need before you can apply for the main grant. Eligible rural applicants get the planning paid for, and we've used them to fund the work that eventually wins the larger award.
Ask us about PPG on your first call. It often takes a 90-day project from "maybe someday" to "funded."
You don't need a polished project to start the conversation. You need a problem and a rough sense of scale. We bring the rest.
Most grant consultants can't read the drawings they're applying for. Most engineers can't write a narrative that scores. We do both, under one roof.
Our funding narratives are written by people who've sized the water main, graded the site, and specified the pumps.
We know the CIB trimester calendar, the DWSRF priority list, and the USDA-RD state office, by name. We've sat in the meetings.
Multi-source packages, USDA + CDBG + CIB + local match, designed to maximize the award and minimize your local burden.
We don't cash the check and disappear. We stay engaged through Davis-Bacon reporting, reimbursements, amendments, and closeout.
If your question isn't here, pick up the phone, we answer faster than we reply to email.
No. Utah CIB funding is restricted to counties, cities, towns, school districts, building authorities, special service districts, water conservancy districts, county service areas, special improvement districts, water or sewer improvement districts, and public postsecondary institutions. Engineering firms, private corporations, individuals, and nonprofits aren't eligible applicants. Our role is to partner with the eligible public entity, we prepare the submittal, coordinate supporting engineering, and walk it through review.
We charge hourly for application preparation and can also roll grant-writing hours into our overall engineering scope for a given capital project. For predevelopment planning and feasibility, many clients offset our fees using USDA Predevelopment Planning Grants (up to $30K), which means the planning work that leads to your main application gets reimbursed. We'll give you a specific scope and fee in our first meeting.
It depends on the program and the project, but more importantly: we won't pursue an application we don't think has a strong chance. Our "go / no-go" assessment at the end of Phase 1 (Identify) is honest. If a project isn't competitive, we'll tell you, and pivot to a program where it is. That's why our overall award rate beats industry benchmarks.
Yes. Federally-recognized tribes have a separate eligibility track from state subdivisions, USDA Rural Development, BIA, HUD Indian CDBG, and state partnership funding. We've worked with tribes in the Uinta Basin region and understand both federal tribal consultation requirements and the distinct funding landscape.
Yes. Board presentation prep is part of our work. For CIB applications specifically, your project needs a public hearing and sound board support, we draft hearing materials, prep the presentation, and can attend in person when it matters. Most denied CIB applications fail on board communication, not project merit.
That works. We can plug in as a stand-alone funding consultant, writing the application, coordinating with your existing engineer on technical exhibits, and administering the award. We don't need to do the engineering work to help you fund it.
For a typical CIB trimester deadline, 60–90 days out is ideal. For USDA-RD applications, plan 4–6 months out to include environmental review (NEPA) and PER (Preliminary Engineering Report) work. For multi-source stacked funding, 6–12 months. But don't let timing stop you from calling, we've turned around tight timelines, and we'll tell you honestly if yours is realistic.