RFP Proposal Evaluation---How do the evaluators do it? www.rfpmentor.com/software.html

Received by the President of Aloha Chapter of NCMA on 22 March 2009

Dear Colleague

There isn't a lot written about what happens when the Evaluators meet to discuss

the proposals received in response to an RFP. For the most part, the workings of

these meetings are secret.

My latest report is A Guide for Procuring Complex Off-the-Shelf Software for Public Agencies. In it, I describe the entire Evaluation Process and each stakeholder's role. Here is a small sample of what I wrote about the Procurement Officer's role:

The Procurement Officer did not participate in the scoring. His role was to ensure that the evaluation was done fairly and that all vendors were treated equally; more specifically, his role was to

(i) provide guidance on completing each task in the evaluation to ensure that it was fair to all vendors

(ii) to document critical events such as the disqualification of a proposal for non-compliance and

(iii) to assist the team in developing its list of clarification questions.

His comments were generally restricted to issues of law, policy, fairness and the evaluation process. His major contribution was to ensure that each vendor was treated in a consistent manner and that the evaluation process did not evolve so that the last proposal evaluated was treated differently than the first. (In fact, this often occurs. During the process, the evaluators discuss various factors and learn more about features. Based on this, they may change the evaluation process from vendor to vendor, as the process proceeds. It is the role of the Procurement Officer to point this out and to force the Evaluators to re-visit their earlier evaluations and apply the same rules to the first proposal as they applied to the last one.

For example, in reviewing the first proposal, the Evaluators may have declared that a certain level of explanation for one particular feature warranted a ‘6’.

In subsequent evaluations, they may have concluded that the same level of explanation only warranted a ‘4’. Once this has been determined, they have to revisit the earlier proposals and rescore to establish a consistent approach.

For more information about this valuable report, go to:

A Guide for Procuring Complex Commercial Off-the-Shelf-Software (COTS)

for Public Agencies

www.rfpmentor.com/software.html

Best regards

Michael Asner

604.530-7881

www.rfpmentor.com

michael@rfpmentor.com