How much do you know about how government agencies evaluate request for proposals? If your business depends on government contracts, funding, or grant-giving, then it helps to understand how bids are:

• Reviewed
• Assessed
• Scored and
• Awarded

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In this series of tutorials, I will first look at how government bodies uses the services of external proposal evaluators to evaluate bids. While this process may change across different departments, it’s the one I’m most familiar with.

How Request For Proposals are Evaluated: Defining the Scope

This article describes the rules and procedures for evaluating Request For Proposals.

First, identify who will perform the evaluation, e.g.,

The evaluation shall be carried out by the Department in conjunction with [consultant 1] and [consultant 2].

The evaluation process consists of two phases:

1. Phase 1 – Assess the proposed solution against the requirements of the Request For Proposal.
2. Phase 2- Concerns the financial assessment, i.e. which bid offers the best value for money.

Defining the Request For Proposal Evaluation Process

Phase 1 of the evaluation works as follows:

• Appoint the evaluation team
• Identify lead evaluator for each tender.
• Review the Invitation to Tender (ITT) and Supporting Documentation including the Q&A responses.
• Identify any issues or risks in the ITT and Q&A documents.
• Develop a scoring scheme; agree the marking scheme, with specific references to the criteria stated in the Invitation to Tender and any risks or issues identified.
• Evaluators agree a threshold mark for each section.
• Evaluators agree a weighting system.
• Each evaluator performs the evaluation for each Tender Submission
• Each evaluator attributes marks as per the marking scheme: note that the rules and guidelines described in this document should be applied in all aspects of the evaluation of bids.
• Consensus meeting is held at the end of the individual evaluations.
• Prepare Phase 1 Evaluation Report draft and final versions

Assumptions

It is assumed that any bids provided to the evaluating team by the government agency are valid bids (i.e. received on time and accepted as a bona-fide bid).

Defining the Evaluation Team Roles and Responsibilities

In general, at least two independent evaluators are used on any bid.

You need to appoint one lead evaluator and other evaluators to coordinate the assessment.

Their roles are summarised as follows:

Lead Evaluator

• Co-ordinates the bid evaluation process
• Chairs any moderation/consensus meetings
• Prepares Phase 1 report
• Co-ordinates/facilitates Phase 2 [providing organisation and management of the process, such as organising meetings, minute taking, and scheduling interviews]

Other Evaluators

• In Phase 1, scores the tender submissions according to an agreed marking scheme.
• Participates in evaluation and consensus meetings.
• Attends meetings providing input as required.

Rules and Guidelines

Apply the following rules, guidelines and procedures during the Phase 1 evaluation.

The appointing of the evaluation team
The team to evaluate any bid is approved by the project leader.

Participation

Any individuals involved in evaluating tenders must be consistently involved in reviewing all competing bids on a project.

If someone becomes unavailable before they have fully reviewed all competing bids, their replacement must review all proposals including those already covered by the initial evaluator.

Conflict of Interest

The evaluation team must be objective and free from any conflict of interest.

It is essential that all companies and evaluators are objective.

If any company or individual has any financial or personal interest (e.g. competitor, business partner, shareholder, relative, employee etc) in any of the companies presenting tender bids, then they must make their interest known to the coordinating evaluator.

This will be discussed with the client; if necessary, the evaluator may have to step aside and be replaced.

Confidentiality

All documentation that relates to the tender bids – and their evaluation – is subject to restricted access and should not shared wit any persons outside the evaluation team.

Each evaluator is responsible for ensuring that the information provided to them is kept secure and confidential.
Reports and Communications

During the assessment, there will be many reports and communications between the teams.

Adhere to the following guidelines as follows:

• Communication with prospective contractors (i.e. bidders) should occur in writing only and should be coordinated through the lead evaluator.
• Retain copies of all communication (including emails) with prospective contractors; submit these with the evaluation report.
• Communication with the government agency regarding project specifics and clarifications should also be in writing and preferably coordinated through the lead evaluator.
• Communication between evaluators regarding bid assessment should be avoided before consensus meetings. This ensures that evaluations are objective and independent.
• Communications regarding procedure or clarifications may take place if required.
• Use the Evaluators Report to communication the result of evaluations.

Achieving Consensus

It would be very strange if both evaluators awarded the same score to the same bid. In general, there is a difference of opinion, which is always a good sign.

The question is how to discuss these scores and work towards consensus, i.e. a common score.

• Differences are likely to occur in individual scores in different sections of the bid; to explore this setup consensus meeting.
• Its objective is to address these points and, if possible, achieve an agreed evaluation score.
• If there are significant differences in the scores – which cannot be reconciled at a consensus meeting – you need to use an additional evaluation team (for instance, members of the government agency) to assess the bids.

The final deliverable from a consensus meeting is a list of scored bids.

Scores, rankings and recommendation(s) may be qualified with commentaries and notes.

Note any anticipated risks associated with the bids based on the information available to the evaluation team.

Evaluation Report

This includes the administrative documentation involved in the evaluation of bids, such as:

• Declaration from the team members of their capacity to evaluate the bids objectively and independently
• Individual evaluators’ sheets on each bid.
• Consensus report.
• Appendix with all written communications of any significance during the bid.
• Final evaluation report signed by the evaluators.

Conclusion

In the next tutorial, we will look at how to create a scoring system for the bids. This is usually based on
Understanding of the Project; Quality of the Proposed Solution; Approach to Project Management; Proven; Completeness of the Proposal.

Do you have any questions about how to evaluate a Request For Proposal? Please share them below and we can discuss it together.

Related posts:

1. How To Create a Scoring System When Evaluating Request For Proposals
2. How Business Proposals Are (Really) Evaluated
3. 11 Guidelines For Scoring Business Proposals

How do you create a scoring system so that business proposals are scored fairly? One way to do this is to develop a scoring system and award points for each part of the bid. You can further refine this by adding ‘weights’ to the scores, i.e. as some parts of the bid are more important that others.

Evaluating Proposals

Yesterday, we looked at how to setup the proposal assessment team. This team is responsible for evaluating bids, scoring the proposals, and making recommendations.

The next step is to decide how to evaluate the actual bid. Here’s a suggested approach:

During the Request For Proposal evaluation, evaluate the bids under the following five headings:

• Project Understanding – The prospective contractor must have a deep understanding of what the government agency is trying to achieve and how it wants to achieve the solution. It is critical that the proposal demonstrates an appreciation of the business needs and technical requirements.
• Quality of the Proposed Solution – The evaluation team will assess the fit between the proposed solution and the requirements of the ITT. This is the main part in the evaluation; bids should present how the system will be implemented at the business level and technical levels, with regard to the preferred technical environment and procedures.
  
• Project Management – This covers aspects of the project including scheduling, resource allocation, risk management, issue management, quality assurance, and reporting.
  
• Proven Ability – It is essential that prospective contractors have proven track records with the type of technical solution proposed; projects of this size; clients similar to government agency and ideally in the business area. The assessment of capability may require references and referees.
  
• Completeness of the Proposal – The least significant (and lowest score), this ensures that areas that fall outside those listed above are evaluated and help score the overall completeness of the bid.

In evaluating each bid under these headings, create different forms and templates.

Guidelines For Scoring Bids

The score given to each section will depend to a certain extent on the project under evaluation, its size, the technology involved, the business division and timelines.

However as a general guideline it is proposed that the total Phase 1 evaluation is marked out of 1,000 marks, and that the weights of each of the five criteria are chosen to achieve this overall total. In addition, a threshold mark for each criteria should be agreed by the evaluators. It is important to note that should a proposal fail to achieve the threshold mark in any one criteria, then the proposal will fail overall.

For example, the marking scheme could adopt the following weights and thresholds:

• Criteria – for example, Understanding of the Project
• Threshold – for example, 40, 50 or 60
• Weight – for example, .5, 1, 2 or 3
• Max Possible (Weighted Score) – this is the total combined scored when all factors have been combined

For example:

1. Project Understanding    40    1.5    150
2. Proposed Solution            60    3    300
3. Project Management       40    3    300
4. Proven Capability            60    2    200
5. Completeness                      0    0.5    50

Make sure to add notes and comments when submitting these marks, i.e. to explain why you awarded these scores.

You may also want to reference any perceived risks not addressed in the proposals.

Related posts:

1. 11 Guidelines For Scoring Business Proposals
2. Request For Proposals: Writing the Format Section
3. How Business Proposals Are (Really) Evaluated