23 C.F.R. Subpart C—Proposal Evaluation Factors
Title 23 - Highways
(a) The proposal evaluation factors and significant subfactors should be tailored to the acquisition. (b) Evaluation factors and significant subfactors should: (1) Represent the key areas of importance and emphasis to be considered in the source selection decision; and (2) Support meaningful comparison and discrimination between and among competing proposals. (a) The selection of the evaluation factors, significant subfactors and their relative importance are within your broad discretion subject to the following requirements: (1) You must evaluate price in every source selection where construction is a significant component of the scope of work. (2) You must evaluate the quality of the product or service through consideration of one or more non-price evaluation factors. These factors may include (but are not limited to) such criteria as: (i) Compliance with solicitation requirements; (ii) Completion schedule (contractual incentives and disincentives for early completion may be used where appropriate); or (iii) Technical solutions. (3) At your discretion, you may evaluate past performance, technical experience and management experience (subject to §636.303(b)). (b) All factors and significant subfactors that will affect contract award and their relative importance must be stated clearly in the solicitation. (a) If you use a prequalification procedure or a two-phase selection procedure to develop a short list of qualified offerors, then pre-qualification criteria should not be included as proposal evaluation criteria. (b) The proposal evaluation criteria should be limited to the quality, quantity, value and timeliness of the product or service being proposed. However, there may be circumstances where it is appropriate to include prequalification standards as proposal evaluation criteria. Such instances include situations where: (1) The scope of work involves very specialized technical expertise or specialized financial qualifications; or (2) Where prequalification procedures or two-phase selection procedures are not used (short listing is not performed). (a) Proposal evaluation is an assessment of the offeror's proposal and ability to perform the prospective contract successfully. You must evaluate proposals solely on the factors and subfactors specified in the solicitation. (b) You may conduct evaluations using any rating method or combination of methods including color or adjectival ratings, numerical weights, and ordinal rankings. The relative strengths, deficiencies, significant weaknesses, and risks supporting proposal evaluation must be documented in the contract file. Normally, technical and price proposals are reviewed independently by separate evaluation teams. However, there may be occasions where the same experts needed to review the technical proposals are also needed in the review of the price proposals. This may occur where a limited amount of technical expertise is available to review proposals. Price information may be provided to such technical experts in accordance with your procedures.
Title 23: Highways
PART 636—DESIGN-BUILD CONTRACTING
Subpart C—Proposal Evaluation Factors
§ 636.301 How should proposal evaluation factors be selected?
§ 636.302 Are there any limitations on the selection and use of proposal evaluation factors?
§ 636.303 May pre-qualification standards be used as proposal evaluation criteria in the RFP?
§ 636.304 What process may be used to rate and score proposals?
§ 636.305 Can price information be provided to analysts who are reviewing technical proposals?
