3. Addendum 52.212-2_Power Converters_Final.pdf

Evaluation Factors for Award

Addendum to FAR 52.212-2, Evaluation - Commercial Items

The following is inserted as new paragraph (d) of the provision:

(d) BASIS FOR CONTRACT AWARD

(1) This is a competitive Performance Price Tradeoff (PPT) best value source selection conducted in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Parts 12, 13, and 15 in which competing offerors' technical and past performance information when combined will be significantly more important than price. All technically acceptable offers will be treated equally except for their prices and performance records. Any quotation with an unacceptable technical rating will not be considered for award. Failure to meet a factor and/or subfactor may result in an offer being determined unacceptable. The Government reserves the right to award a contract to other than the lowest Total Evaluated Price (TEP), if the difference in the Past Performance Confidence Rating of another offeror with a higher TEP justifies the higher price premium. In that event, the Contracting Officer (KO) will make an integrated assessment of the best value award decision using the TEP and the Past Performance Confidence Rating.

A. EVALUATION APPROACH: PRICE PERFORMANCE TRADE-OFF

Proposal evaluation is an assessment of the proposal and the offeror’s ability to perform the prospective contract successfully. A contract will be awarded to the offeror who is deemed responsible IAW FAR Subpart 9.1 as supplemented. Technical and Past Performance is significantly more important than Price/Cost.

This may result in an award to a higher past performance confidence rated, technically acceptable, higher priced offeror, where the decision is consistent with the evaluation factors, and the KO reasonably determines that the offeror with a higher past performance confidence rating that is technically acceptable, although higher priced, is the best value and outweighs the price difference of a lower priced, technically acceptable, lower past performance confidence rated offer. The Government will evaluate proposals that conform to the solicitation requirements using the following procedures:

Step 1 – Completeness: Each offeror's proposal will be evaluated for completeness IAW the Addendum to 52.212-1, Instructions to Offerors - Commercial Items. Any offeror the Government deems to have an incomplete proposal shall not be considered for award and shall not be evaluated for Price or Technical and Past Performance Evaluation. Only those offers that are determined to be complete will proceed to Step 2.

Step 2 - Price Evaluation: All proposals that are determined to be complete shall be evaluated for fair and reasonableness, balance, and realism (if necessary) then ranked from lowest to highest price. Any offerors with prices determined to be unfair, unreasonable, unbalanced, or unrealistic (if necessary) shall not be considered for award, shall not be evaluated for technical capability, and shall not be evaluated for past performance. Only those offers with prices determined to be complete, fair and reasonable, balanced, and realistic (if necessary) will proceed to Step 3.

Step 3 – Technical and Past Performance Evaluation: Beginning with lowest Total Evaluated Price (TEP) proposal, proposals will be evaluated for technical acceptability on an Acceptable or Unacceptable basis based on the ratings defined in Table 1 listed below. If the proposal receives an acceptable rating, a past performance evaluation will be done.

Past performance will be rated as Substantial Confidence, Satisfactory Confidence, Limited Confidence, No Confidence, or Neutral Confidence in accordance with Table 3 listed below.

1) The Government will conduct evaluations until it identifies a proposal that is the lowest priced offer receives a Substantial Confidence performance confidence assessment rating, and it receives an Acceptable technical rating, and the price is determined to be complete, fair and reasonable, balanced, and realistic (if necessary), that offer represents the best value for the Government and the evaluation process ends at this point. Award shall be made to that offeror without further evaluation of any other offers technical or past performance volumes.

2) If the lowest priced offer does not receive a Substantial Confidence performance assessment rating, the next lowest priced offer will be evaluated for technical and past performance and the process will continue until an offer receives an Acceptable technical rating and a Substantial Confidence performance assessment rating, or until all offers are evaluated. If the lowest priced offer receives a performance confidence assessment rating of Satisfactory Confidence or lower, the Government reserves the right to award a contract to other than the lowest priced offeror. In that event, the KO shall then make an integrated assessment of the best value award decision of all evaluated offerors.

B. FACTOR 1 - TECHNICAL ACCEPTABILITY

The Government will evaluate proposals on an acceptable/unacceptable basis and assign an Acceptable or Unacceptable rating as described in Table 1 below. A rating of unacceptable in one or more technical subfactors will constitute an overall rating of

Unacceptable for the technical evaluation. The offeror's quotation shall, at a minimum, address each of the subfactors outlined below as they apply to the specifications.

Detailed preparation instructions are included in the Addendum to FAR 52.212-1, Instructions to Offerors—Commercial Products and Commercial Services.

Table 1: Technical Acceptability Ratings, Defined Rating Definition Rating Definition

Acceptable: Quotation clearly meets the minimum requirements of the solicitation.

Unacceptable: Quotation does not clearly meet the minimum requirements of the solicitation.

The quotations will be evaluated against the following subfactor(s):

(i) Subfactor 1 - Conformance to Specifications

This subfactor shall address whether the offeror's technical specification meets the minimum salient characteristics listed in the attached product description. For this subfactor to be rated "acceptable", the proposed technical approach will address and conform to all technical specifications listed in the product description.

(ii) Subfactor 2 – Delivery Schedule

This subfactor shall address the offeror's proposed power converter delivery schedule.

The delivery schedule will be realistic based on the industry standards.

C. FACTOR 2 - PAST PERFORMANCE FACTOR

The Past Performance evaluation considers each offeror’s demonstrated recent and relevant record of performance as indicated in their submited contract references that are similar to this solicitation requirement. The Government will evaluate recent and relevant performance information on technically acceptable offerors based on the references provided by the offeror and any data independently obtained by the Government. Past performance evaluation will stop once a Substantial Confidence assessment has been reached.

In conducting the Past Performance evaluation, the Government reserves the right to use both the information provided in the offeror’s Past Performance proposal volume, and information obtained from other sources available to the Government to include, but not limited to: Contractor Performance Acquisition Retrieval System (CPARS); Federal Awardee

Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS); Electronic Document Access (EDA), or other databases; and interviews/questionnaires with Program Managers, COs, the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), and commercial sources.

(i) Recent past performance information includes contracts performed and/or being performed such as Federal contracts, DoD contracts, or state contracts within the last five

(5) years.

(ii) Relevant contract performance effort involved similar scope, magnitude of effort, and/or complexities to that required by this solicitation. The Government will assess relevancy for each contract and assign a rating as described in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Past Performance Relevancy Ratings Rating Definition

Very Relevant: Present/past performance effort involved essentially the same scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this Solicitation requires. To qualify, the past/present effort must:

Involve the delivery of power converters.

Number of power converters delivered in excess of 10, can be cumulative across multiple Task Orders, Delivery Orders, Purchase Orders, IDIQs, etc.

Relevant: Present/past performance effort involved a similar scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this Solicitation requires. To qualify, the performance may fail to meet all of the requirements for "Very Relevant" but meets all of the following:

Involve the delivery of power converters.

Number of power converters delivered in excess of 5, can be cumulative across multiple Task Orders, Delivery Orders, Purchase Orders, IDIQs, etc.

Somewhat Relevant: Present/past performance effort involved some of the scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this Solicitation requires. To qualify, the performance fails to meet all of the requirements for "Very Relevant" or "Relevant" performance but meets all of the following:

Involve the delivery of power converters.

Number of power converters delivered 4 or more, can be cumulative across multiple Task Orders, Delivery Orders, Purchase Orders, IDIQs, etc.

Not Relevant: Present/past performance effort involved little or none of the scope and magnitude and of effort and complexities this Solicitation requires. To qualify, all performance fails to meet one of the three relevancy ratings: "Very Relevant", "Relevant" or "Somewhat Relevant".

(iii) Performance Evaluation. In addition to evaluating the extent to which the offeror's past performance meets the minimum salient characteristics listed in the product description and technical requirements of previous efforts, the assessment will consider things such as: the offeror's history of adhering to schedules, the administrative aspects of performance, reasonable and cooperative behavior, and commitment to customer satisfaction.

(iv) When a relevant and recent performance record indicates performance problems, the Government will consider the number and severity of the problems and the suitability and effectiveness of any corrective actions taken (not just planned or promised). The Government may review more recent projects or performance evaluations to review the corrective actions and evaluate their effectiveness.

(v) Performance Confidence Assessment. The purpose of the past performance evaluation is to assess the degree of confidence the Government has in the offeror's ability to meet the solicitation requirements based on the offeror's demonstrated record of performance.

The Government will combine recency, relevancy, and performance evaluations of all of the efforts considered for the offeror to assign a Performance Confidence Assessment of Substantial Confidence, Satisfactory Confidence, Limited Confidence, No Confidence or

Neutral Confidence as described below in Table 3.

Table 3: Past Performance Confidence Assessment

Rating Definition Substantial Confidence: Based on the offeror's recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a high expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort.

Satisfactory Confidence: Based on the offeror's recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a reasonable expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort.

Neutral Confidence: No recent/relevant performance record is available, or the offeror's performance record is so sparse that no meaningful confidence assessment rating can reasonably be assigned.

The offeror may not be evaluated favorably or unfavorably on the factor of past performance.

Limited Confidence: Based on the offeror's recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a low expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort.

No Confidence: No Confidence Based on the offeror's recent and relevant performance record; the Government has no expectation that the offeror will be able to successfully perform the required effort.

D. FACTOR 3 - PRICE EVALUATION FACTOR

The Government will rank all offers by Total Evaluated Price (TEP). The price evaluation will document the fairness and reasonableness of the TEP. Separately priced line items or subline items shall be analyzed to determine if the prices are unbalanced.

(i) Total Evaluated Price: The offeror's TEP is the sum of all separately priced line items.

(ii) In addition, proposed unit prices may be evaluated for unbalanced pricing IAW FAR 15.404-1(g). Unbalanced pricing exists when, despite an acceptable TEP, the price of one or more contract line items or sub-line item(s) appears to be significantly overstated or understated as indicated by the application of cost or price analysis techniques. An offeror's quotation may be rejected if the Contracting Officer determines the lack of balance poses an unacceptable risk to the Government.

(iii) If the quotation analysis techniques listed above are insufficient to make a determination of price reasonableness or, if the Contracting Officer determines that adequate price competition no longer exists, the Contracting Officer may request submission of other than certified cost or pricing data and may use other quotation analysis techniques as described in FAR 15.404, to the extent necessary, in order to make a Fair and Reasonable price determination.

(2) The Government intends to award a contract without discussions with respective offerors; however, the Government reserves the right to conduct discussions if deemed in its best interest.

(End of Addendum)