5-RFQ Vol. 1-3 Eval and Selection Procedures.pdf

Agency for Community Transit Investment Management Services No. 25-2-14401

3. Evaluation and Selection Procedures

A. Selection Procedures Award will be made to the responsive and responsible firm whose proposal is most advantageous to the Owner with price and other factors considered. Proposals will be evaluated, negotiated, selected and any award made in accordance with the criteria and procedures described herein. The approach and procedures are those that are applicable to a competitive negotiated procurement whereby proposals are evaluated to determine which proposals are within a competitive range. Discussions and negotiations may then be carried out with vendors within the competitive range, after which Best and Final Offers (BAFOs) may be requested.

However, Owner may select a proposal for award without any discussions or negotiations or request for any BAFOs. Subject to Owner’s right to reject any or all proposals, the vendor whose proposal is found to be most advantageous to Owner shall be selected, based upon consideration of the evaluation criteria below.

Proposals will not be publicly opened. All proposals and evaluations shall be kept strictly confidential throughout the evaluation, negotiation and selection process, except as otherwise required by applicable law.

Only the members of the Evaluation Committee and other Owner officials, employees and agents having a legitimate interest shall be provided with access to the proposals and evaluation results during this period.

Step 1: Determination of Proposer’s Responsiveness Responsiveness will be determined on the basis of the vendor’s adherence to all proposal requirements. No points are assigned during this stage of the evaluation. Submittals that do not comply with the material terms and conditions of the solicitation may be rejected as non-responsive. The Owner reserves the right to waive minor errors, omissions, or technicalities as determined to be in the best interest of the Owner and that does not impede the Owner’s ability to evaluate the responding firm’s quality of work, experience, and/or its ability to perform the requested work.

Step 2: Evaluation of Submitted Proposals All proposals determined to be responsive will be evaluated and scored by an Evaluation Committee, which may include employees and/or agents of Owner. This Committee will carry out the detailed evaluations, including establishing the Competitive Range.

Step 3: Interviews, Discussion, and Negotiations The Evaluation Committee will determine whether acceptance of the most favorable initial proposal without discussion is appropriate, or whether interviews and/or discussions should be conducted with all vendors within the competitive range.

If the Committee determines it is in the best interest of the Owner to enter into negotiations with vendors in the competitive range, the Committee may submit, only to the vendors in the competitive range, questions regarding their proposals which it feels are appropriate for discussion or which need additional clarification.

Vendors shall be prepared to respond, in writing, to all questions within the time frame provided by the Committee. If deemed necessary by the Committee, oral interviews and discussions with vendor(s) may be required.

Each vendor remaining within the competitive range at the close of negotiations may be allowed to submit a final supplement called a “best and final offer”.

Step 4: Contract Award A recommendation to award a contract, if any, to the responsive and responsible vendor found to be the most advantageous with price and other factors considered, will be made to the Owner’s board. Accordingly, the Owner may not necessarily make an award to the vendor with the highest technical ranking nor award to the vendor with the lowest price if doing so would not be in the overall best interest of the Owner.

Agency for Community Transit Investment Management Services No. 25-2-14401

B. Evaluation Criteria The following criteria are listed by their relative order of importance by which proposals will be evaluated and ranked for the purposes of determining any competitive range and making any selection of a proposal for a potential award. As proposals are considered by the Owner to be more equal in their technical merit, the evaluated cost or price becomes more important so that when technical proposals are evaluated as essentially equal, price may be the deciding factor.

a) Project Approach

b) Staffing/ Project Manager

c) Experience and Qualifications

d) Price - Points will be assigned based on the proposer’s price in relation to the lowest proposal price.

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