Evaluation Factors OM.pdf

Support for Development, Maintenance and Distribution of Identifiers for Research Resources to Serve Replicable, Reproducible and Generalizable Biomedical Research

TECHNICAL EVALUATION FACTORS

Evaluation factors are used by the technical evaluation committee when reviewing the technical proposals. The factors below are listed in the order of relative importance with weights assigned for evaluation purposes. Subfactors are listed in order of relative importance.

TECHNICAL PROPOSAL EVALUATION FACTORS (Volume I)

• The government will award a contract resulting from this solicitation based on best value in consideration of trade-off between technical factors (Volumes I & II) and price/cost (Volume III).

Technical factors together will be considered more important than price. However, price will also be an important parameter to differentiate among proposals with similar technical scores. For the Business Proposal (Volume III) the Government will perform a cost or price analysis to determine if the proposed price is fair and reasonable. The business proposal shall include enough details for the Government to perform such analysis and reach a conclusion. The Government will use the following evaluation factors to assess how well the offeror's technical proposal meets the program requirements outlined in the Statement of Work (SOW). Offerors must submit information sufficient to evaluate their technical proposal based on the criteria below.

• Technical Approach (Volume I) o Technical Capabilities; Factor 1 o Personnel Qualifications and Staffing: Factor 2 o Organizational Capacity: Factor 3

• Past Performance (Volume II)

• Business Proposal (Volume III)

FACTOR 1: Technical Approach

The proposal will be evaluated on how well it demonstrates the Offeror’s ability to meet the SOW objectives, tasks, deliverables, and complies with standards and guidelines as well as industry best practices. This factor includes the following subfactors:

1. Proposal addresses existing problems with the unique identification of DCM’s research resources.

2. Demonstrated ability of proposed technology platforms, analytical and modeling tools, and validation approaches to successfully be integrated and achieve the objective and tasks of the SOW.

3. Proposed changes to concepts, methods, technologies, treatments, and services that drive scientific reporting and authentication of biomedical research.

4. Demonstrated ability to promote and implement ‘FAIR’ principles (i.e. make research data ‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable)

5. Demonstrated ability of proposed technology platforms to have significant advantages in performance.

6. Demonstrated ability of the proposed primary technology platforms to sufficiently validate to begin producing data in their first year at the necessary scale to accomplish the goals of the project during its 5-year period.

7. Demonstrated effectiveness of proposed refinement, improvement or new application of the concepts, approaches and technologies.

8. Demonstrated effectiveness of proposed description of how the Offeror would capitalize on existing public and/or private resources. Proposals shall identify organizational partners and support mechanisms that may be available to enable continued development and maintenance of the standard, tool, or resource.

9. Demonstrated scalability of proposed approach, tools, platforms, resources, etc. to other resources used in biomedical research.

FACTOR 2: Personnel Qualifications and Staffing

Personnel information shall be an indicator of the Offeror’s ability to perform the contract successfully. The offeror's staffing plan will be evaluated to assess the degree to which it complies with the requirements of the solicitation, (both key and non-key personnel) and the experience, skills, and qualifications and training of personnel proposed. The offeror will submit resumes for proposed key personnel. The resumes shall be no more than 2 pages and should include a) relevant working experience, b) education, c) certifications, and any other relevant information related to their qualifications. This factor includes the following subfactors:

1. Offerors shall demonstrate the proposed personnel’s qualifications to successfully perform their proposed roles.

2. Offerors shall demonstrate proposed personnel’s experience and training with utilizing the proposed technology platforms and related analytical tools.

3. Offerors shall also demonstrate the proposed personnel has relevant experience with and an ongoing record of accomplishments in developing and managing electronic systems for the authentication of key biological reagents, including animal and human resources.

4. Demonstrated experience of proposed personnel in successfully communicating with animal and human biological material resources, collecting required information, maintaining the databases and providing/reporting the results of the use analysis.

5. Demonstrated experience of proposed personnel’s track record of disseminating novel tools and techniques broadly and working with scientific literature publishing resources.

FACTOR 3: Organizational Capacity

This factor will evaluate the organizational capacity of the Offeror’s facilities and research environment. This factor includes the following subfactors:

1. Demonstrated ability of the proposed organizational environment (facilities, research environment, management structure and oversight, teaming/partnering relationships, problem-solving capabilities, quality control, etc.) to facilitate and contribute to the successful performance of the SOW.

2. Offeror’s proposed organizational support, equipment and other physical resources and their demonstrated adequacy and availability to the investigators.

3. Demonstrated benefits of proposed features of the organizational environment, infrastructure, and/or personnel.

4. Demonstrated effectiveness and availability of resources within the scientific environment to support electronic information handling.

RATINGS FOR FACTOR 1, FACTOR 2 and FACTOR 3

The following adjectival ratings will be used to evaluate Technical Capabilities (Factor 1), Personnel Qualifications and Staffing (Factor 2) and Organizational Capacity (Factor 3):

Rating Description Excellent Proposal demonstrates excellent understanding of requirements and approach that significantly exceeds performance or capability standards. It has exceptional strengths that will significantly benefit the Government. A comprehensive and thorough proposal of exceptional merit with one or more significant strengths. No deficiency or significant weakness exists. Risk of unsuccessful performance is very low.

Good Proposal demonstrates good understanding of requirements and approach that exceeds performance or capability standards. One or more significant strengths have been found and strengths outbalance any significant weaknesses or weaknesses that exist. There are no deficiencies. Risk of unsuccessful performance is low.

Fair Proposal demonstrates fair understanding of requirements and approach that meets some performance or capability standards. It has few or no strengths that will benefit the Government. Weaknesses and/or deficiencies outbalance any strengths. Risk of unsuccessful performance is no worse than moderate.

Poor A proposal that has one or more deficiencies or significant weaknesses that demonstrate a lack of overall competence or would require a major proposal revision to correct. Proposal fails to meet performance or capability standards. Risk of unsuccessful performance is high.

PROPOSAL

RISK RATING

DEFINITION

High Likely to cause significant disruption of schedule, increase cost, or degradation of performance. Risk may be unacceptable even with special contractor emphasis and close Government monitoring.

Medium Can potentially cause disruption of schedule, increased cost, or degradation of performance. Special contractor emphasis and close Government monitoring will likely be able to overcome difficulties.

Low Has little potential to cause disruption of schedule, increased cost or degradation of performance. Normal contractor effort and normal Government monitoring will likely be able to overcome any difficulties.

PAST PERFORMANCE (VOLUME II)

FACTOR 4 - PAST PERFORMANCE

The evaluation of this factor will provide an indication of the Offeror’s ability to staff and manage activities similar in function, scope and complexity to this requirement, and will indicate the likelihood of the Offeror’s success. To evaluate this factor, the Government will review relevant past performance information provided in proposals, past performance assessments from Offeror’s customers and/or relevant past performance information obtained through other sources including Government databases (e.g. CPARS). This factor will be evaluated on the basis of the following subfactors:

1. The relevance of past performance and working experience of the Offeror and any proposed teaming partners will be evaluated to assess the Offeror’s approach. The evaluation of this factor will include an evaluation of the quality of the Offeror’s past products and services, its timeliness of performance, its approach to recruiting, hiring, training, retraining a fully qualified workforce and the experience of its personnel.

Offerors shall identify and provide contact information for past (within the last 5 years) or current customers on projects similar to this requirement, information on problems encountered and corrective actions taken by Offeror.

2. Customer Satisfaction – The Offeror will be evaluated based on assessments of their past performance by past (within the last 5 years) or current customers. The Offeror’s performance, quality of service, timeliness of service, professionalism, achievement of project goals, risk mitigation approach, corrective actions and overall customer satisfaction will be evaluated.

RATINGS FOR FACTOR 4

Past performance will be evaluated using the relevancy rating below.

VERY RELEVANT Present/past performance involved essentially the same scope and magnitude of effort and complexities as this solicitation requires.

RELEVANT Present/past performance involved similar scope and magnitude of effort and complexities as this solicitation requires.

SOMEWHAT RELEVANT Present/past performance involved some of the scope and magnitude of effort and complexities as this solicitation requires.

NOT RELEVANT Present/past performance involved little or none of the scope and magnitude of effort and complexities as this solicitation requires.

In addition, the Government's confidence that the offeror will meet the requirements stated in the solicitation will be rated using the confidence ratings below.

SUBSTANTIAL

CONFIDENCE

Performance meets contractual requirements and exceeds many to the Government's benefit. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element being assessed was accomplished with few minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the contractor were highly effective.

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

Performance meets contractual requirements and exceeds some to the Government's benefit. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element being assessed was accomplished with some minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the contractor were effective. Based on the offeror's recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a reasonable expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort.

LIMITED CONFIDENCE The contractor's proposed actions appear only marginally effective or were not fully implemented. Performance does not meet most contractual requirements and recovery is not likely in a timely manner. 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 The contractual performance of the element or sub-element contains a serious problem(s) for which the contractor's corrective actions appear or were ineffective.

Based on the offeror's recent/relevant performance record, the Government has no expectation that the offeror will be able to successfully perform the required effort.

UNKNOWN CONFIDENCE

(Neutral)

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