Evaluation Criteria for Award.pdf

EVALUATION FACTORS FOR AWARD

A.1 Basis for Award

A.1.1 Evaluations will be conducted in accordance with the FAR 15.305. The Government intends to award one contract resulting from this solicitation to the responsible and responsive Offeror whose Proposal conforming to the Solicitation provides the “best value” to the Government, all factors considered. "Best value" means the expected outcome of an acquisition that, in the Government's estimation, provides the greatest overall benefit in response to the requirement will be most advantageous to the Government, Price and other factors considered.

A.1.2 The Government intends to evaluate proposals and award a contract without discussions with offerors. Therefore, the offeror’s initial proposal should contain the offeror’s best terms from a price and technical standpoint. The Government reserves the right to conduct discussions with one or a combination of some or all of the Offerors, if the Government, in its sole discretion, determines that discussions are in the Government’s best interest.

A.1.3 The Government may reject any or all proposals if such action is in the Government’s interest.

A.1.4 The Government may waive informalities and minor irregularities in proposals received.

A.1.5 Exchanges with Offerors after receipt of a proposal do not constitute a rejection or counteroffer by the Government.

A.1.6 All evaluation factors other than price, when combined, are significantly more important than price.

A.2 Factors and Subfactors to be Evaluated

A.2.1 AmeriCorps will evaluate proposals based on the following factors:

Factor 1 – Technical Factor 2 – Past Performance Factor 3 – Price

A.2.2 The Technical Factor has two (2) Subfactors, which are listed below:

Subfactor 1 – Technical Approach

Subfactor 2 – Experience and Capacity

A.3 Factor 1 - Technical

A.3.1 Technical Evaluation Approach. Each proposal will be evaluated relative to the Factors and Subfactors. As a result, there will be a determination of the overall merits of each proposal in terms of its potential to best satisfy the needs of the Government.

The Government will evaluate the Technical Proposal in accordance with the following adjectival scale:

Rating Adjectival Description

Blue Exceptional Greatly exceeds all minimum requirements of the criteria; has a high probability of success; contains no weaknesses or deficiencies.

Green Good Exceeds all the minimum requirements of the criteria; has an above average probability of success; contains no significant weaknesses and only minor, correctable weaknesses exist.

Yellow Acceptable Meets all the minimum requirements of the criteria; has an average probability of success; no significant weaknesses and any deficiencies can be readily corrected.

Orange Marginal Fails to meet one or more of the minimum requirements of the criteria; low probability of success; major weaknesses and/or significant number of deficiencies exist.

Red Unacceptable Fails to meet any of the minimum requirements of the criteria; proposal needs major revisions; very low probability of success.

A.3.1.1 Subfactor 1 – Technical Approach. The Contractor’s proposal shall address each area of the Statement of Work (SOW) requirements in sufficient detail to demonstrate a clear understanding of the requirement needs and the understanding of the expertise required for successfully meeting the requirements needs. At a minimum, the proposal shall address the Contractor’s technical approach to implementation of process automation. Additional merit will be assigned to offers which exceed the stated requirements by raising the assigned adjectival rating in concert with the additional benefit afforded the Government.

The Offeror shall demonstrate:

(a) In-depth knowledge of system functions and requirements related to back-end administrative support of activities related to grant monitoring and reporting.

(b) Ability to meet scope, deliverable, and knowledge requirements; and

(c) The ability to work cooperatively and collaboratively with CNCS’ monitoring team.

A.3.1.2 Subfactor 2 – Experience and Capacity. The Government will evaluate the extent to which the Contractor’s previous experience with projects of a similar size, scope and complexity demonstrate its capability to successfully perform the requirements of this contract.

A.4 Factor 2 – Past Performance

The Government will evaluate the quality of the offeror's past performance deemed relevant to the requirements of this RFQ. The Government will use information submitted by the offeror and any other sources of information available to assess past performance. The Government will evaluate past performance on an Acceptable/Unacceptable basis as follows:

• Acceptable: Based on the offeror’s performance record, the Government has a reasonable expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort, or the offeror’s performance record is unknown.

• Unacceptable: Based on the offeror’s performance record, the Government does not have a reasonable expectation that the offeror will be able to successfully perform the required effort.

NOTE: In the case of an offeror without a record of relevant past performance or for whom information on past performance is not available or so sparse that no meaningful past performance rating can be reasonably assigned, the offeror shall be determined to have unknown (or “neutral”) past performance.

A.5 Factor 3 – Price

A.5.1 Offeror(s) price proposal will be evaluated for reasonableness. For a price to be reasonable, it must represent a price to the Government that a prudent person would pay when consideration is given to prices in the market. Normally, price reasonableness is established through adequate price competition, but may also be determined through cost and price analysis techniques as described in FAR 15.404. The Offeror shall submit their Firm Fixed Price proposal for all items and/or services required in this solicitation, including option years.

A.5.2 The technical and cost proposal volumes shall be submitted in separate documents.

Offerors who submit one document with technical and cost combined will be excluded from competition.