The purpose of the post-solicitation process is to evaluate contractor offers and select the best-value offer for comparison with the Government's proposal. Upon evaluation of all solicitation responses, each RFP respondent must be notified in writing either that it will be invited to participate in the resultant acquisition or, based on the information submitted, that it is unlikely to be a viable competitor. This is a brief overview of the process.
In the advisory multi-step process, the Government publishes a notice of its requirements and invites potential offerors to compete for a forthcoming acquisition.
A Request For Proposal (RFP) is released with the approval from the Source Selection Authority (SSA).
Upon receipt, the offeror's proposal is marked with the date and time of receipt, transmitted to the designated officials, and safeguarded from unauthorized disclosure throughout the source selection process.
The Government uses an initial evaluation (responsive)to determine the relative merits of an offer and the offeror's ability to successfully accomplish a prospective contract.
Clarification is a limited exchange used to resolve minor irregularities between the Government and an offeror that occurs when award on initial proposal is contemplated.
Competitive Range is determined on the basis of the ratings of each proposal against all evaluation factors, and refers to the range of proposals that are identified as the most highly rated.
Prepartion for discussions with remaining offerors is based on past performance information that might be the determining factor preventing them from being placed within the competitive range. Discussions are held to enhance Government understanding of proposals to allow reasonable interpretation of the proposal or facilitate the Government's evaluation process.
Face-to-face discussions involve bargaining and negotiations, in either a competitive or sole source environment, between the Government and offerors with the intent of allowing the offeror to revise his proposal.
A request for final proposal revision is a request from The Government for proposal revisions from all offerors still in the competitive range.
Five parties perform the majority of the effort in the reciept and analysis of final proposals. The contracting officer has overall responsibility for managing the acquisition function.
- The SSEB chairman appoints a technical evaluation panel and a management evaluation panel to examine the technical proposal and the management structure of the proposal, respectively. The SSEB and the contracting officer review the panels' findings as a quality check.
- The SSEB forwards the proposals, with recommendations for the best-value proposal, for the SSAC briefing.
- The SSAC reviews the SSEB recommendations and forwards the recommended proposal for an SSA briefing.
The SSA decision is based on a comparative assessment of proposals against all source selection criteria in the solicitation. Generally, the Source Selection Authority (SSA) signs a stand-alone, Source Selection Decision Document (SSDD) that states the decision and the rationale for it.
The contract award is usually made by acceptance of an offer. In procurement by negotiation, the contracting officer awards a contract by transmitting a written Notice of Award to the successful offeror.
Finally, an offerors debriefing is scheduled as an explanation by a procuring activity of why an offeror failed to be awarded a contract in a competitive negotiated procurement.
