Joel - I am indeed a CO working for a DOD activity. We currently do not rank proposals, but if we were to begin here is how I think we would do it: The SSA would accomplish a comparative assessment of all proposals remaining in the competitive range against all source selection criteria (to include cost/price considerations) and make the best value decision (identifying the winner) as required in the DOD Source Selection Procedures. Next, the SSA would have to acccomplish another comparative assessment amongst all remaining proposals and determine who the next best value offeror would be (offeror ranked number two), and so on until all offerors had been ranked. Using this approach, cost/price considerations are considered along with all other source selection evaluation criteria. As Vern mentioned above, and I agree, this could be a very time consuming effort - and I just don't see the benefit to the Government of doing so.
I agree that if one were to use a 100% numerical evaluation approach to ranking, not only would cost/price have to have a numerical value assigned, but so would Past Performance (if evaluated). I'm really not interested in this type of approach, but appreciate the discussion.
The question that I really want to get input on is whether agencies are ranking proposals, and if so, what benefit they percieve that approach provides them. For offerors, I would imagine that they would like it if the Government were to rank proposals as they would know that say out of a field of six offerors they came in second, or fifth, etc. I could see this potentially providing value to them, but not sure what the value to the Government would be.
Thanks.