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Down-Selects Vs. 15.202 Advisory Multi-step & Competitive Ranges - FAR part 15


FARmer

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Guest Vern Edwards
Lastly, Vern, What about eliminating offerors that propose prices that are too low? Is this because we would then have to go into a realism analysis to make that determination or does it further add to the complexity of the phased evaluation?

If you're thinking that you might want to eliminate offerors that propose unrealistically low prices, then you'll have to conduct a price realism analysis. Yes, that will further add to the complexity of a phased evaluation.

Good luck to you. Simplicity is dead. I'm off to the funeral.

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Guest Vern Edwards

Taking i20874's factors as given, I would rework them as follows, in order of importance:

Assent to the Government's terms (on a pass/fail basis).

Corporate experience

Price (or cost and fee)

Technical/management approach

(Oral presentation is not an evaluation factor; it is an information delivery method. You don't evaluate oral presentations. You evaluate something else based on information obtained through oral presentations.)

I'd ask for the assent, experience, and price information up front. I would rank offerors on those bases. I might eliminate some. I would tell the survivors to make oral presentations that will include Q&A sessions. I would evaluate technical/management approach based on the oral presentations and then do my combined assessments and make tradeoffs to choose the winner on the basis of all factors.

The key time and money saver is the elimination of written "approach" proposals.

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A competitive range and its determination are for the purpose of conducting discussions (15.306) and for requesting revisions to proposals, not for short listing procedures or other phased evaluation procedures prior to selecting firms to conduct discussions with.

I apologize for assuming earlier that you were conducting a multiple phase proposal submission something akin to two phase design- build process in 36.3.

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Guest Vern Edwards

I don't understand what prompted the last comment. One need not make a competitive range determination in order to eliminate one or more firms from a competition in a phased evaluation.

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In a few of the earlier posts we started to discuss competitive ranges in this phased evaluation process discussion. I just wanted to make it clear to anyone that came upon this discussion that the competitive range is not the same as a phased evaluation. Joel's response was spot on as this discussion was more towards conducting phased evaluations outside of a two phased design-build process per FAR subpart 36.6 and I would say I was hoping to steer this discussion of phased evaluations more towards services under FAR part 15.

When discussing this phased evaluation with other contracting folks, it's easy for them to jump to the conclusion that this is a competitive range........ and it's not.

Vern, back to your comment about simplicity being dead.... Sorry and I agree 100%. But as your book states, the decision to use this phased approach "may be controversial"...... and it is in my world. So after rereading your book, it is a full blown evaluation (that leads to a rating) of the non-price factor being evaluated and then a simple comparison to other offerors during the phased approach. That's my take away.

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I don't understand what prompted the last comment. One need not make a competitive range determination in order to eliminate one or more firms from a competition in a phased evaluation.

Vern, I agree with your last statement. Posts 1,3,13, and 21 - all by separate posters - appear to refer to the competitive range in the context of the multiple phased evaluation/elimination process. Post #21 was in response to an earlier post by me, which discussed eliminating proposals on the basis of past performance and/or lack of experience. I never used the term "competitive range".

Your own post 22 appeared to be in response to post #21 - which, as I said, was discussing a competitive range in a context unrelated to conduct of discussions.

In post #25, FARmer asked a question concerning the correct use of the term. Having been out of cell coverage area for a few hours, I was responding to those 5 or 6 posts.

EDIT: FARmer answered while I was posting this response. I agree with FARmer.

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Guest Vern Edwards

FARmer:

Phased evaluation is simply progressive winnowing of the field of competitors through phased application of the evaluation factors.

The idea is to start with the easiest factors to evaluate -- generally: legal acceptability, experience, and bottom-line price -- so that by the time you reach more difficult factors to evaluate you won't have as much work to do. There is no reason for the concept to be controversial, except to the eternally blockheaded.

You must consider price in each phase before eliminating anyone. However, if your solicitation says that you are going to award without discussions, then you do not have to consider the price of any offeror whose proposal is ineligible for award as submitted. For example, you don't have to consider the price of any firm whose offer does not conform to any material term of the prospective contract as stated in the solicitation.

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Thanks for the response everyone!

So based on the phase approach, some "blockheads" (lol) may think that by putting the easiest factor (for instance Past Performance) in the phased approach may make it appear that past performance is the most important factor when it's on the bottom of the list in order of importance. I counter this argument by saying that the phased evaluation has nothing to do with the order or importance.

Furthermore, "blockheads" may think that this phased approach isn't designed to achieve "best value" as someone could receive an excellent rating on all other factors, but be eliminated in the phased approach for lack luster past performance. In addition, it would be seem arbitrary to eliminate that offeror based on the least important factor and unreasonable....... I was dumbfounded by this. What say you?

I have found no GAO cases that support these thoughts......

My thought is that their could be a potential that someone that is rated as an "excellent" on the other factors but be eliminated via this phased approach because they were not determined to be sufficiently competitive. However, the purpose of this approach is to make a source selection more efficient when a large number of proposals is expected to be received. So this same argument could be said for any offerors eliminated using this approach.

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FARmer, you're right.

For example, in Phase One, you might say that price and past performance are of relatively equal importance.

In Phase Two, you might say that technical approach, price, and past performance are in descending order of importance.

Yes, there are a lot of "blockheads" (to use your term) in the process.

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