Blind Evaluation

[Contracting123]

While at a previous agency there was an existing policy that required offerors to submit redacted technical proposals, along with an orginal copy. The purpose was to let the technical evaluation team evaluate the redacted technical proposals, so as to remove any possiblity of unfairly evaluating all offers based on any prior knowledge of the competing firm. The CS or CO would label the technical proposals (A,B,C,D) and the TET would evaluate without knowing the identity of each offeror (A,B,C,D). This was never meant to insult any of the technical evaluators, or accuse them of having bias towards one contractor or another. It was meant as a simple step to take to maintain the integrity of the evaluation process.

This doesn't appear to be the way my new agency operates. I'm told everyone on the evaluation team is an upstanding Federal employee and there is no need to not let the TET know the identity of the firms they are evaluating. Again, I'm not insinuating that the members of the TET would be influenced by this knowledge, but that there does exist a possiblity that it could happen.

My question is if anyone knows of any published guidance or best practices I can refer to in order to show my leadership that this could be a beneficial process to institute here. On the other hand, if anyone thinks I'm off base and there would be no reason to not let the TET know the names of firms, please let me know.

[Guest Vern Edwards]

It is a common practice, but there is no legal necessity for it in statute or in the FAR. It is only a matter of opinion as to whether the evaluators can be trusted to be unbiased. In my opinion, blind evaluations are an unnecessary nuisance in most cases. I can't say you're "off base," but my unsolicited advice is not to go to a new place and try to get them to do things the way your old office did them, unless what they are doing is illegal or very unwise. It's a way to become unpopular very quickly.

[formerfed]

It is a common practice, but there is no legal necessity for it in statute or in the FAR. It is only a matter of opinion as to whether the evaluators can be trusted to be unbiased. In my opinion, blind evaluations are an unnecessary nuisance in most cases. I can't say you're "off base," but my unsolicited advice is not to go to a new place and try to get them to do things the way your old office did them, unless what they are doing is illegal or very unwise. It's a way to become unpopular very quickly.

One should seek to get the best agency people possible as evaluators, especially when the acquisition is important to the agency. You want people that are intelligent and have the ability to analyze, draw conclusions, and justify (document) their positions well. But if you tell those same people you don't trust them to be objective and honest by giving them redacted proposals, most view that as an insult regardless of how you couch it.

It also is literally impossible to find evaluators that don't have biases. Everyone has favorites or at least comes to the table with pre-established beliefs about whaich company is better than others. You can't ignore that. Plus if the evaluators are good, they can tell the identity of a company even if the proposal is redacted. The important thing is ensuring the evaluation is well founded and the reasons are well documented.