The Solicitation
Ensure consistency among the objectives of the acquisition, the contracting strategy, the evaluation plan, the solicitation, the evaluation and selection.
All the parts of the solicitation work together to communicate Government requirements to potential offerors. The solicitation provides all the information the offeror needs to understand what you are buying, how you are buying it, and how you will select who to buy it from. This information includes: the work requirements; the terms and conditions; evaluation factors and significant subfactors; the relative importance of the factors and subfactors; instructions to offerors, including whether award might be made without discussions; and other exhibits and attachments. When read as a whole, the solicitation should convey to the offerors a clear understanding of what you are buying and the areas where technical and cost tradeoffs can be made in their proposals to best satisfy the Government requirements.
Industry frequently complains that solicitations have major conflicts. Particularly troublesome are conflicts among the descriptions of what we're buying, instructions on how to prepare a proposal, and guidance on important factors/subfactors and the ground rules for the evaluation. An inconsistent solicitation may result when different groups of people develop the different sections without proper coordination. Such a solicitation can defeat our objectives, cause unnecessary delays, or lead to litigation.
Coordination within a multidisciplined acquisition team, whose members are stakeholders in the acquisition and have a commitment to work together, is the best way to ensure consistency. You may also find it beneficial to develop a matrix that correlates the solicitation sections and content to ensure solicitation consistency. You may want to provide industry with a copy of the matrix as a reference tool to aid in proposal preparation. This approach promotes understanding of the linkage within the solicitation and explains how all parts of the proposal will be used in the evaluation process.
Another way to promote understanding of the solicitation is to foster a presolicitation dialogue with industry. This can be accomplished through use of various communication forums such as Federal Business Opportunity (FedBizOps) notices, Advance Planning Briefings for Industry, draft solicitations, and/or presolicitation/preproposal conferences.
Performance Requirements (Specifications, Work Statement, or Equivalent)
The way you present the Government's requirements in the solicitation can have a significant impact upon a source selection using the tradeoff approach. For example, use of a work breakdown structure (WBS) in the work statement for the most complex cost type contracts can help ensure offerors' pricing breakdowns are consistent and comparable. Some additional areas to consider when preparing the work requirements for the solicitation include:
- Functional or Performance Requirements Use functional or performance requirements to the maximum extent possible. In some cases, it may be more difficult to develop evaluation standards and conduct the evaluation process itself; however, there are benefits to using functional or performance requirements. These benefits include:
- Increased competition.
- Access to the best commercial technology.
- Better technical solutions for better prices as a result of offeror innovation.
- Functional or performance requirements can usually be developed faster than design requirements.
- Fewer situations may exist for protests.
- Design Requirements You should limit the number of design requirements to those essential to meet mission needs. Design requirements may:
- Limit competition.
- Limit situations where potential offerors can propose innovative solutions.
- Slow the specification development process.
- Provide more situations for an offeror to protest (e.g., because of the belief that the winning proposal did not meet all the minimum requirements or that the requirements were unnecessarily restrictive of competition).
Proposal Submission Information
The instructions for preparing and submitting proposals are critical to an acquisition using the tradeoff approach. There has to be a linkage between solicitation requirements, each evaluation factor and subfactor and the proposal preparation instructions. If you cannot cross-walk the solicitation requirements, factors/subfactors and the proposal instructions, you have a conflict that you need to correct.
Request only the information needed to evaluate proposals against the evaluation factors and subfactors. Never ask for information you do not intend to evaluate. The information requested from offerors must correlate with the evaluation factors and subfactors. However, instructions that require voluminous information can cause potential offerors to forego responding to the solicitation in favor of a less costly business opportunity.
Furthermore, excessive size of proposals may increase the Government's costs to perform the evaluation and length of the evaluation period. In order to simplify the preparation of proposals and to make the evaluation easier, you may wish to consider imposing a realistic limit on the number of pages and foldouts to be submitted.
The instructions on the preparation and submission of proposals must:
- Be clearly and precisely stated.
- Be keyed to the evaluation factors and subfactors.
- Describe the type, scope, content, and format of the information to be submitted.
- Describe the order in which proposal responses and materials are to appear.
- Be limited to the information needed to do the evaluation.
Properly written proposal preparation instructions simplify the evaluators' job. That is, evaluators do not have to learn a new format for each proposal; they can evaluate the same requirements in each proposal in the same way. With a sufficient degree of structure in the proposal preparation requirements, you may be able to accept proposals in electronic form and use some automation in the evaluation process.
Proposal Evaluation Information
Clearly state in the solicitation the basis upon which the Government will make the source selection decision.
The information from the Source Selection/Evaluation Plan that you provide in the solicitation on evaluation factors and subfactors and their relative importance forms the basis for evaluating offerors' proposals and making the cost/technical tradeoff. The solicitation is the official vehicle for you to communicate to offerors which factors and subfactors or ground rules the Government will use to select the most advantageous proposal for award.
Consider the following points in designing the solicitation:
- Provide the evaluation factors and subfactors verbatim from the source selection plan.
- Provide the actual numerical weights at the factor level.
- Provide an estimate of what you've identified as an affordable target price range for the acquisition, based on your market research or other reviews.
This information can help offerors to better focus on those aspects of the mission objectives where additional value can be important and to better respond to the Government's needs by giving emphasis to those things most important to the Government. To reap the benefits of better proposals you need to include and adequately describe all the factors and subfactors (as reflected in the source selection plan) that will be considered in making the selection.
The solicitation must also inform offerors of any minimum requirements that apply to particular evaluation factors and subfactors that have to be met. You need to distinguish between minimum acceptable requirements and desirable objectives or features that you would be willing to pay extra for. If you elect to include desirable objectives or features in addition to minimum requirements, the solicitation must clearly explain how you will evaluate them and whether or not credit will be given in the evaluation for exceeding such desirables.