(a) The proposal evaluation factors and significant subfactors should be tailored to the acquisition.

(b) Evaluation factors and significant subfactors should:

(1) Represent the key areas of importance and emphasis to be considered in the source selection decision; and

(2) Support meaningful comparison and discrimination between and among competing proposals.

(a) The selection of the evaluation factors, significant subfactors and their relative importance are within your broad discretion subject to the following requirements:

(1) You must evaluate price in every source selection where construction is a significant component of the scope of work. However, where the contracting agency elects to release the final RFP and award the design-build contract before the conclusion of the NEPA process (see § 636.109), then the following requirements apply:

(i) It is not necessary to evaluate the total contract price;

(ii) Price must be considered to the extent the contract requires the contracting agency to make any payments to the design-builder for any work performed prior to the completion of the NEPA process and the contracting agency wishes to use Federal-aid highway funds for those activities;

(iii) The evaluation of proposals and award of the contract may be based on qualitative considerations;

(iv) If the contracting agency wishes to use Federal-aid highway funds for final design and construction, the subsequent approval of final design and construction activities will be contingent upon a finding of price reasonableness by the contracting agency;

(v) The determination of price reasonableness for any design-build project funded with Federal-aid highway funds shall be based on at least one of the following methods:

(A) Compliance with the applicable procurement requirements for part 172, 635, or 636, where the contractor providing the final design or construction services, or both, is a person or entity other than the design-builder;

(B) A negotiated price determined on an open-book basis by both the design-builder and contracting agency; or

(C) An independent estimate by the contracting agency based on the price of similar work;

(vi) The contracting agency's finding of price reasonableness is subject to FHWA concurrence.

(2) You must evaluate the quality of the product or service through consideration of one or more non-price evaluation factors. These factors may include (but are not limited to) such criteria as:

(i) Compliance with solicitation requirements;

(ii) Completion schedule (contractual incentives and disincentives for early completion may be used where appropriate); or

(iii) Technical solutions.

(3) At your discretion, you may evaluate past performance, technical experience and management experience (subject to § 636.303(b)).

(b) All factors and significant subfactors that will affect contract award and their relative importance must be stated clearly in the solicitation.

(a) If you use a prequalification procedure or a two-phase selection procedure to develop a short list of qualified offerors, then pre-qualification criteria should not be included as proposal evaluation criteria.

(b) The proposal evaluation criteria should be limited to the quality, quantity, value and timeliness of the product or service being proposed. However, there may be circumstances where it is appropriate to include prequalification standards as proposal evaluation criteria. Such instances include situations where:

(1) The scope of work involves very specialized technical expertise or specialized financial qualifications; or

(2) Where prequalification procedures or two-phase selection procedures are not used (short listing is not performed).

(a) Proposal evaluation is an assessment of the offeror's proposal and ability to perform the prospective contract successfully. You must evaluate proposals solely on the factors and subfactors specified in the solicitation.

(b) You may conduct evaluations using any rating method or combination of methods including color or adjectival ratings, numerical weights, and ordinal rankings. The relative strengths, deficiencies, significant weaknesses, and risks supporting proposal evaluation must be documented in the contract file.

Normally, technical and price proposals are reviewed independently by separate evaluation teams. However, there may be occasions where the same experts needed to review the technical proposals are also needed in the review of the price proposals. This may occur where a limited amount of technical expertise is available to review proposals. Price information may be provided to such technical experts in accordance with your procedures.