§ 700.22 - How are proposals for contracts evaluated?

(a) Each peer reviewer must be given a number of technical proposals to evaluate.

(b) Each peer reviewer shall—

(1) Independently evaluate each technical proposal;

(2) Evaluate and rate each proposal based on the reviewer's assessment of the quality of the proposal according to the technical evaluation criteria and the importance or weight assigned to those criteria; and

(3) Support the rating for each proposal with concise written comments based on the reviewer's analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal with respect to each of the applicable technical evaluation criteria.

(c) After each peer reviewer has evaluated each proposal independently, those reviewers who evaluated a common set of proposals may be convened to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of those proposals. Each reviewer may then independently reevaluate and re-rate a proposal with appropriate changes made to the written comments.

(d) Following discussion and any reevaluation and re-rating, reviewers shall rank proposals and advise the contracting officer of each proposal's acceptability for contract award as “acceptable,” “capable of being made acceptable without major modifications,” or “unacceptable.” Reviewers may also submit technical questions to be asked of the offeror regarding the proposal.