27 CAR § 92-516. Step 6A: Technical proposal evaluation

(a)(1) The technical proposal should address specific requirements the Arkansas Department of Transportation has established for the project. (2) The technical proposal should be evaluated and scored on how well it meets the proposal ESC within the RFP. (3) The project evaluation team (PET) should be prepared to spend significant effort reviewing the scoring distribution in each category, understanding the individual technical evaluation criteria, and applying a consistent approach to ensure that evaluators will select an appropriate score for each criterion. (b)(1) On D-B projects where only conceptual preliminary development was provided by the department and where flexibility exists in the product performance criteria, completely objective evaluation criteria require significant efforts to derive. (2) Performance-based design criteria requiring a demonstration of success in implementation (capacity, smoothness, durability, etc.), is difficult to quantify in a technical proposal. (3) It is very difficult to be specific in the proposal ESC without having specific concepts in mind. (c)(1) Using the definition of value as quality/price, the quality of each project component can be defined by the contract provisions while the price of each component is defined by the component-estimated cost. (2) The contract provisions represent the minimum acceptable quality, the dividing line below which a technical proposal would be considered unacceptable or nonresponsive. (3)(A) The PET members should be provided with the definition of best value and a defined range of points in determining if a specific product meets or exceeds the contract requirements. (B) However, the criteria should not be so prescriptive as to award explicit points for specific designs.