What is the purpose of weight factors and what advantages do they have in seal bidding?

By Anonymous on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 02:33 am:

Do you mean, what is the purpose of weighting the factors?

By Loki on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 09:54 am:

Weighted factors and sealed bidding (as I understand the meaning of weighted factors) are mutually exclusive, applying instead to a negotiated procedure.

By joel hoffman on Friday, April 27, 2001 - 09:09 am:

The only weighted factors I've ever been aware of in sealed bidding were under a procedure which the COE called the "Evaluated Total Cost Method." Under this method, the bidders included unit prices for daily project overhead and overhead costs (including all subs) for each day of compensable delay, and bid the contract duration.

All of this information was evaluated on the basis of lowest overall cost to the Government. Cost to the Government per each day of contract duration was factored into the formula (using the liquidated damage estimate).

One major weakness of the ETCM method was having the bidders pre-determine site and overhead daily costs - prior to award. Bidders couldn't accurately predict subcontractor shares of the fixed bid prices, because they had not awarded any subcontracts prior to contract award. Then there were big internal disputes between the prime and subs, when an actual delay occurred. Happy Sails! Joel

By Anonymous on Friday, April 27, 2001 - 09:30 am:

Weighting, in the sense of expressing the relative importance of the evaluation factors, is inapplicable to sealed bidding because in a sealed bid procurement there is only one evaluation factor -- price (and price-related factors, which are measured in terms of dollars).

The purpose of weighting, i.e., stating the relative importance of evaluation factors, is to aide competing offerors in making tradeoffs during proposal preparation -- e.g., whether to offer higher quality or lower price -- by telling them about the Government's preferences in that regard.

By joel hoffman on Friday, April 27, 2001 - 10:06 am:

Anon, I agree with you, in principle. As far as I know, non-cost factors which are "weighted" with respect to each other for comparison purposes are used only in negotiated procurement, not in sealed bidding.

My example related only to a special IFB method where other factors are able to be expressed in terms of "cost" to the Government. Technically, they are "weighted." The GAO upheld the validity of this method, under Part 14 IFB procedures. I happen to think that the method was not fully researched before it was fielded. It failed for its overly simplistic approach to complex issues. However, it may still being used, somewhere.

There are many different definitions of "weighted". My reply was in response to Loki's statement implying that any "weighted" factors and IFB's are mutually exclusive. Loki and you are correct from the standpoint of using comparative factors to make trade-offs. Robert did not define "weighted" in his question.

By Anonymous on Friday, April 27, 2001 - 10:20 am:

Joel Hoffman:

"Weight" and "weighting" are not well-defined terms in Government procurement.

Some people would say that the following expression constitutes "weighting": "Quality is twice is important as price." Others would say that that describes "relative importance," but not "weight," and that "weighting" necessarily involves a numerical expression or factor, such as "50 percent" or "0.5".

Also, see the discussion about the GAO's CardioMetrix and ENCORP decisions on pp. 361-362 of Competitive Negotiation: The Source Selection Process, by Nash, Cibinic, and O'Brien, in which the authors assert that the GAO was confused about "relative importance" and "relative weight."

By joel hoffman on Friday, April 27, 2001 - 10:32 am:

I concur! Happy Sails! joel