Crossover between Evaluation Factors

I think Offeror A's past experience with xyz is very valuable in developing confidence that Offeror A's technical approach is sound.  Generally, I would have more confidence in the soundness of an offeror's technical approach where the offeror has actually successfully done it rather than where an offeror who has not done it.

Sam101 said:

To make a long story short I don't see why an offeror would have to validate their technical approach in their technical approach narrative just so the Government will understand their technical approach.

I do not understand this sentence.

@ji20874  what I mean by "I don't see why an offeror would have to validate their technical approach in their technical approach narrative just so the Government will understand their technical approach" I mean saying "we will sear the steak on both sides and not just on one side" is already understandable enough to where the offeror doesn't have to write "we will sear the steak on both sides and not just on one side, Agency X liked this when we did it for them 5 times last year and it cut their costs by 50%". Everything past the first comma is corporate experience and maybe some self-proclaimed past performance, the only technical approach is "we will sear the steak on both sides and not just on one side"... I see where you're coming from with you "would have more confidence in the soundness of an offeror's technical approach where the offeror has actually successfully done it rather than where an offeror who has not done it" but isn't that what the corporate experience section is for, perhaps their corporate experience can reference their technical approach for clarity? Why have a separate corporate experience evaluation factor if you're allowing offerors to put corporate experience in their technical approach? Unless you want to combine the technical approach section with the past experience section and call it Technical Approach/Corporate Experience I see how that makes sense but in my scenario I have technical approach and corporate experience being different factors each evaluated separately and the RFP says "only put information that belongs in each factor under that factor and it will be ignored if it is not under the proper factor." If I award to Offeror A then Offeror B will be like "well the 5 strengths you gave Offeror A under the Technical Approach factor was really them talking about their corporate experience when they should have been talking about their technical approach, so you should have ignored that information."

Requirement: Food service at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, including steak for the special Fourth of July meal, and the non-price factors are corporate experience and technical approach.

OFFEROR A

• Corporate experience:  We do complete food service for three universities, ten county jails, two state prisons, four corporate cafeterias, and one military base, in four different states.  We have an already-existing system of trucks and warehouses.
• Technical approach:  We will plan nutritious menus (in half of our corporate experience examples, we plan the menus -- and for the other half, the institution plans them), hire quality employees (we're a leader in food service; we are an employer of choice and have the lowest attrition rates in the industry), and so forth.  We will handle all food purchases and food storage using our already-existing system of trucks and warehouses.  For the special Fourth of July meal, we suppose the agency will want to use plastic tableware so we will make sure to tenderize the steaks before searing them on both sides -- we already do this for all of our jail and prison contracts.

OFFEROR B

• Corporate experience:  We provide snacks for parties at companies, schools, and so forth, in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, and are expanding into full service.
• Technical approach:  We recognize the crucial importance of nutritious meals that balance flavor and calories and vitamins, and we will hire a freshly-graduated nutritionist to plan complete meals.  We will hire good employees and develop an incentive and retention program based on state-of-the-art research from Professor Jones-Smythe at Harvard University.  We will subcontract for foodstuffs with Sodexho (Sodexho is a French food services and facilities management company headquartered in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux).  We will tenderize the steaks before searing on both sides as we understand this is a best practice in the industry.

For me, Offeror A gets a higher confidence rating than Offeror B for both factors -- and there is no cross-over from one factor to the other.  Both offerors might be proposing an identical technical approach (nutrition, employee retention, foodstuffs, tenderizing, searing on both sides), but I will have far more confidence in Offeror A than Offeror B -- to me, they are not identical in technical approach (they will all get a checkmark on a checklist, but Offeror A's experience adds real value for me).

@Sam101, you likely are thinking too much about this and caught up in details unnecessarily.  Corporate experience generally asks about similar work performed.  It may not get into specific details about whether or not the proposed technical approach was used or another approach.  It often just says “we’ve done this before many times.” In many instances, technical evaluators just look at the extent of experience and leave it at that unless the solicitation requires details.   

Mentioning experience in technical approach validates that this isn’t the first time.  It’s good.

Sam101 said:

I seen many responses to solicitations where the offeror inserts a short blurb in their technical approach narrative basically validating their proposed approach by saying that they have done this in the past and it worked out well for their clients, but then what is the corporate experience section for?

@Sam101I have a different take on this than the others who have responded to you. 

If you think there is value in requiring each offeror to describe its proposed "approach" to doing the work (whatever that is—process, procedure, method, technique) then the attributes of the approach itself are what matter and what you should measure or assess, based on appropriate standards.

"Blurbs" about experience are just part of a sales pitch and should have no bearing on the determination of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. It's the inherent soundness of the approach that should matter. The experience of the user is a separate consideration.

The merits of a horse are determined by the horse's attributes. The merits of the rider are something else.

Vern Edwards said:

The merits of a horse are determined by the horse's attributes. The merits of the rider are something else.

Now this could lead to a very intense discussion.  My attempt is to make it as simple as possible.

One could argue based on experiences that the merits of a horse and a rider are both attributes and something else.

@Sam101What do your proposal instructions say regarding technical approach and corporate experience?

Don Mansfield said:

@Sam101What do your proposal instructions say regarding technical approach and corporate experience?

It says this:

L.1 The offeror shall provide the requested information within the designated volume evaluation factor. Any requested information placed outside of the designated location shall not be considered or evaluated under that evaluation factor regardless of whether it is located somewhere else in the proposal. As an example, the offeror shall not refer to any key personnel qualifications, the staffing plan, corporate experience, or past performance in the Technical Approach factor section of its proposal. If the offeror does so, that content will not be considered by the government during the evaluation of the offeror’s Technical Approach.

L.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: Offeror shall describe how they will perform the SOW's requirements.

L.3 Factor 2 - Key Personnel and Staffing Plan: Offeror shall provide resumes of the key personnel listed in C.15 and describe their staffing plan.

L.4 Factor 3 - Corporate Experience: Offeror shall describe three past contracts of similar size and scope.

L.5. Factor 4 - Past Performance: Offeror shall provide the attached PPQ to the customers of the three contracts mentioned in the Corporate Experience Factor.

Sam101 said:

L2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: Offeror shall describe how they will perform the SOW's requirements

What are the stated evaluation criteria for this factor?

C Culham said:

One could argue based on experiences that the merits of a horse and a rider are both attributes and something else.

On a ranch, they are components of something else—a working team, which has its own attributes. You can evaluate the horse, or the rider, or the team. Which is it?

In an RFP you must state what it is that you are evaluating. The answer to Sam101's question is that if you state that you are evaluating an "approach", then evaluate it based on its own attributes—the characteristics, features, properties, and qualities that make it what it is.

On 4/22/2021 at 1:54 PM, Sam101 said:

But then the evaluator will have to look at technical approach and corporate experience holistically (i.e. together) wouldn't they? If so how can the Government say that they gave the Technical Approach an individual rating of Good if they had to read the corporate experience section along side the technical approach section to even get that rating? And even if that "validation of how it was done with past customers" is in their technical approach then wouldn't the Government have to ignore it since it's technically not their technical approach but their corporate experience?

Not according to your proposal submission instructions (bolded question above).

”Any requested information placed outside of the designated location shall not be considered or evaluated under that evaluation factor regardless of whether it is located somewhere else in the proposal. As an example, the offeror shall not refer to any key personnel qualifications, the staffing plan, corporate experience, or past performance in the Technical Approach factor section of its proposal. If the offeror does so, that content will not be considered by the government during the evaluation of the offeror’sTechnical Approach.”

What are the stated evaluation criteria for the L2Factor1 ?

joel hoffman said:

What are the stated evaluation criteria for the L2Factor1 ?

The evaluation criteria for technical approach is the government will evaluate the offeror's technical approach to determine the extent to which the offeror demonstrates that thier proposed technical approach will meet the requirements of the SOW, then I have lettered bullet points such as:

a) Serve steaks which are not messed up.

b) Provide steaks on time and within budget.

c) Ability to season the steaks good without too much salt.

If the offeror doesn't have experience with doing this and they rate Outstanding on their technical approach then so be it, they will rate Marginal on Corporate Experience and wouldn't win the contract anyways.

I may do a a combined technical approach/corporate experience factor in the future and see how that works out.

Sa

Sam101 said:

I may do a a combined technical approach/corporate experience factor in the future and see how that works out.

Sigh.

Source selection should be considered a medical specialty. Don't go to podiatrist for brain surgery.

Vern Edwards said:

Source selection should be considered a medical specialty. Don't go to podiatrist for brain surgery.

Agree.

Sam101 said:

The evaluation criteria for technical approach is the government will evaluate the offeror's technical approach to determine the extent to which the offeror demonstrates that thier proposed technical approach will meet the requirements of the SOW, then I have lettered bullet points such as:

a) Serve steaks which are not messed up.

b) Provide steaks on time and within budget.

c) Ability to season the steaks good without too much salt.

If the offeror doesn't have experience with doing this and they rate Outstanding on their technical approach then so be it, they will rate Marginal on Corporate Experience and wouldn't win the contract anyways.

I may do a a combined technical approach/corporate experience factor in the future and see how that works out.

There doesn’t appear to me to be any need to describe or evaluate how the firm will perform prescriptive tasks. That’s just regurgitating the requirements.

It sounds to me like the OP is focused on process and not outcome.   How is compartmentalizing evaluation factors in the best interests of the government?  If including past experience  in a discussion of technical  approach helps demonstrate understanding  of the requirement, it is a good thing; if it doesn't, the offeror is just wasting valuable proposal space.  That's on them.  A CO's job is to practice good, consistent, business judgement, not just memorize regulations.  As Duke Ellington used to say, "If it sounds good, it is good".  

It seems to me that many procurement professionals are practicing Source Eliminations, not Source Selections.

REA'n Maker said:

How is compartmentalizing evaluation factors in the best interests of the government?

I don't understand that question. What do you mean by "compartmentalizing"? Do you mean focusing on approach when you evaluate approach?

joel hoffman said:

There doesn’t appear to me to be any need to describe or evaluate how the firm will perform prescriptive tasks. That’s just regurgitating the requirements.

You don’t need a technical approach factor to evaluate how to perform tasks such as those described.

Simply evaluate whether they have recent, related experience and how well they performed those tasks/contracts.

Quote

I don't see how blubs about past experience with xyz are needed to describe xyz.

By "Compartmentalizing" I mean treating the factors as being completely distinct and separate, e.g., expecting an offeror to discuss an approach without referring to their past experience with that approach.  That's not a mortal sin. (Edit: including past experience to validate your approach is not a 'mortal sin'.)

You should certainly evaluate PP and technical approach separately, but anything which imparts understanding should not be ignored or discouraged; that's not the same thing as relying on a PP reference in a technical approach to determine the PP factor rating.

"We found that the approach of using the strongest horse  was not conducive to good performance, because big horses tend to be obnoxious jerks who throw their riders without warning."

Vern Edwards said:

On a ranch, they are components of something else—a working team, which has its own attributes. You can evaluate the horse, or the rider, or the team. Which is it?

In an RFP you must state what it is that you are evaluating. The answer to Sam101's question is that if you state that you are evaluating an "approach", then evaluate it based on its own attributes—the characteristics, features, properties, and qualities that make it what it is.

I am sorry but I just can't get to your original thought and the further explanation as dipositive example whereby a horse's merits are determine by its attributes but a riders merit has something else.   After all you now have thrown in ranch and team as well.  Each has characteristics, features, properties, and qualities.  If the example was refined to a trained horse, untrained horse, horse for food, show horse, competitive horse for dressage, competitive horse for rodeo then an approach to getting the horse of one of these colors would have its attributes as well.

Have a great day!

REA'n Maker said:

By "Compartmentalizing" I mean treating the factors as being completely distinct and separate, e.g., expecting an offeror to discuss an approach without referring to their past experience with that approach.  That's not a mortal sin.

@REA'n MakerIt's not a sin of any kind, mortal or venial. But it's not sound practice.

As in all decisions involving multiple objectives, the task is to (1) identify the attributes of the alternatives you are evaluating that will be useful to the pursuit of acquisition objectives (have "value"), (2) assess each alternative's performance on each attribute, (3) integrate the findings on diverse attribute scales to a common value (utility) scale, (4) compare and rank the alternatives.

Decision scientists have worked on that task for decades and developed sound, widely-practiced methods. They go by various names, such as SMART (Simple Multiple Attribute Rating Technique), SAW (Simple Additive Weighting), and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).

You can read about them in books like

• Decisions with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs (a classic);
• Advances in Decision Analysis: From Foundations to Applications;
• Decision Analysis: Introductory Lectures on Choices Under Uncertainty;
• Foundations of Decision Analysis;
• Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research (based on Navy-funded research in decision making; another classic, but technical);
• Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking (good discussion of attributes);
• A Science of Decision Making; 
• Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions;
• Decision Analysis for Management Judgment (very clear and practical); and
• Multiple Criteria Decision Making: From Early History to the 21st Century;

all of which are on the bookshelf behind me as I sit typing, and many more, not to mention countless and widely-available research and practical-application papers, such as SMARTS and SMARTER: Improved Simple Methods for Multiattribute Utility Measurement. The government funded much of the research that went into those books, but it didn't tell their contracting people about it or provide them with decent education and practical training.

Ignorant contracting officers—who haven't, don't, or won't read such books, because they don't know about them or because they're hard reads—speculate and pontificate based on half-baked OJT (training by rumor and innuendo), and then spread their ignorance to trainees entrusted to them.

And so it goes.

C Culham said:

I am sorry but I just can't get to your original thought...

@C CulhamI'm sorry about that. I thought it was a simple illustration. I'm not sure I can dumb it down any further. But try this:

Bucephalus was a magnificent warhorse, large, strong, brave, and fierce.

Alexander was a daring tactician, fearless warrior, great horseman, and the only man able to break and ride Bucephalus.

The objective was victory. Each was valuable in their own way in that pursuit. The value of the whole was equal to the sum of the values of the components.

Together, they were an unequaled victory machine. Never defeated.

Alexander on another horse, or Bucephalus under another rider, would not have been as great.

If that doesn't add up for you, don't bother to tell me, because I can't do better.

Sam101 said:

It says this:

L.1 The offeror shall provide the requested information within the designated volume evaluation factor. Any requested information placed outside of the designated location shall not be considered or evaluated under that evaluation factor regardless of whether it is located somewhere else in the proposal. As an example, the offeror shall not refer to any key personnel qualifications, the staffing plan, corporate experience, or past performance in the Technical Approach factor section of its proposal. If the offeror does so, that content will not be considered by the government during the evaluation of the offeror’s Technical Approach.

L.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: Offeror shall describe how they will perform the SOW's requirements.

L.3 Factor 2 - Key Personnel and Staffing Plan: Offeror shall provide resumes of the key personnel listed in C.15 and describe their staffing plan.

L.4 Factor 3 - Corporate Experience: Offeror shall describe three past contracts of similar size and scope.

L.5. Factor 4 - Past Performance: Offeror shall provide the attached PPQ to the customers of the three contracts mentioned in the Corporate Experience Factor.

You are communicating what you want, but it seems some offerors aren't reading this. Maybe bold and capitalize?

It's common to include evidence of using an approach in a technical approach. I've seen training for proposal writing that says to write that way.

Vern Edwards said:

dumb it down

How dare you!!!!   It is quite honestly a sad state of affairs when you will not accept peer review of your posts but we all have to swallow yours with caustic and implied innuendo!

Vern Edwards said:

Alexander on another horse, or Bucephalus under another rider, would not have been as great.

  Really and what proof do you have?  History proved the one the other would have only been proved if either fact was change!  Your anecdotal evidence has limited value when establishing a premise.

Thank you all for all the responses, to slightly deviate from the original question, how would an unsuccessful offeror know after a debrief to protest on the ground that the government evaluated the awardee's proposal improperly (like if the government didn't ignore the corporate experience and self-proclaimed past performance in the awardee's technical approach as stated they would in the RFP)? Because the FAR says at 15.506(d)(2) "The overall evaluated cost or price (including unit prices) and technical rating" of the successful offeror, it doesn't say to address every strength that the government found in the awardee's proposal, so why do I see GAO cases where the protester is protesting on the grounds that the government evaluated the awardee's proposal improperly? How do they even know how the government evaluated the awardee's proposal other than the overall ratings? For example in the debrief I just say this about the awardee:

1. The awardee's technical approach was rated Good, their Corporate Experience was rated Good, and their Past Performance was rated satisfactory.

2. The summary for the rational for award is that the awardee is the best value because they rated better than you on the non-price factors and their price was reasonable.

And that is all the unsuccessful (i.e. debriefed) offeror hears about the awardee and the rest of the time I'm just talking about the debriefed offeror's weaknesses.

😆 How dare I? How could I not? You didn't give a coherent peer review. It was close to nonsense.

And to think I devoted precious time trying to clear things up for you!

Hmph!

joel hoffman said:

Not according to your proposal submission instructions.

Well, yes, I guess saying "see corporate experience #1" in the middle of the technical approach would violate the terms of the RFP's section L just like explicitly writing about the corporate experience would.

Sam101 said:

L.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: Offeror shall describe how they will perform the SOW's requirements.

Don Mansfield said:

You are communicating what you want, but it seems some offerors aren't reading this.

Or maybe he's not communicating what he wants.

What does "how" mean? What does he want to know? Process? Procedure? Method? Technique? Means? Something else? Everything?

"How" is a vague word. Without some specifics, offerors can't be sure what he wants.

Sam101 said:

Any requested information placed outside of the designated location shall not be considered or evaluated under that evaluation factor regardless of whether it is located somewhere else in the proposal. As an example, the offeror shall not refer to any key personnel qualifications, the staffing plan, corporate experience, or past performance in the Technical Approach factor section of its proposal

@Vern Edwards This was what I was referring to☝🏽️

@Don MansfieldBut that doesn't say what he wants. It says what he doesn't want. Or am I misreading it?

Sam101 said:

how would an unsuccessful offeror know after a debrief to protest on the ground that the government evaluated the awardee's proposal improperly

They probably wouldn't know.

But they might protest the evaluation of their own proposal and then, after getting a protective order and the awardee's proposal and the record of the evaluation of the awardee's proposal, amend their protest to add a complaint that the awardee's proposal was evaluated improperly.

Vern Edwards said:

What does "how" mean? What does he want to know? Process? Procedure? Method? Technique? Means? Something else? Everything?

L.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: The offeror shall describe the processes, procedures, methods, and techniques that they intend to implement to accomplish the requirements of the SOW.

M.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: The government will evaluate the offeror's technical approach to determine the extent to which the offeror proposes sound and feasible processes, procedures, methods, and techniques to accomplish the requirements of the SOW.

Offeror A's Response:

Technical Approach: We will drive to the store and buy Brand A steak, we will not freeze it and we will take it out of the packaging carefully and wash it. Then we will tenderize it with a new tenderizer for each steak and never reuse a tenderizer. We then will season the steak and then proceed to marinate it for 3 hours. After that we will sear it on both sides for 3 minutes each side. After that we will put it in the oven for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. We will take the steak out carefully to make sure not to drop it on the floor as we are taking it out of the oven, if we do we will start over at no additional cost to the government. We will then serve the steak with A1 sauce.

Key Personnel and Staffing Plan: See Resumes, and we will cross train employees to be able to perform all tasks and we will have our staffing full at all times. Bob Smith (see Project Manager resume) will be the one taking the steaks out of the oven.

Corporate Experience: Description of three similar projects.

Past Performance: PPQs sent to CO.

Offeror B's Response:

Technical Approach: We will drive to the store and buy Brand A steak, we will not freeze it and we will take it out of the packaging carefully and wash it. Then we will tenderize it with a new tenderizer for each steak and never reuse a tenderizer. We then will season the steak and then proceed to marinate it for 3 hours. After that we will sear it on both sides for 3 minutes each side. After that we will put it in the oven for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. We will take the steak out carefully to make sure not to drop it on the floor as we are taking it out of the oven, if we do we will start over at no additional cost to the government. We will then serve the steak with A1 sauce.

We have been driving to the store for years and know how to do that, we haven't been freezing steaks for 5 years now, past customers liked that we marinated the steaks for 3 hours instead of for 2 hours.

CO's response to Offeror B during debrief: Your blurb about "We have been driving to the store for years and know how to do that, we haven't been freezing steaks for 5 years now, past customers liked that we marinated the steaks for 3 hours instead of for 2 hours" was a waste of space and was ignored during the evaluation of your technical approach because the RFP instructed you not to do that and why would you even want to do that when you have the Corporate Experience section for that? We simply asked you to describe your processes, procedures, methods, and techniques that you intend to implement to accomplish the requirements of the SOW for the technical approach factor.

Sam101 said:

why do I see GAO cases where the protester is protesting on the grounds that the government evaluated the awardee's proposal improperly?

Because the incumbent will protest anything to profit from the CICA stay.  The additional revenue from the bridge/extension more than pays for the 20 minutes it takes for a staff attorney to file a protest.  Note how GAO almost never sustains on grounds of  'improper evaluation' alone.

Sam101 said:

How do they even know how the government evaluated the awardee's proposal other than the overall ratings?

They don't.  They guess.  Some protests even invoke evaluation factors that never actually existed:

Quote

The RFP did not require consideration of optician licensing or staffing level for a determination of technical acceptability. Id. As such, the protester’s argument that the VA failed to adequately evaluate the awardee’s optician licensing and staffing level fails to reasonably establish that a violation of statute or regulation has occurred

B-419300, PDS Consultants, Inc.

Vern Edwards said:

😆 How dare I? How could I not? You didn't give a coherent peer review. It was close to nonsense.

And to think I devoted precious time trying to clear things up for you!

Hmph!

Yep you.   

A little self control.   

And your example of horse with attributes solely and rider with "other" was coherent?   Not so if it has to be proven by additional facts for context of ranch, team, and a flimsy anecdote..   I am sure glad I did not try to evaluate based of your very first offering - attributes of one thing and oh well "something else" for another.  I guess you can deny that everything has attributes then so be it.  Yet I sure the heck know that you have at least one!!!!!!

You devote time always so it should not be too much of an effort or issue for your practice!

Sam101 said:

L.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: The offeror shall describe the processes, procedures, methods, and techniques that they intend to implement to accomplish the requirements of the SOW.

M.2 Factor 1 - Technical Approach: The government will evaluate the offeror's technical approach to determine the extent to which the offeror proposes sound and feasible processes, procedures, methods, and techniques to accomplish the requirements of the SOW.

Offeror A's Response:

Technical Approach: We will drive to the store and buy Brand A steak, we will not freeze it and we will take it out of the packaging carefully and wash it. Then we will tenderize it with a new tenderizer for each steak and never reuse a tenderizer. We then will season the steak and then proceed to marinate it for 3 hours. After that we will sear it on both sides for 3 minutes each side. After that we will put it in the oven for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. We will take the steak out carefully to make sure not to drop it on the floor as we are taking it out of the oven, if we do we will start over at no additional cost to the government. We will then serve the steak with A1 sauce.

Key Personnel and Staffing Plan: See Resumes, and we will cross train employees to be able to perform all tasks and we will have our staffing full at all times. Bob Smith (see Project Manager resume) will be the one taking the steaks out of the oven.

Corporate Experience: Description of three similar projects.

Past Performance: PPQs sent to CO.

Offeror B's Response:

Technical Approach: We will drive to the store and buy Brand A steak, we will not freeze it and we will take it out of the packaging carefully and wash it. Then we will tenderize it with a new tenderizer for each steak and never reuse a tenderizer. We then will season the steak and then proceed to marinate it for 3 hours. After that we will sear it on both sides for 3 minutes each side. After that we will put it in the oven for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. We will take the steak out carefully to make sure not to drop it on the floor as we are taking it out of the oven, if we do we will start over at no additional cost to the government. We will then serve the steak with A1 sauce.

We have been driving to the store for years and know how to do that, we haven't been freezing steaks for 5 years now, past customers liked that we marinated the steaks for 3 hours instead of for 2 hours.

CO's response to Offeror B during debrief: Your blurb about "We have been driving to the store for years and know how to do that, we haven't been freezing steaks for 5 years now, past customers liked that we marinated the steaks for 3 hours instead of for 2 hours" was a waste of space and was ignored during the evaluation of your technical approach because the RFP instructed you not to do that and why would you even want to do that when you have the Corporate Experience section for that? We simply asked you to describe your processes, procedures, methods, and techniques that they intend to implement to accomplish the requirements of the SOW for the technical approach factor.

Your description of submission requirements and evaluation criteria above don’t match what you responded to my specific question earlier.

Regardless, neither version seems to be meaningful in terms of either determining acceptability or compliance with the requirements or to serve as a discriminator between proposers.

Other than Offeror B telling you that they are experienced - which you said in the RFP that you would ignore - there are no differences between offeror A and Offeror B.

And even if you don’t ignore it, it’s still no discriminator because the lack of such information in A’s proposal doesn’t mean that they don’t have any experience. You didn’t ask for it under that factor.

Thus, the sub factor or factor itself is really meaningless, lacks  being a discriminator and is unnecessary.

Evaluation factors usually serve one and/or more purposes. For example:
1. Determine the Offeror’s  capability to perform the requirement and/or

2. Determine if the proposed solution to a performance requirement is acceptable, and/or

3. Determine if it offers an advantage or disadvantage to the government in comparison to the minimum acceptable requirements. And/or

4. Determine if it offers an advantage or disadvantage to the government versus other offer(s).

It may be more or less complicated than this but I see no useful purpose or discriminator in what you described.

Sam101 said:

Corporate Experience: Description of three similar projects

I think the issue might be with your definition of "corporate experience", which typically refers to an offeror's corporate capabilities, not merely past projects.  In my opinion, when viewed properly, corporate experience doesn't cross over any of your other factors.  "Past customers liked that we marinated the steaks for 3 hours instead of for 2 hours..." isn't a corporate capability, it's a statement supporting an approach. Which you are free to ignore when evaluating corporate experience for all the reasons you mention.  In fact, based on your examples, it's not a matter of "cross-over", it's a matter of "past customers liked..." isn't speaking to corporate experience OR technical approach.  Maybe their past customers are a bunch of rubes.

Besides; unless you said you were going to evaluate corporate experience as part of the evaluation of the technical approach, what's the problem?  There's no requirement to enumerate what you're NOT going to evaluate.  (Cue the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Brother Maynard* ceremoniously recites the procedure for how - and how not to - count to three).

[My hypothetical is less opinion-based, such as this one from my past: "Based on our past experience, loading the solid rocket booster propellant  under vacuum prevents voids from forming in the cured propellant which would cause hot-spots when ignited, resulting in total system failure".  That's a fact-based assertion derived from specialized experience which supports an approach and is intended to increase the government's confidence in that approach, not 'corporate experience' in the typical context.]

* Patron Saint of Contracting

Vern Edwards said:

@Don MansfieldBut that doesn't say what he wants. It says what he doesn't want. Or am I misreading it?

How about that specific instruction is clear?

Don Mansfield said:

How about that specific instruction is clear?

@Don MansfieldI don't understand.

On 4/23/2021 at 9:15 AM, C Culham said:

And your example of horse with attributes solely and rider with "other" was coherent?   Not so if it has to be proven by additional facts for context of ranch, team, and a flimsy anecdote..   I am sure glad I did not try to evaluate based of your very first offering - attributes of one thing and oh well "something else" for another.  I guess you can deny that everything has attributes then so be it.  Yet I sure the heck know that you have at least one!!!!!!

@C Culham I don't know what you're talking about. Please quote the passage that I wrote to which you referred. I'll take "corrective action" if I can understand your criticism.

And Carl, I would not deny that everything has attributes (aka, "properties"). Everything that exists has at least one attribute.

Quote

At least since Aristotle, the essential properties of an object have been contrasted with its accidental properties; the object could not exist without the former, whereas it could fail to have the latter (see entry on essential vs. accidental properties).

https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/members/view/properties/sc/

Just quote whatever it is that I wrote about horse and rider that troubles you, and I'll respond promptly.

There is only one "greatest" Horse who ever lived.  And that Horse ran in the Belmont in 1973 and owns the current record for the Belmont.

Belmont Stakes of1973.

Secretariat was a great horse and my all time favorite race horse.

Bucephalus is the most famous horse in Western history. According to historian Peter Green, in Alexander of Macedon, 356 - 323 B.C., Bucephalus was from Thessaly, where great horses were bred. King Philip of Macedon bought him, paying the highest price on record for a horse, but no one could mount him. Alexander—who was either 8, 9 or 12, depending on which account you read—bet his father in front of a crowd that he could mount him, and Philip took the bet. Alexander did it, and rode the horse to the cheers of the crowd. Philip was proud and told him that he would not be able to stay in Macedonia, because it would not be big enough for him. (That does not do justice to Green's account, which is in pages 41-44.)

Bucephalus bore Alexander into every battle, from Greece, through Persia and Afghanistan, to India. He carried Alexander into the breach in the Persian line at Gaugamela, routing the bigger army and ending the Persian Empire. He died of wounds, old age, and heat stroke in India in 326 B.C. at the age of 30. Alexander gave him a state funeral and named a city after him.

According to Arrian: "Enormous in stature and noble in spirit, Boukephalos had been mounted only by Alexander, since the horse had refused to carry any other riders."

Secretariat and Bucephalus.

Vern Edwards said:

Please quote the passage that I wrote to which you referred.

I believe you can easily find it.

The greatest is an emotional thing - Magic!

@C CulhamI won't bother.

Vern Edwards said:

@C CulhamI won't bother.

Not surprised!

Neither was I.

How could you be, you expect it!

On 4/22/2021 at 11:54 AM, Sam101 said:

I typically don't allow an offeror to mention anything about corporate experience in their technical approach narrative however I seen many responses to solicitations where the offeror inserts a short blurb in their technical approach narrative basically validating their proposed approach by saying that they have done this in the past and it worked out well for their clients, but then what is the corporate experience section for?

On 4/22/2021 at 3:18 PM, Vern Edwards said:

I have a different take on this than the others who have responded to you. 

If you think there is value in requiring each offeror to describe its proposed "approach" to doing the work (whatever that is—process, procedure, method, technique) then the attributes of the approach itself are what matter and what you should measure or assess, based on appropriate standards.

***

The merits of a horse are determined by the horse's attributes. The merits of the rider are something else.

 I have attached a detailed explanation. Comments, criticisms, and questions are welcome.

Explanation to Sam101 from Vern Edwards.docx

On 4/24/2021 at 8:11 PM, C Culham said:

The greatest is an emotional thing - Magic!

Actually, the greatest 3-year old is a fact, not emotion.  Secretariat holds the current record times--made in 1973--for a 3-year old in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and The Belmont.  (The official timer at Pimlico incorrectly timed the Preakness in 1973 and it wan't until 2012 that the Maryland Racing Commission acknowledged that error.)

For anyone watching the video I posted, they will see a horse ahead by nearly a football field at the finish line.  The Belmont is a mile and a half and Secretariat won that race at the mile point.  For the final mile, it ran on its own.  It realized it had no competition and it just felt like running.  For those few minutes, we watched the greatest 3-year old of all time.  And that's the truth!

Since I violated the forum rules by taking this off topic, I will now close it.