Overview
FAR 15.304 establishes the requirements for agencies to develop and disclose the criteria used to evaluate proposals, ensuring that awards are based on factors that provide a meaningful comparison between offerors. It mandates the inclusion of price and quality factors while providing agencies the discretion to tailor additional subfactors to the specific needs of the acquisition.
Key Rules
- Mandatory Factors: Every source selection must evaluate price or cost (with limited exceptions for specific DoD, NASA, and Coast Guard multiple-award contracts) and the quality of the product or service.
- Past Performance: Evaluation of past performance is required for negotiated competitive acquisitions exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, unless the Contracting Officer justifies its exclusion in writing.
- Discrimination: Evaluation factors must be designed to support meaningful comparison and "discrimination" among competing proposals to identify the best value.
- Transparency: All factors, significant subfactors, and their relative importance must be clearly stated in the solicitation; however, the specific numerical or adjectival rating method does not need to be disclosed.
- Relative Importance: Solicitations must explicitly state whether all non-cost factors, when combined, are significantly more important than, approximately equal to, or significantly less important than price/cost.
- Small Business & Telecommuting: Specific factors must be included for subcontracting participation in bundled contracts, and agencies cannot unfavorably evaluate telecommuting without a formal determination.
Practical Implications
- Proposal Prioritization: Offerors must use the "Relative Importance" statement to determine their strategy—for example, deciding whether to propose a high-end technical solution if non-cost factors are "significantly more important" than price.
- Accountability: Because agencies are bound by the factors stated in the solicitation, contractors have a basis for protest if an agency uses unstated evaluation criteria or fails to follow the disclosed weighting.