FAQs for Conducting Bid Evaluations

January 25, 2018

Attached: Sample Bid Evaluation Matrix

~ Sample Bid Evaluation Matrix Attached ~

By now I hope you have all posted your Form 470s (or released your PEPPM mini-bids), waited at least 29 days, and have either concluded your bid evaluations or are ready to conduct your bid evaluations. This message provides a series of FAQs related to conducting bid evaluations, and attached is a sample bid evaluation matrix, containing two tabs – a blank matrix for you to complete, and a completed sample to use as a guide.  As you can see, I’m recommending that everyone create and retain a bid evaluation spreadsheet for each procurement, and that you begin to use a simple formula to assign cost points (more on that below) when you have more than one bid evaluation factor.

PREPARING FOR YOUR BID EVALUATION

·        How do you determine your Allowable Contract Date and/or view a copy of your submitted Form 470?
The Allowable Contract Date (ACD) is the 29th day after you hit submit on your Form 470, and is the first date that you are permitted to hit submit on your Form 471 (29 days include weekends and holidays).  To find out your exact ACD, you must log into EPC (https://portal.usac.org/suite), scroll to the bottom of your Landing Page to find ‘FCC Forms and Post-Commit Requests’, select Form 470, Funding Year 2018 and click on the relevant Form 470 #.   The search results will show Allowable Contract Date under Application Information.  To see a copy of the actual Form 470, click on Generated Documents on the left toolbar.  USAC also should sent you an automatic reminder when your ACD has arrived.

  • Are you required to respond to vendors that contact you for the first time after the 28-day waiting period?
    No.  But you may do so as long as you afford all vendors the same opportunity, and as long as it is permitted by your local bidding rules.
  • What should you do if you received no bids for a service listed on our 470?If you don’t receive any bids after your 28-day waiting period, you can contact one or more service providers to solicit a bid(s) or if it’s an existing service, you can choose to remain with your incumbent provider and use a recent invoice as the bid response.  You are not required to seek more than one bid, but if you only get one bid, you must make sure it’s cost effective.  The only exception to this is for Category 2 equipment which costs between $10,900 – $20,100 where the applicant has not released a formal RFP (and is not using PEPPM) in which case PA procurement law requires public school entities to seek 3 telephonic bids (does not apply to services).

CONDUCTING YOUR BID EVALUATION

  • Are you required to select the lowest-cost bid?
    This depends on whether you’re bidding equipment or services, and whether you’re a public school, nonpublic school or library.

…SERVICES (ALL schools/libraries) and EQUIPMENT (nonpublic schools & libraries):  You are NOT required to select the lowest bid.  You ARE required to select the most cost effective proposal with price of eligible services being the most heavily weighted factor (which means that if you have 3 evaluation criteria, price of eligible services must be at least 34% of the total weight.)  Many other factors besides price may be considered, for example (this is not an exhaustive list):

- vendor qualifications/experience

- vendor owns facilities or is leasing from a 3rd party

- minority business status

- in-state preference

- existing relationship with school

- references from other customers

- staff time required to change IP addresses, etc.

…EQUIPMENT (public schools):  It depends:

– IF…you released a 470/RFP, PA procurement law requires public school entities to select the lowest responsible bidder (basically low-bid).  You are not permitted to consider additional bid evaluation criteria as suggested above; however, you are permitted to outline strict bid disqualification criteria in your 470/RFP that vendors must meet in order to be considered a qualified bid.  The disqualification criteria must be able to be answered in a Yes/No fashion (such as: do they have a SPIN, is their equipment compatible and interoperable with the District’s existing equipment, do they receive good references, do they have E-rate experience, have they been in business for X number of years, have they submitted all of the required documents, etc.).

– IF… you released a PEPPM Mini-Bid (whereby you do not release a 470/RFP), you are NOT required to select low bid and your evaluation standard is based on the E-rate “most cost effective proposal” standard.  You and are permitted to consider additional bid evaluation factors just as you are with services.  In addition, you also are permitted to outline strict bid disqualification criteria in your PEPPM Mini-Bid that vendors must meet in order to be considered a qualified bid, as described in the preceding paragraph.

  • Do you have to create a bid evaluation matrix?
    In all E-rate audits, PQA Assessments and SPIN Change Requests, applicants are required to provide the bid evaluation worksheet showing how they selected their vendors (SPIN change procedures require applicants wishing to switch vendors to submit a copy of their bid evaluation worksheet to prove that they have selected the vendor with the next highest score in your Form 470 evaluation process).  Also, the required Contracts Module in EPC requires you to list the # of bids received which is easy to determine if you have created a good bid evaluation matrix for each procurement.
  • How do you score the cost in a bid evaluation?
    The fairest way to score cost is to calculate a weight based on the difference between a proposal’s cost and the lowest proposal’s cost.  For example, you would divide the second lowest cost by the lowest cost to assign a weight %.  Then that weight % would be multiplied by the total available points assigned to cost.  Attached is a bid evaluation template which shows how the calculations work.  Be sure to fill-in your own evaluation criteria and scoring system.  Formula: (proposal cost/lowest proposal cost) * points assigned to cost category.
  • Are you required to list disqualified vendors in the bid evaluation matrix?

This is not a requirement, but it’s a good idea to list the vendor name and the reason for disqualification (no need to list the proposal cost).

POST-BID EVALUATION

  • Are you required to keep the losing proposals?
    Yes!  You must keep the winning AND losing proposals for a period of 10 years from the last date to receive service, which is basically 11 years.
  • Are you required to notify the losing vendors?

It’s not an E-rate requirement, but is a good idea so vendors know where they stand (and so they will stop contacting you!)

  • Are you required to release information related to your bid evaluation?

This is not an E-rate requirement, but for public schools, it is considered public information and must be provided if someone submits a formal Right to Know request through the appropriate process.

Please e-mail me at jtschell@comcast.net if you have any questions!

Happy Evaluating!

– Julie

Julie Tritt Schell
PA E-rate Coordinator
717-730-7133 – o
717-730-9060 – f
jtschell@comcast.net
www.e-ratepa.org

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