E-rate 471 Step 1: Selecting Your Vendors
February 28, 2012
After the Form 470 is posted, there is a mandatory 28 day (minimum) waiting period during which vendors may submit proposals to you for consideration and/or contact you for more information relating to the services you listed on your Form 470. Then, on the 29th day that your Form 470 was posted or after, you may select a vendor, sign a contract (unless MTM service) and submit the 471.
If contacted by a vendor about a specific service listed on a 470, applicants are required to provide relevant information to prospective vendors so they may submit solid proposals for your consideration. Applicants should not simply ignore these inquiries as it would be a violation of the E-rate competitive bidding requirements and applicants are encourage to keep a log of all vendor inquiries and your responses to these inquiries. However, generic emails from vendors saying that the service provider can provide the general type of service requested is not considered a good faith response to a Form 470 posting and can be considered 'spam' and ignored by the applicant. In addition, inquiries from "brokers" or mass e-mails that are not specific to your 470 are not considered legitimate inquiries by the SLD.
1) What should we do if we only received one bid, or no bids, for a service listed on our 470?
In such instances, the SLD advises that applicants write a memo to their files explaining why they selected that particular vendor. For example:
* At the conclusion of the Form 470 28-day waiting period, the District only received one bid, which was from [fill in name of Vendor]. We reviewed the bid for cost effectiveness and selected [fill in name of Vendor] as the provider for [fill in description of service].
OR
* At the conclusion of the Form 470 28-day waiting period, the District did not receive any bids. [Fill in name of Vendor] can provide [fill in description of service] service to our entity and is cost effective. Therefore, we selected [fill in name of Vendor] to provide our entity with these services.
2) Do we have to select the lowest bid?
No. You are just required to select the lowest responsible bid, with price of eligible services being the most heavily weighted factor, after you have completed a bid evaluation process. The SLD has been asking more and more applicants to provide all of the bid responses received as a result of your Form 470 competitive bid, as well as your bid evaluation process in order to prove that you selected the lowest responsible bid. Keep in mind that price of eligible services has to be the most heavily weighted factor, which means that if you have 3 criteria that you judged the proposals on, price of eligible services must be at least 34% of the total weight. Many other factors besides price may be considered (for example, vendor qualifications/experience, minority business status, in-state preference, existing relationship with school, references from other school customers, cost of ineligible services/equipment (such as new cell phones required to run on vendor's network), school personnel time needed to obtain services, etc.)
Two sample bid evaluation worksheets are attached here and here and may be used as templates (be sure to fill-in your own evaluation criteria and weighting system). Please note that in all E-rate audits thus far, applicants are expected to have either a memo to file indicating no bids were received, or a bid evaluation worksheet showing how they selected their vendors. In addition, the new SPIN change procedures require applicants wishing to switch vendors to submit a copy of their bid evaluation worksheet to prove that you have selected the vendor with the next highest score in your Form 470 evaluation process.
3) Are you required to respond to vendors that contact you after the 28-day waiting period?
No. But you may do so.
4) Are you required to meet with vendors?
No. Applicants are not required to meet with vendors or view product demonstrations.
5) Is there anything we can do during this 28 day waiting period?
Yes!
a) You are permitted to reach out to vendors and encourage them to submit proposals in response to your 470 posting.
b) Begin your Form 471 online by completing Blocks 1 - 4 and 6. Then when you select your vendors, you can just complete Block 5. Don't forget to save your 471 number and security code when you exit the incomplete application so you can return and finish it. It also will enable you to submit your Item 21 attachments online.
c) If you didn't electronically certify your Form 470, be sure you mail a paper certification asap.
As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me at jtschell@comcast.net. Next messages? Signing Contracts and Submitting your 471 and Item 21 Attachments.
-- Julie
Julie Tritt Schell
PA E-rate Coordinator
717-730-7133 - o
717-730-9060 - f
jtschell@comcast.net
www.e-ratepa.org
Penn*link
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