The Owner’s Selection Committee - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 202

approving authority for award of the DB contract. Often, the committee provides the
final ranking of the top two or three design-builders, with a recommendation to select the
top-ranked firm.
The committee's recommendation is supported by the combined findings and judg-
ments of all members' evaluations. The committee members should be independent and
free of any conflicts of interest to make findings and judgments based solely on the RFQ
and/or RFP requirements, which represent the intentions and best interests of the owner.
While the committee should be adequately supported by technical, contract, legal,
and financial experts, who provide specific subject analysis and input, committee mem-
bers should make their own review, findings, and judgments, and not be influenced by
other members or persons outside of the committee. The committee members should not
bring any personal biases or prejudices to the evaluation and should make objective judg-
ments based on the information presented in the proposals, including any available refer-
ences or public records and results of any interviews conducted.
For traditional DBB projects, owners evaluate professional consulting engineering
services proposals and review and select construction bids. DB teams, however, are com-
prised of both the design engineer as well as the constructor, and the evaluation and selec-
tion of a design-builder require a unique review of capabilities and/or price, depending
on the DB selection criteria for the project. The selection committee members must be
prepared to make their evaluation with some distinctly different considerations than for
traditional DBB projects.
Unique roles and responsibilities of the selection committee for DB projects are as
follows:
• Must comply with established legislation for DB projects
• Review and judge qualifications of both the designer and the constructor, using
evaluation criteria that might be new to the committee members
• Work with a diverse set of committee members who have engineering, construc-
tion, and operations experience representing diverse interests
• Evaluate and score technical proposals for both design and construction concepts
• Base selection on both nonprice (i.e., qualifications or other) factors and/or price
• Recognize that confidentiality concerns are more significant, because proposers
may have provided technical and schedule solutions or alternatives to be more
competitive
• Be capable of evaluating multiple solutions that may be proposed to meet the
RFP requirements, specifically with respect to the design criteria
• Be prepared to review RFP addenda that may incorporate responses to various
technical questions raised by proposers during their design development in the
proposal preparation process
DEFINING THE SELECTION COMMITTEE'S FUNCTION
Organizations conduct the evaluation and selection process in various ways, depending
on the type and nature of the project. In many cases in the public sector, the controlling
legislation provides guidance, requirements, and restrictions for the selection process.