The Owner’s Selection Committee - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 206

• Technical areas such as hydraulics, structural, treatment process, tunneling, life-
cycle costs, safety record statistics, and so on
• Environmental issues such as noise, odor emissions, vibration, visual impacts,
traffic, and so on
• Pricing/cost review
• Compilation of selection committee scores and calculations for the final award
• Security support for proposal materials during committee reviews
POTENTIAL PITFALLS OF THE SELECTION
COMMITTEE AND THE EVALUATION PROCESS
Several pitfalls of selection committee activities and the evaluation and selection process
are identified in the following list. If and when indications of these pitfalls occur, the
committee chairperson should address them immediately. With timely, thoughtful, and
proper planning, owners can structure and conduct an efficient and effective evaluation
and selection process.
• Not having enough time for the evaluation/selection process due to the size and
complexity of the project
• Having committee members without the background or experience to reasonably
understand the project and/or its complexity
• Committee members that cannot or do not commit the time and effort required
for the evaluation/selection process
• Committee members not clearly understanding the evaluation criteria, on which
the selection should be limited. Additional information provided in proposals
should not be evaluated, if it is not related to the evaluation criteria.
• Not following the rules and procedures that were outlined in the RFP or any
legislative requirements
• Inappropriate communications by or between committee members
• Security breaches of proposal materials
• The identification of potential conflicts of interests of committee members
• Not providing adequate technical, commercial, and administrative support to the
committee
• Not having sufficient physical space for each member to assemble all proposals
for review during committee meetings
• Not obtaining written documentation from each committee member for their
evaluation comments, observed strengths and weaknesses of each proposal, dif-
ferentiating capabilities of DB teams, any responses to protests, and feedback for
unsuccessful proposers
• A lack of written documentation from technical or commercial specialists that
review proposals to support to the committee. Specialists should not recommend
specific proposers but rather just provide their findings, including the proposer's
level of compliance with the RFP.