The Source Selection Bootcamp®
Part I – The Basics
The Source Selection Bootcamp®, Part I – The Basics, is a 2 1/2-day introduction to the topic. It is designed for those who have had little or no formal training in the rules that govern competitive negotiated acquisitions and little or no practical experience in their conduct. The course covers the rules about competition, proposal solicitation, contractor selection, and contract award. It includes detailed descriptions of source selection steps, procedures, and documentation.
Course hours are 8:30 am until 3:30pm first two days and 8:30 am to Noon on the third day.
Topics
What is competition?
What is best value?
What is a negotiated contract?
What is source selection?
Where and what are the rules?
What are the FAR Guiding Principles?
What is procurement integrity?
What is streamlining?
What is acquisition planning?
What is source selection planning?
What are the methods of source selection?
Trade-off process
Lowest-price technically-acceptable
Value-adjusted total evaluated price
Highest technically rated, fair and reasonable price
What are the source selection process steps?
Who is in charge?
What is a synopsis?
What are the parts of a solicitation?
Model contract
Instructions and evaluation factors
How are the parts of solicitations organized?
Uniform contract format
Commercial items format
Combined synopsis/solicitation
Construction format
What are proposals and what’s in them?
Offers (promises)
Other proposal content
What are proposal modifications?
What are proposal revisions?
What are oral presentations
How to handle late proposals
What is evaluation?
What is phased evaluation?
What is an evaluation team?
Functions
Organization
Membership and size
What are evaluation factors?
Offer factors
Offeror factors
What are the mandatory evaluation factors?
What are evaluation findings?
What is “relative importance”?
What are strengths and weaknesses?
What are deficiencies?
What does unacceptable mean?
What is cost realism analysis?
What is price realism analysis?
What is cost and fee or price reasonableness?
What is rating (scoring) and why is it done?
Adjectival/color systems
Numerical systems
What is ranking?
What are paired comparisons?
What are tradeoffs, and how do you make them?
What is evaluation documentation?
What are clarifications?
What are communications?
What is the competitive range?
What are discussions?
What are the rules about proposal revisions?
Who makes the selection decision?
What rules govern selection decisions?
What is contract formation?
How are contracts awarded?
What notifications must be made, and when?
When are debriefings required?
What is debriefing content and procedure?
What is a protest?
What is “case law”?
What organizations handle protests?
Who may file protests?
When must protests be filed?
What is corrective action?
When may an agency cancel a source selection?
When is a source selection complete?