Criminial Process

Before anyone can tackle government bids, they need to understand the procurement process and how it works. Most cities, counties and states buy differently which make life tough for vendors. However, most local government duplicates their procedures, rules and regulations after the federal governments. The most basic two types of procurement methods are sealed bids and proposals. As defined by John Murphy sealed bidding is a process by which government requirements are made known by a solicitation called an invitation for bids (IFB). The government will use sealed bidding when 1) it feels confident that award can be made to the lowest price offeror who is responsive and responsible, and 2) the government requirement is reasonably well defined in the drawing and specifications. Award by sealed bidding exploits the presumed existence of adequate price competition. John Murphy also defines competitive proposals as a process by which government needs are made know by a solicitation called a request for quotation (RFQ) or a request for proposal (RFP). Offerors respond by submitting price offers for work, product or service described in the solicitation. However, FAR 15.304(c) (2) provides that offeror's response may and in some case, must provide other relevant information to enable the government to consider such non-cost evaluation factors as past performance, compliance with solicitation requirements, technical excellence, management capability, personnel qualification, and prior experience. After government evaluations of the proposals individually with each offeror. Offerer's are given the opportunity to change their proposals. Final contract award is made to the offeror or offeror's who provide the best deal for the government. Price may or may-not be the final factor but it is a factor in the final choice. The Contracting Officer (CO) will decide when to use seal bidding which is normally used when there's adequate price completion existing and the specifications or statement of work is clearly defined to enable offeror's to bid on a fix-price basis. While on the other hand competitive proposals uses the market price forces to receive the best value for the government. According to the FAR 15.002 (b) this method should "minimize the complexity of the solicitation, the evaluation and the source selection decision, while maintaining a process designed to foster an impartial and comprehensive evaluation of offerors proposals. Although sealed bidding is currently the most common acquisition method used by the government especially when procuring construction services, competitive proposals continue to grow. Typically both sealed bidding and proposal