Engineering Commons^™

Best-Value Contracting Criteria, Douglas D. Gransberg, Michael A. Ellicott

Douglas D. Gransberg

Best-value procurements focus on selecting the contractor with the offer most advantageous to the government, when price and other factors are considered. Best-value procurements allow government contracting services to evaluate offers on the basis of total procurement costs, construction quality issues, completion dates, additional features and technical innovations. More importantly, they force the early development of detailed project and procurement plans and create solicitations that contain accurate source-selection criteria. This combination of early planning and quality-based contracting yields significant benefits in construction timeliness, cost containment and customer satisfaction.