Para 5.3.1 — CONSULT_MANUAL

5.3.2 The Request for Proposal (RFP) (Rule 186 of GFR 2017) 1. The Request for Proposals (RfP) is the bidding document in which the technical and financial proposals from the consultants are obtained. For procurement of Consultancy Services, the RfP is sent only to the short-listed consultants. It contains the following sections:

a) Section I: Request for Proposal Letter (RFPL) and its Appendix: Tender Information Summary (TIS) b) Section II: Instructions to Consultants (ITC)

5.3.1 Basic Considerations 1. Department of Expenditure (DoE), Ministry of Finance, Government of India has issued Model Tender Documents for Procurement of Consultancy Services and Procurement of Consultancy Services51, which may please be referred.

Chapter 5: Bid Invitation Process c) Section III: Appendix to Instructions to Consultants (AITC) d) Section IV: General Conditions of Contract (GCC) e) Section V: Special Conditions of Contract (SCC) f) Section VI: Terms of Reference (TOR) i) Section VI-A: List of Key Experts and Required Qualifications g) Section VII: Evaluation/ Scoring Criteria

2. Section I: Request for Proposal Letter (RFPL) and its Appendix: Tender Information Summary (TIS) Section I – Request for Proposal Letter (RFPL and its Appendix – Tender Information Summary - TIS) provides a synopsis of information relevant for a Consultant to decide on participating in the RFP. RFPL states the intention of the Procuring Entity to enter into a contract for the provision of consultancy services, details of the Procuring Entity, and date, time, and address for submission of proposals. It plays the role played by NIT in procurement of Goods and Services.

3. Section II: Instructions to Consultants (ITC) and Section III: Appendix to Instructions to Consultants (AITC) Section II: “Instructions to Consultants” (ITC), along with Section III: “Appendix to Instructions to Consultants (AITC)”, contains all necessary information that would help the consultants prepare responsive proposals. It shall bring in as much transparency as possible to the selection procedure by providing information on the evaluation process and by indicating the evaluation criteria and factors and their respective weights and minimum passing quality score. Standard information includes clauses relating to the procedure of bid submission, prebid meeting, for seeking clarifications, and so on, but should not contain information on processes after the announcement of the award which should be covered in GCC, for example, the arbitration clause, resolution of disputes, and so on. The assignment/ job specific information in AITC include the date and time of bid submission, contact address, qualification criteria, method of selection, evaluation process, factors of evaluation and their respective weights, and so on. The ITC shall specify the proposal validity period [normally 90 (ninety) days].

4. Section IV: General Conditions of Contract (GCC) and Section V: Special Conditions of Contract (SCC) Section IV – General Conditions of Contract (GCC) and Section V – Special Conditions of Contract (SCC) describe the conditions governing the resulting contract. GCC covers all information on aspects after the announcement of the tender award till the closure of the contract and dispute resolution. It should not cover any aspect up to the announcement of the award. Instead of modifying the GCC every time, any changes warranted by exceptional circumstances may be indicated in a separate section - Special Conditions of Contract (SCC)- with the prior approval of the CA and GCC and may be included unchanged in every tender document. It is also to be indicated therein that the provisions in the SCC will supersede the corresponding provisions in the GCC.

5. Section VI: Terms of Reference (TOR) and Section VI-A: List of Key Experts and Required Qualifications a) Section VI: Terms of Reference (TOR) describes the background, purpose/ objectives, description/ scope, deliverables/ outcomes, timelines, Procuring Entity’s inputs and counterpart personnel, statutory requirements of Services required etc.

b) Since cost is part of the selection criterion the ITC shall not indicate the budget (except in case of Fixed Budget System of selection) but shall indicate the expected input of key professionals (staff time). Section VI-A: ‘List of Key Experts and Required Qualifications’ describes the team composition, expertise, experience, and professional qualifications required for each Key Experts. Consultants, however, shall be free to prepare their own estimates of staff time necessary to carry out the assignment. c) Consultants may be encouraged to provide comments and suggestions on Terms of Reference, Counterpart Staff, Key Experts and Facilities to be provided by the Procuring Entity’ regarding these Sections. d) Simplified Technical Proposal: In LCS system of evaluation, since the technical scores are not ranked or weighted and added to Financial Scores, it would suffice if instead of a detailed marking scheme for the criteria/ sub criteria, minimum fail-pass qualifying benchmarks are laid down for each criteria/ sub criteria. For such assignment technical evaluation can be carried out by following a simplified procedure for evaluation of technical quality and only a Simplified Technical Proposal (STP, instead of a Full Technical Proposal - FTP) may be called for and indicated in the data sheet of the RfP document. STP should be used. when the assignment is: i) unlikely to have significant downstream impact; ii) of a routine nature where ToR already defines details of tasks to be performed and required output and approach, methodology, organisation, and staffing could be evaluated without use of sub criteria; and iii) that characteristics of work do not require further detailed evaluation of the consultant’s experience (e.g., engagement of accountants, auditors, consultant engineers etc). e) STP reduces the time and cost required to prepare the proposal and could be evaluated faster by the Evaluation Committee. For example, following parameters can be used: i) Minimum experience including number of assignments handled by the firm similar to the area of assignment; ii) Turnover and other financial parameters of the firm, if required; iii) Minimum educational qualifications of each of the key professionals; iv) Minimum requirement of experience of the key professionals in an area similar to the proposed assignment. v) All the firms which meet the minimum qualifying standards/ criteria so prescribed will stand technically qualified for consideration of their financial bids.

6. Quality Considerations - Section VII: Evaluation/ Scoring Criteria Section VII – Evaluation/ Scoring Criteria stipulates the scoring scheme for evaluating various Technical criteria. These may cover scoring of criteria relating to the Consultant’s experience, Technical Approach and Methodology, understanding of requirements, qualification, and experience of Key Experts (Key experts need not be a permanent employee of the consultant), transfer of knowledge etc. It may also lay down a minimum technical score to qualify for the next stage of Financial Evaluation. In a specific evaluation scheme, instead of a scheme of scoring, a scheme may be laid down to evaluate criteria on a pass/ fail basis.