The project brief was approved and then released to short listed respondents on 11 October 2006. The project brief was comprehensive. Its objectives and required outputs were consistent with the business case.
The project brief set out the criteria to evaluate proposals. These were more specific than the criteria used at the EOI stage, and were tailored to the specific requirements of the redevelopment project. The evaluation criteria and sub-criteria were allocated weightings to determine their relative importance in the overall evaluation of bids.
DHS advised that the weightings allocated to each of the criteria reflected discussions between DHS and RCH. However, these discussions were not recorded and there is no documented rationale for the weightings.
As the allocation of weightings to evaluation criteria is a matter of judgement we have no concern with the weightings applied in this instance, but suggest that the underlying rationale should be documented to maintain the transparency of the procurement process.
A project brief evaluation plan was finalised in February 2007 documenting the methodology to be used in the evaluation of proposals. It outlined the formation of an evaluation panel to assess the proposals with advice from technical, commercial and service sub-panels. These, in turn, could access expert advisers to assist in the evaluation process. For example, there were 10 RCH advisory groups convened to support the evaluation of the technical sub-panel. These RCH advisory groups were from a range of functional and clinical areas within the hospital.
The evaluation panel received three proposals at the project brief stage by the closing date of 15 March 2007. Each proposal was rated, ranked or scored by the sub-panels on the basis set out in the evaluation plans. Sub-panel assessments of each proposal were used as the basis for the detailed report by the evaluation panel that documented its overall appraisal of each proposal and explained the scores and rankings awarded. The evaluation panel report ranked two proponents ahead of the third-ranked bidder.
The probity auditor signed off on the evaluation report on 21 May 2007. It was subsequently agreed by the project steering committee and government that the two highest ranking proponents would be invited to participate in a structured negotiation phase (SNP) to address key issues associated with their proposals. On 30 May 2007 the Minister for Health publicly announced that the shortlist of consortia had been reduced to two proponents.
The evaluation process at both the EOI and project brief stage was well documented and fair to all proponents. The decisions were justifiable on the basis of the requirements and the selection criteria declared in the project brief.