July/August 2018

PE Report
Award Winners Make Qualifications Top Priority

A small town in northwest Massachusetts and large agency that designs and constructs federal buildings overseas have been recognized by NSPE for their emphasis on qualifications in the procurement of design professional services.

The 2018 QBS Award winners—the Town of Buckland, Massachusetts, and the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations—will be recognized during the 2018 NSPE Professional Engineers Conference in July.

Through the QBS Awards program, NSPE recognizes both public and private entities that make exemplary use of the qualifications-based selection process.

The Town of Buckland, Massachusetts was selected as the winner in the state government category. The town’s Board of Selectmen has followed a QBS process for the selection of designers since 2005.

The board’s selection committee evaluates clients based on experience, past performance, financial stability, and qualifications of the consultants who will work on the project. The committee then ranks the firms and provides the ranking to the board. For projects in which the fee is to be negotiated, the board shall request a fee proposal from the first ranked designer remaining on the list and begin contract negotiations. If the board is unable to negotiate a satisfactory fee with the first-ranked designer, negotiations shall be terminated and undertaken with the remaining designers in the order in which they were ranked by the selection committee until agreement is reached.

The town recently used the process for a road reconstruction and widening project that’s slated to begin in late 2020.

In the federal sector, the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations was selected based on its execution of the worldwide design services contracts over several procurement cycles. The bureau procures A/E services for new embassy and consulate compounds as well as upgrades to existing facilities.

Prior to the procurements, OBO holds open industry days and invites teams to provide qualifications briefs to the agency. The request for qualifications includes a two-phase approach. First, teams provide portfolios of no more than six projects, which are scored by the selection panel based on the stated selection criteria. OBO then shortlists teams after they provide a technical submission and a team presentation. The agency issues task orders in the contracts based on team qualifications, and fair and reasonable fees are negotiated.