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PURCHASING
BY GARY BARKMAN
Working with Post-Award Debriefings
Bary Barkman
Lately, the word Post-Award Debriefing has become Debriefings can give the offeror a chance to
a common term in the purchasing arena. More and hear from the agency putting out the solicitation
more procurement people have been asking, “What regarding: what the evaluation process entailed as
is a post-award debrief? “What’s its purpose?” and stated in the solicitation or criteria, how the offeror’s
“How do you conduct one?” proposal scored based on the evaluation criteria,
explain what was successful about the offeror’s
What I first need to tell you is that this article is proposal and what may have been lacking or had
not meant to be construed as legal advice, but rather room for improvement. If offers lessons learned and
best practice based on my experience as a buyer for takeaways for the offeror.
Mesa Public Schools.
I’d also like to explain what the post-award
Having said that, let me tackle this piece first. Post- debriefing is not, since we have indicated several
Award Debriefings should be considered a “Best things that make up the debriefing. To me anyway,
Practice,” if you will. It allows suppliers/vendors it is NOT a point-by-point comparison of all the
the opportunity to see how they fared with regard to offers. It’s NOT an opportunity to disclose trade
an offer they submitted in response to a solicitation. secrets or proprietary/confidential information and
It offers them transparency and a chance to ask it’s certainly NOT an opportunity to reveal other
questions for improvement on the next go around. information exempted from disclosure.
"If we’re not willing to Now that we’ve discussed what a post-award
debriefing can consist of and its purpose, let’s
help educate our suppliers, discuss how a person “may” conduct one. Notice
how can we expect to see that I indicated how a person “may” conduct a
debriefing. This is because no one person has
improvement?" exclusivity in ‘The Best” way to conduct a post-
award debriefing. It needs to be a process developed
by each procurement officer and their agency
A debriefing can offer evaluation of strengths and that utilizes such tools because not every agency
weaknesses and where their offer fell within the conducts post-award debriefings.
overall evaluation/ranking. Post-award debriefings
can offer an opportunity to all participating suppliers Generally, I like to bring the supplier into the
as well as give the offeror the chance to better agency for a face-to-face discussion so that they can
understand the basis for the award or the selection view the procurement file, once the debriefing is
process. complete but just know that remote meetings work
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26 THE EDGE FALL 2023
