How to Be an Evaluator (Video)

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Transcript:

Thank you for being an evaluator.

This session is going to teach you how to go through the PlanetBid system and manage your evaluation process.

You may have just received an email letting you know for the first time that you're an evaluator on a particular project or you may have received an email reminding you that you're an evaluator and that you're now part of a In that email, there will be a link to the PlanetBid’s system.

If you have never created a password or you don't remember your password, you'll simply click need password help, enter your username and hit send.

It will then send you a password reset email and from there you'll be able to set your password.

So let's log in.

As an evaluator, when you log into the system, on the left-hand navigation pane, you will be able to see all the modules that you will have access to.

Project Evaluation, the Vendor Portal, which is a quick link to the vendor side of the system, User Settings, where you can change your contact information as well as reset your username and password, and then the Help Center.

The Help Center will have user guides for project evaluation, frequently asked questions, And at the very bottom, an online support ticketing center, as well as our phone number.

We are available Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Pacific Standard Time, or if you're on the East Coast, that's 8 to 8.

So let's go to project evaluation.

In here, you will see only the projects that you have actually been invited to participate in.

You can search for them. You can search for a project by a keyword, a stage, a bid type.

Click on the plus to search by additional information.

But it will only show you the project again that you have been invited to.

Once you find the project, click on it to open.

And then select edit in order to edit the field.

When you log in, the very first tab that you will come to is the Evaluation tab.

Here you will see your name and then each one of the bidders that you're going to have to evaluate for, whether or not you've started the evaluation process, and the total score so far for that vendor.

If you click on the vendor's name, it'll expand to show you the criteria that you need to score for the that you're in.

It will now show draft, and then you will see the points available for that criteria, and over on the far side it will tell you how many points you can score up to. So here I can come in and I can put in my score.

It's to a 8.56.

Now if I click anywhere on this row as well, you will see that it then open up and tell me more information about the criteria set by the agency.

It will also have a place for me to record strengths, general weaknesses, or as we like to say, observations.

Don't necessarily think of it as a weakness.

Think of it as just a general observation and then any other comments.

You do have the ability to click in as well to collapse and collapse.

Or, you can come over here to the far right and expand all, collapse all.

You will need to put scores in for every single criteria and each vendor.

Your agency may have special instructions for you as far as entering any information in the comments, weaknesses, and strengths.

Now that I have all my scores in here, and again I can hit collapse, once I save this at the top it will then save it as a draft so when I return you can see here it says it's the draft. While you're in draft mode you can make edit changes.

Let's go through the other tabs. The bid detail tab.

The bid detail tab is going to show you everything that it went on during the bidding process and who the submissions were from that you need to evaluate.

If the agency has released price you will see price here and if we select into a particular vendor we will then be able to scroll down and get all of the submitted documents.

Cost file if it has not been released means the agency does not want you looking at it yet. When they are ready they will release the cost file.

Each agency has its own practices and policies in regarding releasing of costs.

Below that is other information that happened during the bidding process including any documents they handed out to the vendors, any line items if there were any, addendas, Q &A, and you can drill into Q &A and addenda to see more information.

Evaluation admin will show you who your fellow evaluators are and what round you'll be scoring.

It will also show you a schedule of meetings you need to be aware of.

You will also see under evaluation form, if the agency is using it, documents that they want to hand out to you on top of the bid submission documents.

So be sure to download those, read those instructions carefully, and if they're asking for any attachments, you may return them here.

Once you've selected your document, you can review it and change the title.

Please note that any emails that the agency has sent you during the evaluation process will also appear down here at the bottom and you can drill in to view it. When attaching documents, you'll see here it has my name, Evaluator 1, Marge.

On this particular project we have two evaluators. Evaluator 2, Michael.

When he logs in, he will never see any of the information under Evaluator Attachments.

This area is kept private between you and the agency.

Technical qualifications will let you know that there were originally more vendors who submitted, but maybe one or two of them have failed.

You're not going to have access to the failed submissions, but you will have access to all that passed.

The Criteria tab will show you the general criteria and a quick glance including the points available.

But really, the main majority of your work will be done on the evaluations tab.

So once you have gone in and downloaded the documents from the bid detail, read them, you can start scoring on evaluations.

When you're all done scoring and you're not going to make any further changes, be sure to hit submit.

If you fail to do any portion of the system when you go to submit it will let you know with evaluations where you need to go to fix, where you need to go to make the changes.

Once you have corrected your, once you have corrected the missing items you may hit submit and okay.

Your scores are now locked and you will not be able to make any further changes without contacting the agency.

Here you can see all of the items have submitted.

You will do this for every round the agency initiates on this evaluation.

Should the agency release the results you will be able to see the results information on the results tab. Right now they have not been released.

You and all your fellow evaluators will have the ability to enter in general notes on the notes tab. Once you're done you hit done and log out.

Thank you for being an evaluator.

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Related Articles: 

Admin Training

Setting Up a Project Evaluation

Managing and Completing the Evaluation Process