Hillsborough County committee completes consensus scoring of six proposals for five-year consolidated plan consulting RFP

An evaluation committee for Hillsborough County announced final consensus scores for six firms that responded to RFP P25Dash00282 for affordable-housing planning consulting services related to the county’s five-year consolidated plan.

“For the record, this meeting is being recorded, and the recording will be available after the meeting has ended,” said Dawn D’Amena, the county’s chief buyer, at the start of the session. She also explained the procurement “tone of silence” applies until five business days after the county posts a notice of intent to award or if the solicitation is canceled.

Committee members discussed and scored proposals using the solicitation’s stated criteria: technical approach (30 points), organization and staff qualifications and experience (25 points), past performance (25 points), and proposed fee (20 points). A fifth category — listed in the solicitation as DMDWDE bonus points — had no submissions and therefore received zero points for all proposers.

Discussion focused on how well each proposal described a work plan, local staffing and availability, stakeholder engagement and public meetings, and comparable past projects. Multiple committee members raised concerns that some proposals lacked a phase-by-phase breakdown of tasks, did not list staff hours or capacity, named a very small core team, or relied on projects outside Florida with unclear local presence. For example, several reviewers said they could not find a clear breakdown of phases or named local staff in one proposal and said that limited the proposal’s score on technical approach and staffing.

After deliberations, procurement staff read the committee’s consensus scores and the calculated cost and bonus-point sub-scores. Dawn D’Amena announced the total consensus scores as reported by the committee: Delway Inc. 6.46; Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP 86.43; BEW Advisors Inc. 90.00; Civitas LLC 85.40; Florida Housing Coalition Inc. 90.90; and SLV Enterprises LLC 73.44. D’Amena said procurement would prepare the enumeration-summary memo and obtain committee members’ signatures on the scoring spreadsheet.

The committee did not take a formal procurement award action at the meeting. Instead, members completed scoring by consensus and directed procurement to finalize documentation and post the meeting recording. D’Amena reminded attendees that the county’s silence period remains in effect until the county posts a notice of intent to award or cancels the solicitation.

The meeting record shows extensive point-by-point scoring conversation, including narrow numeric splits among reviewers for multiple firms on organization, staff qualifications and past performance. Committee members noted some firms presented stronger work plans or more detailed staffing models, while others had strengths in prior experience but lacked project-level packaging or measurable timelines.

Procurement staff will post the recording, finish the consensus spreadsheet and circulate the enumeration summary memo for signatures before concluding the solicitation process. Any notice of intent to award and the end of the county’s silence period will be posted following the county’s procurement rules.