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Police jury adopts 'blackout' procurement rule to centralize RFQ/RFP communications
Summary
The jury approved a change to procurement/evaluation procedures establishing a single designated point of contact and a blackout period during active solicitations to limit off‑record contractor contacts.
The Assumption Parish Police Jury adopted a procurement memorandum and revised its technical-evaluation procedures to establish a formal “blackout period” for solicitations and to require a single designated point of contact for questions during an active RFQ/RFP process.
Under the adopted approach, from the date a solicitation is first published until a contract is awarded (or all submittals are rejected), only the named single point of contact will answer questions related to that solicitation. The policy aims to avoid inconsistent answers that could give some respondents an advantage and to reduce informal lobbying of jurors or staff during an evaluation period.
Committee members and staff said the change was requested by the parish’s grant administrator and is consistent with practices used by other municipalities. The jury asked staff to insert the blackout language into the personnel/policy manual and to apply it to public-works solicitations, not only technical-evaluation processes.
The jury voted to amend its conducting-technical-evaluations policy and directed staff to publish the change and include it in the manual; they also clarified that the single point of contact can change by project but must be publicly designated in the solicitation.
