The Town of Concord advisory board reviewed the selection process for a recently released request for proposals (RFP) for the town site and sketched a compressed timeline to identify consultants. Dan Gainsborough, an advisory-board co-chair, said the RFP was posted and that the committee refined evaluation criteria, interview procedures and reference checks to keep the procurement on schedule.

Gainsborough described three comparative scoring categories in the RFP’s evaluation matrix — "highly advantageous" (5 points), "advantageous" (3 points) and "least advantageous" (1.4 points) — with a maximum of roughly 20 points across the assessment sections. He said the same point framework will be applied to interviews and reference checks to maintain consistency across stages.

Anthony, a town staff member supporting procurement, confirmed the RFP was sent to a selected group of firms, posted on COMMBUYS and posted on the town website; he said he has been fielding requests for copies by email. "Anybody that wants a copy is right now emailing me and I've been sending out — I think I sent out 6 emails since that hit the streets," Anthony said.

Committee members debated whether the RFP should preclude consultants from later joining a master-developer team. Scott Bates asked whether a selected consultant would be barred from future participation on a developer team; Gainsborough said that question was not addressed directly in the RFP and Anthony said the RFP does not appear to contain such a prohibition. "I don't think that's addressed anywhere in the RFP," Anthony said.

Members agreed the committee’s job is to set the scoring and interview questions, not to assemble subconsultants on bidders’ behalf. Elizabeth offered a sample ranking matrix used for a prior town planning process and advised the panel to require minimum scope-of-service items in proposals and use comparative criteria for scoring. "You don't need somebody to reiterate what's in their proposal," Elizabeth said. "Ask how this firm will handle competing interests and provide examples."

The committee discussed logistics for interviews and reference checks: the plan is to narrow responses to roughly three firms for interviews where possible, though Anthony cautioned the number could expand depending on how many proposals tie in score. Panelists emphasized asking behavioral questions and hearing from project managers and field staff rather than only business-development presenters.

The panel set procedural expectations for bidder questions and deadlines: Shannon and Megan (town staff) will collect incoming questions and route technical queries to subject-matter staff (for example, zoning or wastewater questions to town planners or engineers). The committee identified January 15 as the deadline for receipt of final bidder questions, with a short window after that to issue consolidated responses.

Gainsborough said dropping the site tour helped avoid weather-related delay and preserve the RFP timeline; the group discussed an aim to have consultant teams ready to begin work in early March. "We really tried to do things that would keep the request for proposals on track," he said.

Public comment urged the committee to weigh wastewater constraints and to consider public, transparent final interviews or community design exercises. The committee said consultants would be asked to conduct mini-charrettes and other outreach within the project’s constrained schedule.

Next steps: staff will continue to collect questions through the central intake, apply the agreed scoring matrix when proposals arrive, and work with the advisory-board selection subgroup to pull together the interview panel and reference checks in January.