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Hillsborough County evaluation committee ranks Atkins Realis top for Town and Country drainage project, forgoes oral presentations
Summary
An evaluation panel for Hillsborough County’s Town and Country Regional Drainage Improvements (RPS '20 600059) gave Atkins Realis the top score and, by consensus, decided not to require oral presentations, moving toward a notice of intent to recommend award subject to a five-day protest period.
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY — An evaluation committee on Thursday reviewed proposals for the Town and Country Regional Drainage Improvements solicitation (RPS ’20 600059), ranked the firms and by consensus agreed to proceed toward recommending award without holding oral presentations.
Senior buyer Joe Wright opened the meeting and explained the scoring matrix: four primary criteria totaling up to 100 points (ability of firm and personnel, firm experience, schedule/budget, workload) plus up to five bonus points (small business/SBE, past performance, volume) for a 115-point maximum. Committee chair Mikhail Moberg then led firm-by-firm discussions and asked members to state consensus scores for each criterion.
The committee discussed each firm’s personnel qualifications, representative projects and technical approaches. For Atkins Realis, members cited institutional knowledge of the Town and Country project and said the project manager, Daniel Parsons, demonstrated relevant experience; Atkins received consensus scores that produced a high subtotal before bonus points. After bonus points were added in the recap, Joe Wright said, "So our number 1 ranked firm was Atkins Realis with 103 total points." Mikhail Moberg summarized and the committee recorded Atkins as the top-ranked proposer.
Technical concerns influenced scores for some firms. Floodplain engineering manager Kyle Omen and other reviewers raised questions about the depth of some firms’ demonstrated experience with Hillsborough County’s HC SWIM watershed modeling tool, noting that relevant resumes or specific modeling experience were limited or unclear in a few submittals. "There's limited experience for key team members, in terms of past modeling experience with HC SWIM," Omen said during the Burgess & Neiple review; advisors and other members discussed whether referenced projects and resumes adequately supported that modeling experience.
Other scoring differences reflected how members weighed representative projects versus project scale. Committee members noted that some firms submitted transportation-oriented projects with drainage elements rather than large-scale flood-protection portfolios comparable to Town and Country; one reviewer flagged unusually low design fees on a firm’s referenced projects and said that raised questions about comparability to a project with an expected construction magnitude near $49 million.
At the meeting’s recap, Wright read totals and bonus-point breakdowns: Atkins Realis 103 points (top), Kimberly Horn 93, DRMP 84, Burgess & Neiple 77, Plummer Associates 71 and Fowler Davis 66. The committee then considered whether to require oral presentations by shortlisted firms and "made a consensus decision" to proceed without presentations. Moberg and other members expressed agreement and the committee moved to finalize the evaluation rankings.
Wright reminded attendees that the cone of silence remains in effect until the notice of intent to recommend award is posted and the five-day protest period ends, and that procurement questions should be directed to him as the senior buyer. The committee’s consensus to forgo presentations is a procedural decision documented in the evaluation record; any formal recommendation or award remains subject to the county’s procurement procedures and the statutorily provided protest period.
Next steps: procurement staff will prepare the notice of intent to recommend award and follow the county’s procurement process, including the five-day protest window before any final award is issued.
