Section M
Also called: evaluation factors for award, evaluation criteria, Section M factors, basis for award
Section M of a federal solicitation states the evaluation factors and subfactors, their relative importance, and the basis for award (tradeoff or lowest price technically acceptable) the agency will use to pick the winner.
FAR 15.304 requires the factors and their relative importance to be stated in the solicitation, and FAR 15.204-5(c) places them in Section M of the Uniform Contract Format. Commercial buys put the same content in FAR 52.212-2. A typical Section M names technical approach, management, past performance and price, says whether the non-price factors together are more or less important than price, and describes the rating scheme in words.
What to check: the order and weight of factors (the first listed is usually the most important), the definitions of relevance for past performance, whether price is evaluated for realism or only reasonableness, and the exact phrases the evaluators will look for. Write the proposal so a tired evaluator can score each factor without searching.
What it is not: optional. An evaluation that departs from Section M is a classic protest ground under FAR 33.1, which is why agencies draft it carefully and why you should answer it exactly.
See also: Section L, Best value tradeoff, Past performance, Debrief
Questions that use this term
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