Page 187 - Sustainable On-Site CHP Systems Design, Construction, and Operations

160 De s i g n

The CHP owner-operator or developer should select a panel of stakeholders and
interested parties (minimum of three people) including facilities operation and mainte-
nance personnel, facility owners, design and construction personnel, contract adminis-
trators, and even outside members including other facility consulting engineers (for
peer review) and, or facility owners (someone who has gone through the selection
process before). This panel should serve as the selection committee.
Once the responses to the RFQ are obtained by the owner, each member of the
owner’s panel should review each of the engineering firms SOQ submissions and rank
them per the agreed rating system. Sometimes each member individually scores the
RFQ and then an average of all scores is used to determine the best SOQ. In other cases,
the members who are most familiar with a certain area of the SOQ score that part.
Whatever process is used, after all panel members are complete with their review of the
engineering firms SOQ submissions, the individual panel members’ reviews should be
tallied. The responsive engineering firms can then be ranked from highest (best, most
responsive) to lowest number of points. The CHP owner-operator can decide on the
number of engineering firms to interview and creates what is known in the industry as
a short list.
The process of interview or preparation of a detail project proposal is expensive for
both the engineering firm and the owner-operator. For that reason, the short list should
be limited to the firms the CHP owner-operator or developer is actually interested in
hiring. If there are only two firms that are really being considered for the CHP design
effort, then just those two firms should be interviewed. If on the other hand there are
four firms that could do the work effectively and the owner-operator is not sure who to
pick, then it is best to interview those four firms.
The length and format of the interview should be determined in advance. Each
team being interviewed may, for example, be given 45 minutes for formal presentation
followed by 30 to 45 minutes for questions and answers. The format and length really
depends on the size and complexity of the project, as well as by how well the CHP
owner-operator has already knows of the engineering firm’s reputation and if the owner
has worked with the firm on prior CHP projects. Sometimes a shorter presentation with
longer questions and answers is warranted, while sometimes the reverse may prove
more effective.
The CHP owner-operator should contact each of the invited engineering firms
by phone and the information should be followed by a written formal invitation
with details on what is expected during the interview. Information should be pro-
vided to the firms being interviewed to let them know something about the project
as well as the interview process including where and when the interview will take
place, and the format for the interview. The CHP owner-operator should also send
a letter to the engineering firms which are not selected to be interviewed thanking
them for their participation in the selection process. A common practice is to agree
to a subsequent “debriefing” phone discussion on firm’s perceived strengths and
weakness, if requested.

Interviewing
The CHP owner-operator can create a list of questions or concerns prior to the inter-
view for the invited firms to answer during their interview. An alternative is to provide
the invited firms with guidelines in advance regarding the topics the owner wants to
discuss and how responses will be scored. The owner-operator that only provides