HB887 revises Louisiana’s Construction Management at Risk (CMAR) selection process by imposing concrete procedural requirements on selection review committees and owners. The bill clarifies who must sit on the committee, defines a quorum, mandates a public training meeting before evaluation begins, expands RFQ advertising, and prescribes how proposals, interviews, and final recommendations are scored and published.
For procurement and compliance teams, the bill shifts discretion to a defined, rule‑driven process: owners must follow specific advertising, meeting, and scoring steps; proposers cannot be asked for fee or general‑conditions amounts before award; and selection records and scores become public. The changes aim to increase transparency and consistency but also create new administrative obligations for owners and bidders.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill fixes membership rules for the selection review committee, requires a public training session before evaluations, mandates expanded RFQ publication channels, and prescribes a two‑stage scoring system (submitted proposal then interview) with defined ranking mechanics. It forbids requesting or considering fees, compensation, or general conditions from proposers before a contractor is selected.
Who It Affects
Public owners and their procurement staff, firms competing for CMAR work (contractors and design professionals), selection committee members, and entities that host project notifications/electronic bidding systems. It also affects agency counsel and records officers because selection records and scores are explicitly public.
Why It Matters
By replacing permissive practice with specific steps—membership, quorum, training, advertising, scoring, and records publication—the bill reduces owner discretion and creates a predictable legal framework for challenges, compliance, and audit. That matters to contracting officers managing risk and to firms structuring proposals and interview investments.
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What This Bill Actually Does
HB887 rewrites the playbook for agencies using the CMAR option. Instead of leaving committee makeup and process to local custom, the statute now delineates committee roles, requires an upfront public training meeting under the Open Meetings Law before any evaluations, and expands where and how RFQs must be advertised.
Those procedural prerequisites must be satisfied before the committee may receive, score, or interview proposers.
The bill sequences evaluation into two discrete phases. First, the selection review committee scores and ranks submitted RFQ responses using a standardized ranking approach to identify the top three proposers that meet minimum criteria.
The committee must then invite those top proposers to in‑person interviews and presentations (with narrow exceptions for documented emergencies), complete a new scoring form that incorporates interview material, and produce a written recommendation to the owner. The committee must publish scores, grading materials, and its recommendation as public records, and members must sign ethics statements before meetings.On the administrative side, owners must advertise RFQs not only in their official journal or website but also in the state’s official journal and on any project notification or electronic bidding systems they use, with multiple notices in the 30‑day window before the submission deadline.
The RFQ may ask for qualifications and the proposer’s surety, but the statute prohibits requiring audited financials and explicitly bars requesting or considering proposer fee, compensation, or general conditions amounts before selection. Finally, the bill provides quorum rules and ties up tie‑breaking and scoring mechanics to limit ad hoc decision making.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The committee must be five members: one owner representative, one design professional (relevant discipline), one principal or employee of a licensed contractor (relevant discipline), and two additional professionals in the relevant disciplines — none of whom may be involved in the project.
Owners must advertise RFQs at least twice within the 30‑day window before the deadline in the owner’s official journal, the state’s official journal, and on any project notification/electronic bidding system the entity uses.
The selection process uses a two‑stage scoring method: committee members rank first/second/third on each score‑sheet section (3/2/1 points), total section points to identify the top three proposers, then re‑score after in‑person interviews to arrive at a final ranked recommendation.
Within 90 days of the RFQ response deadline the committee must deliver a written recommendation; committee deliberations about interviews may occur in executive session, but scores, grading, findings, and the final recommendation must be published in an open meeting.
The RFQ, responses, interviews, and presentations may not request, permit, or consider any proposer’s proposed fee, compensation, or general conditions for preconstruction or construction services until after a contractor is selected; audited financials are not required, and a payment and performance bond suffices to show financial stability.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Defined committee composition
This subsection prescribes the five‑member committee makeup: an owner representative, a relevant design professional, a contractor principal/employee in the relevant field, and two other professionals in relevant disciplines. The provision removes vague "at large" slots and ties membership to relevant professional qualifications while insisting members have no involvement in the project — a concrete constraint intended to reduce conflicts of interest and clarify who may vote.
Quorum and ethics obligations
The bill requires a quorum for any proposal discussion, scoring, interviews, or publication of recommendations; quorum must include the owner’s representative, at least one relevant design professional, and at least one relevant contractor representative. Separately, every committee member must sign an ethics statement before meetings start. Practically, this raises the floor for valid decision‑making (three specified roles) and creates an audit trail — missed quorum or unsigned ethics statements can undermine process validity.
Mandatory public training before evaluation
Before the committee receives or evaluates proposals, the owner (or RFQ coordinator) must convene a public meeting in compliance with the Open Meetings Law to brief committee members on the RFQ, scoring rubric, committee duties, and project particulars. That session serves both as training and as a transparency checkpoint — it documents that the committee started with the same instructions and makes it harder to defend retroactive changes to scoring or criteria.
Expanded RFQ advertising and financial‑qualification rules
Owners must advertise the RFQ in their official journal and, additionally, in the state’s official journal and on any project notification or electronic bidding system they use, with at least two notices in the 30 days before the submission deadline. RFQs may seek qualifications and surety information, but the statute prohibits requiring audited financial statements; a payment and performance bond is deemed sufficient to establish financial stability. This standardizes notice and lowers financial documentation burdens for proposers, but increases owners’ publication obligations.
Recommendation timeline, records, and executive sessions
The committee must produce a written recommendation to the owner within 90 days of the RFQ deadline. All score sheets, grading, findings, and recommendations are public records. Interviews may use executive sessions for internal discussion, but the committee must reconvene openly to announce and publish scores and the recommended awardee. The requirement to publish material creates important evidentiary records for procurement audits and bid protests.
Standardized two‑stage scoring, interviews, and prohibition on pre‑award pricing
The statute prescribes a uniform ranking method: committee members assign first/second/third ranks per score‑sheet section translated to 3/2/1 points, totals determine the top three proposers, and those proposers receive in‑person interviews—except for documented emergencies—after which the committee re‑scores and issues the recommendation. Crucially, the RFQ and interviews may not request or consider any proposer’s fee, compensation, or general conditions before selection, ensuring the evaluation is qualifications‑based prior to price negotiations.
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Who Benefits
- Public owners and procurement officers — receive a clear, defendable process with prescribed membership, quorum, advertisement channels, scoring mechanics, and a documented recommendation path, reducing ambiguity in protests and audits.
- Small and mid‑sized CMAR firms — the ban on requiring audited financials and the prohibition on early price proposals lower initial compliance costs and keep evaluation focused on qualifications rather than deep pockets.
- Taxpayers and transparency advocates — mandatory public training, published score sheets, and official recommendations increase visibility into how firms are shortlisted and selected.
Who Bears the Cost
- Public owners and agencies — must expand advertising (state journal and electronic systems), convene public trainings, manage ethics forms, and maintain public records, increasing administrative workload and potentially procurement timelines.
- Proposers — must prepare for mandatory in‑person interviews (travel/time costs) and cannot use early fee proposals as a strategic tool; that can increase the stakes and cost of the interview phase.
- Selection committee members — greater time commitments, formal ethics obligations, and stricter quorum rules increase the logistical burden on professionals asked to serve, with potential liability if procedures slip.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is transparency and uniformity versus administrative agility: HB887 reduces discretion and increases public accountability in CMAR selections, but those benefits come at the cost of greater procedural complexity, higher administrative and bidder burdens, and potential delay—forcing owners to choose between a cleaner, litigable record and a faster, more flexible procurement.
The bill favors standardized process over local flexibility, which helps consistency but creates several practical implementation questions. Requiring in‑person interviews and multi‑channel advertising increases time and cost for both owners and proposers; agencies will need to budget for notification fees and staff time for public training and records handling.
The prohibition on considering fees before selection reduces early price collusion risk, but it may push price disputes and negotiations into a later phase when the recommended firm has leverage or when scope changes require re‑bidding.
Operationally, the statute tightens ties between form and validity: specific quorum composition, signed ethics statements, and a 90‑day recommendation deadline create bright‑line requirements that could invalidate an otherwise sound procurement if misstepped. The law leaves open several ambiguous enforcement details — for example, what remedies bidders have if advertising channels were incomplete, how "good cause" for remote participation will be judged, and how strictly courts will police the new scoring arithmetic versus substantive fairness.
Relying on bonds instead of audited financials broadens access but could mask long‑term financial weaknesses that only emerge during construction.
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