During the entire life cycle of the project, sellers often give proposals to the buyer in the hopes of being awarded the project. In most cases, the buyer often receives a lot of proposals from prospective sellers thus choosing the right sellers can be quite challenging.
The proposal evaluation techniques refer to the process of reviewing the proposals given by the suppliers to support the contract award decisions of the buyer and the project team. The proposal evaluation techniques are one of the tools of Conduct Procurement which is a process of obtaining the responses from the seller including its selection and awarding of the contract.
Simple projects do not necessarily require such complicated project management techniques. The proposals will be basically reviewed by the buyer and the appropriate seller will be awarded the contract based on merits.
When it comes to complex procurements, the selection of the proposal will be based on the responses of the seller following a weighted criteria set by the buyer. A formal evaluation review process follows that will be defined by the procurement policy of the buyer. There will also be an evaluation committee that will submit a selection for the approval of the management before any awarding can even occur.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.