 Project
Selection Process ...
In carrying out the
project-selection process (as noted in the NRC 2001 report), the ATP uses
several operational components:
- Announcements of
ATP competitions and selection criteria alert industry of the opportunity
and the challenge. Proposers' Conferences
provide tutorials on the selection criteria and process.
- A Source Evaluation
Board (SEB) and expert technical and business reviewers outside the
SEB.
- Preliminary screening
of all proposals identifies those with serious deficiencies, and these
are eliminated from the competition.
- SEB deliberations,
including evaluating proposals, as well as technical and business review;
selection of semi-finalists, conducting face-to-face oral reviews with
proposers, and ranking of proposals.
- Selecting Official
makes final award selections.
- Debriefings provide
feedback to unsuccessful proposers from SEB representatives on proposal
strengths and weaknesses.
The project selection
process used starts with ATP announcing a competition. One or more Source
Evaluation Boards (SEB) are established to determine how proposals score
against established selection criteria. A preliminary screening is performed
for all proposals to identify those that have serious deficiencies and
those that warrant further consideration. Independent reviews provided
by outside technical and business experts are taken into account by the
SEB in its consideration of each proposal. The SEB members discuss each
proposal with reference to the selection criteria. If the Board members
agree that a proposal is sufficiently strong in technical and business/economic
merit, it is chosen to progress to the semi-finalist stage.
Proposers selected
as semi-finalist proposals may be invited to NIST for an oral review (a
face-to-face discussion with the SEB). At this meeting, which typically
lasts about two hours, the Board members question the proposers about
the proposal. Questions involving technical, economic/business and budgetary
aspects of the proposal, and, where applicable, questions about human
and animal subjects in research are raised. There may be questions that
have been raised by various reviewers at any stage of the proposal review
process as well as questions that arise during the oral review. From this
process of review of both written and orally presented information about
proposed projects, semi-finalist proposals are ranked and the Selecting
Official chooses funding recipients based upon the ranking, the availability
of funds, adherence to the ATP selection criteria, and an appropriate
distribution of funds among technologies and their applications. Award
recipients are announced and awards are made in the form of cooperative
agreements between the award recipients and NIST.
Unsuccessful proposers
are given the opportunity of telephone debriefings conducted with SEB
members. The debriefing lets the proposers discuss their proposal's stronger
and weaker points with those particularly knowledgeable, though the views
represented reflect those of the entire Source Evaluation Board and provide
insight into its deliberations. This information can be helpful if the
company decides to revise and resubmit the proposal, submit another proposal
to the ATP, or pursue the proposed research in some other way.
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page.
Date created: July
18, 2003
Last updated:
April 28, 2005
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