This article is an excerpt from The Art of Tendering: A Global Due Diligence Guide, which is available for purchase.
In its February 2022 report entitled Denver International Airport – Concessions Management, Denver’s Office of the Auditor determined that the Denver Airport should revise its current procurement practices so that it no longer destroys its evaluation records. The audit reviewed the airport’s Request for Proposals (RFP) procedures for the award of airport concession contracts for “more than 272,000 square feet of concessions space and more than 140 concessions locations across its main terminal and three concourses.”
While the audit confirmed that “the airport selects new concessionaires through a competitive selection process where panel members evaluate and score each proposal individually before their scores are combined into a master score sheet” the audit found that “the airport destroys scoring information after a concessionaire is selected” and that “as a result, the airport is not transparent in how it selects vendors to receive airport concessions contracts.”
The Auditor concluded that “how exactly a particular vendor scores in that process is secret” since the “selection panel’s individual and summary score sheets are not kept once a concessionaire’s contract is signed.” The audit found that the destruction of evaluation records was by design, rather than error or oversight, noting that the “procedures maintained by the airport’s Business Management Services group say the score sheets must be destroyed; only the final ranking and comments are kept.”
As the report summarized, airport employees claimed that the reasons for not keeping the score sheets was that “the airport wants to protect panel members from disclosing their score and to allow panel members to objectively score the proposals” and that “destroying score sheets might deter unsuccessful proposers from suing the airport.” However, the Auditor concluded that “by destroying the score sheets, the airport is not being transparent with the residents, community members, and business partners it serves” and that this practice was “not consistent with the Colorado Open Records Act and not compliant with the city’s records retention policy or other leading practices.”
The report also noted that this was “not the first time our office has identified a lack of transparency at the airport” since a prior 2014 audit of concession contracts also “found the airport was destroying selection panel members’ score sheets — showing this remains a problem for the concessions program eight years later.” The Auditor recommended that the airport’s senior vice president of business operations “revise the airport’s procedures related to selection panel score sheets and ensure airport staff retain the score sheets for seven years, in accordance with the city’s records retention schedule” and that “this records retention should begin as soon as possible for all contract selection panel score sheets.”
As this case study illustrates, some institutions operate under the mistaken belief that destroying evaluation records helps reduce legal risks. However, in addition to breaching the document retention rules that typically apply to most public institutions, this practice also undermines the defensibility of an evaluation and award decision since the lack of evaluation records makes it impossible to properly defend an evaluation process when that evaluation is legally challenged.
