Under a Best Value contract award process, the Government is not required to award to the lowest bidder. In fact, this is why there is a Best Value process – so the Government is not handcuffed to awarding to someone who possesses a high risk of failing to fulfill the contract. The Government may determine that non-cost areas are more important, and that awarding to someone with the highest technical evaluation at a reasonable price (although not necessarily the lowest) represents the Best Value to the Government.
In these cases the Government is required to notify the bidders of the “relative importance” of the factors which will be considered in the award decision. The FAR only requires they specify whether cost is more or less important than the non-cost areas, however most solicitations go further. It’s not uncommon to see something like, “Factor A and Factor B are of equal importance. Each is more important than either Factors C or D.” It can get complicated, if there are a number of factors, or if the Government includes information on subfactors.
This is useful information. The proposal can now be structured so that the most important factors get the most detail, and more proposal real estate, than the lesser ones.
Another note: the Government is required to describe the relative importance of the factors, but they’re not required to state the exact weighting of the factors. You probably won’t see words like, “Past Performance is 60% of the award decision” or anything similar.
Don’t go overboard on trying to “back into” the specific weights or methodology they’ll use. Since you won’t know for certain if you’re correct, it could lead you down an incorrect path. It’s sufficient to have a good understanding of the relative importance as described, and use that as a guide for building your proposal.