During the J/30 Board of Governors (BOG) meeting on 11 September 2014, a discussion was held on the selection process for yacht clubs to host a J/30 regatta. The Southern New England district indicated it created a request for proposal (RFP) to solicit responses for the 2013 J/30 North American Championship.

The BOG requested that the process and RFP be posted on the forum for others to use. The RFP created incorporates the J/30 North American Championship Organizing Guidelines also posted on this forum. The links in this post refer to documents used for this process and allow you to download the actual files.

1. An evaluation team was assembled with six people within the district, and the class co-president out of the district. A teleconference was held to review the process and discuss the expectations including evaluation requirements and timeline.

2. A letter requesting an "Expression of Interest" was generated and sent to all of the yacht clubs in the area. This provided the notification of the event, and determined which clubs had interest in providing a response. The response time to reply was 14 days.

3. Based on responses to the "Expression of Interest", a formal RFP was sent to interested yacht clubs on 1 November with a response due 45 days later. This included a Questionnaire, Proposed Financial Summary, and "Host Club Requirements" from the J/30 North American Championship Organizing Guidelines.

4. Responses were received and disseminated using a hidden forum on the J/30 Forum only visible to the evaluators. The evaluators were provided with a scoring matrix spreadsheet having weighted evaluation criteria that was discussed in advance, and a comment sheet. These were collected and assembled into a consolidated scoring matrix. The evaluators were given 30 days to complete the scoring and generate comments.

Below are the directions provided to the evaluation team

Attached are two files.

The first file is an Excel spreadsheet that contains a weighted scoring matrix each evaluator will fill out to score each of the proposals received. There are directions on the matrix. It is formatted so that if you print it, the directions and matrix will all appear on the same page.

The second file is a comments sheet where each evaluator records comments for each proposal. It is intended that these comments provide clarifying information on the scores you assign and help promote discussion when we meet to review the results after all the scoring inputs are complete. The sheet has sections for recording comments in the order of the questions on the RFP template.

The scoring should be completed on the Excel matrix and comments recorded in the Word file. Once you complete evaluation of the proposals, the completed matrix and comments should be saved and uploaded to this forum using the file manager link. Please reply to this thread and attach your completed files to the message you post

Please score the proposals based on the inputs received and try not to evaluate on outside information. Each club submitting a proposal was provided the same information and asked to respond to required sections and provide additional optional inputs.

There are 7 evaluators, with each having 1 vote. The Class Co-President is the 7th evaluator. His vote will only be used if it is required to break a tie. Everyone is requested to complete their evaluations and upload the results by Sunday 15 January 2012.

I will review the file upload procedures and go over any procedural questions you may have during the phone conference on 20 December.

5. A teleconference was held with all the evaluators to review comments and discuss discrepancies between evaluators. Adjustment to the scores was made in real time based on a consensus after reconciliation of comments.

The following was sent to the evaluators before the teleconference:

All of the evaluation score sheets have been combined into a single spreadsheet. See the attached Excel sheet and look at the tab labeled "All". The following will help people view the data that has been synthesized.

The raw scores are displayed for each individual, arranged so the raw scores are side by side for each club.

The right columns under each club contain the average of the raw scores, the standard deviation between all scores in a particular category, the weighted average based on the average score times the weighting factor, and a weighted sum that adds all scores and multiplies by the weighting factor.

The standard deviation is color coded for values less than 0.5 represented by shades of green, yellow in the mid range, and as values approach 1.0 pink. Basically, the closer to "red" the standard deviation is means that there is not a consensus on the score in a category.

The raw weighted scores for each individual are displayed in the column below the evaluator's name. A simple Red (last), Yellow (mid) and Green (First) color scheme is displayed for an individual's ranking for each of the 3 proposals.

I did a gross sensitivity analysis on how the various factors that impact the scores. You can try this yourself to see the changes on the spreadsheet results. In column C labeled as "weight", change the factor from the original value to zero. You'll see the results impact, then change it back to the original value.

What I found is the following factors influence the over all results

• Cost
• Ability to meet all requirements
• Quality of Race Side Equipment
• Quality of race site options
• Experience in running events & races
• Measurement area
• Insurance Coverage
• Unsolicited offerings

The other factors have no impact on changing the results. So when we have our phone conference, we should resolve any differences in these areas and see what the results are. Interesting is that those areas are also where some of the largest standard deviations appear showing differences in opinion between the evaluators.

I'd like to schedule a phone conference to review the evaluations, reconcile discrepancies, then decide on the path forward.

6. Evaluation consensus was reached and the results documented. The following was posted to document the results.

Evaluation Committee,

Thanks to everyone for the work you all put in for the 2013 J/30 NA Selection. Here is what I recorded.

1. The 2012 J/30 NAs will be hosted by Barrington YC 25-28 July 2013
2. Mark Rotsky and Bill Kneller will draft a letter to Bristol YC & Newport YC thanking them for their proposals, and describing the selection made based on strengths and weaknesses of the proposals submitted
3. The letter should also indicate that this is not a one time situation and we would like to ask that they support other regional events to be scheduled.
4. We will ask people at the 15 February J/30 SNE meeting to join the 2013 NA organizing committee so we can start the planning in earnest.
5. The organizing committee will work with the host club and class to determine the budget, what will be charged for registration and what is needed for sponsorship.

The scores as adjusted during the phonecon are in the attached spreadsheet.

Again - Thanks for everyone's help on this.

7. The following response was prepared for the clubs not selected and sent via email.

The J/30 Association North American Championship Regatta Site Selection Committee met last night to review proposals and select the host for the 2013 North American Championships. The Committee was made up of one active J30 racer from each of 6 different clubs within the district, including Bristol, Barrington, Newport, Coasters Harbor, Beverly and East Greenwich. There were 3 finalists in the running, Bristol, Barrington, and Newport Yacht Clubs. The committee members agreed unanimously from the beginning that each of these clubs had the facilities, personnel, and experience to put on an excellent event. That said, in an effort to select the host, a weighted matrix was developed and each assessor provided scores for a number of categories based on the information provided in the proposals. When all was said and done, each club had minor minuses balanced by reciprocating pluses, but the main discriminator came down to finances. Not totally unexpected in this economy. With that, the proposal from Barrington separated itself by proposing a significantly lower cost structure for the event, even after normalizing many of the variables between the 3 proposals. As such, it was overwhelmingly agreed that Barrington Yacht Club would be the host of the 2013 J30 North American Championships.

Rest assured that despite the outcome, (???????) YC is still held in very high regard and will definitely be considered for any future J30 related events. The committee greatly appreciated your proposal and the effort required to develop it by your team.