The governing board of the school district shall proceed in accordance with the following when awarding best value contracts under this article:
(a) The school district shall prepare a solicitation for bids and give notice pursuant to Section 20112.
(b) (1) The school district shall establish a procedure to prequalify bidders as required by this code. Information submitted by the bidder as part of the evaluation process shall not be open to public inspection to the extent that information is exempt from disclosure under the California Public Records Act (Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 6250) of Division 7 of Title 1 of the Government Code).
(2) A best value entity shall not be prequalified or shortlisted unless the entity provides an enforceable commitment to the governing board that the entity and its subcontractors at every tier will use a skilled and trained workforce to perform all work on the project or contract that falls within an apprenticeable occupation in the building and construction trades, in accordance with Chapter 2.9 (commencing with Section 2600) of Part 1.
(3) Paragraph (2) shall not apply if any of the following requirements are met:
(A) The school district has entered into a project labor agreement that will bind all contractors and subcontractors performing work on the project or contract to use a skilled and trained workforce, and the entity agrees to be bound by that project labor agreement.
(B) The project or contract is being performed under the extension or renewal of a project labor agreement that was entered into by the school district prior to January 1, 2020.
(C) The entity has entered into a project labor agreement that will bind the entity and all its subcontractors at every tier performing the project or contract to use a skilled and trained workforce.
(4) For purposes of this subdivision, “project labor agreement” has the same meaning as in paragraph (1) of subdivision (b) of Section 2500.
(c) Each solicitation for bids shall do all of the following:
(1) Invite prequalified bidders to submit sealed bids in the manner prescribed by this article.
(2) Include a section identifying and describing the following:
(A) Criteria that the school district will consider in evaluating the qualifications of the bidders.
(B) The methodology and rating or weighting system that will be used by the school district in evaluating bids.
(C) The relative importance or weight assigned to the criteria for evaluating the qualifications of bidders identified in the request for bids.
(d) Final evaluation of the bidders shall be done in a manner that prevents the identity of the bidders and the cost or price information from being revealed in evaluating the qualifications of the bidders prior to completion of qualification scoring.
(Amended by Stats. 2020, Ch. 46, Sec. 4. (AB 1981) Effective January 1, 2021. Repealed as of January 1, 2026, pursuant to Section 20119.7.)