48 CFR 15.308 : Federal Acquisition Regulations System (Section 1.000 To Parts 9906-9999) — Federal Acquisition Regulation (Parts 1 - 99) (Section 1.000 To Parts 54-99) — Contracting Methods And Contract Types (Parts 13 - 18) (Section 13.000 To Section 18.204) — Contracting By Negotiation (Section 15.000 To Section 15.609) — Source Selection (Section 15.300 To Section 15.308) — Source selection decision.

The source selection authority's (SSA) decision shall be based on a comparative assessment of proposals against all source selection criteria in the solicitation. While the SSA may use reports and analyses prepared by others, the source selection decision shall represent the SSA's independent judgment. The source selection decision shall be documented, and the documentation shall include the rationale for any business judgments and tradeoffs made or relied on by the SSA, including benefits associated with additional costs. Although the rationale for the selection decision must be documented, that documentation need not quantify the tradeoffs that led to the decision.