The San Diego County Water Authority (Water Authority) is constructing a 100 million gallon per day (MGD) water treatment plant using state-of-the-art technology. Project delivery is through the design-build-operate (DBO) method. It has proved ideal for the Water Authority and represents an integrated optimization of environmental, efficiency, cost, scheduling, and sustainability considerations. In some respects the Water Authority has unique circumstances that are described in this paper. However, the Water Authority's experience has demonstrated that there are many benefits to using this nontraditional delivery method. The urgency of the need combined with the Water Authority's lack of treatment plant design and operation expertise, resulted in this public-private partnership to implement the Twin Oaks Valley Water Treatment Plant project. Construction of the plant will be funded using long-term Water Authority debt. Qualifications of contractors for this effort were solicited in the summer of 2004, and three DBO teams were short listed in October 2004. Requests for Proposals were issued to the three teams in December 2004 with proposals due in May 2005. The Water Authority evaluated each proposal based on specific non-price criteria, then negotiated with each team. Best and final offers were requested in August 2005 and evaluated based on price and non-price criteria. The DBO contract was awarded in September 2005 and executed in October 2005 with a requirement that the plant be operational by April 2008. The Water Authority retained consultants to assist in evaluating proposals and managing this effort including: an Owner's Representative (OR), legal counsel to assist in the development and negotiation of the DBO Service Contract; and, a Board of Senior Consultants (BOSC) consisting of experts with specialties in several technical and economic aspects of DBO contracting. After the execution of the DBO contract, suggestions for process improvement were solicited from the three proposers and from other project team members. This paper describes the solicitation process, and provides suggested improvements as a result of this collaborative review. Includes table, figures.