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Tree,
My experiences are somewhat different than most and these are tied with a $400M contract with Fluor Daniel, but I suspect a similar process will be followed.
The first thing Dr. Mike did when he came to IOC was look at the negotiations with Exxon. He obviously wanted to make some changes. The extent of these changes we can only speculate, but I think they were substantial. I suspect he basically started a rebidding process, dividing IOC bidding up into the pieces to match how he thinks IOC should be developed to maximize shareholder value That said, the rebidding process proceeded very quickly with the previous bidders. He asked each bidder to put together their development plans for E/A (and potentially other areas). These plans will eventually become part of the contract with IOC and they included engineering, construction, schedule, costs, and of course payments to IOC. He currently has these proposal hand and this is what his team was able to go to the banks with and get the $250M loan.
The next step, is where we are now. He will probably ask the bidders to come and present their proposals to his team; probably a day per bidder. This will serve many purposes. The first of which is to determine if their proposal makes technical sense. The second is to understand the bidders team; do they have the right culture for IOC, do they understand PNG, how do they resolve conflict during the question and answer session, etc.? These presentations are critical. Why? Dr. Mike will meet with his team after these presentations and they will align on who the successful bidder(s) are for IOC. I suspect this will be done by the end of November. For the folks in the know at IOC, find out when these presentation occur and you will know the bidders. I will even go so far to say that the bidders will be giving their presentation on consecutive days, one after another to the IOC team.
At this point, the deal is fundamentally done. They will invite the leading bidder back and ask them to modify their proposal in some given areas, gain their alignment on these areas, and IOC is off and running with the new bidder. The only thing left is to document the reasons why the bidder was selected and bring in the lawyers to finalize the paperwork. This paperwork will take time to complete and is pretty irrelevant to the process. To this day, I cannot tell you when our contract was signed, but it was something like 30/60 days after announcement and the winning bidders people were already on the ground and equipment was being ordered by that time.
Just the thoughts from a simple engineer.