The evaluators spend 45-60 minutes per site, minimum. It's difficult to find enough judges who have knowledge about websites, but no connections to individual teams so that each site gets the required 4-5 evaluations. The Regionals that I am involved with have many teams submitting so each evaluator is assigned anywhere from 12-20 sites. An advantage is that the evaluations are done online so I can use people from other parts of the country who are not affiliated with my teams, but the disadvantage is that we're completely anonymous - no recognition is ever given, the judges are not acknowledged in person.
http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...20 manual.pdf our evaluation system is almost exactly as written here in your criteria for the award. The custom coding question is only one of many things that you are ranked on. I don't think the intent was to exclude CMS use but rather, to encourage web design and not using a template commonly available (I know I didn't say that correctly...) But I can see where you're coming from and will mention it to FIRST.