I have a friend who is looking to have a website created that would allow people to upload documents, allow other users to view these documents but allow select users (judges) to "rate and score" these documents. She didn't go into too much detail but she's going to email me more specifics.

From what I gathered, they basically are letting people upload essays which can be viewed by anyone. Judges need to be able to log on and "score" each essay based on set criteria but not allow these scores to be seen by anyone else. I'm guessing they want to be able to pull metrics to see who's in the lead, etc.

I'm done some quick google searches to see if there's any type of "out of the box" solution but have come up empty. I'm guessing something like this would need to be a custom application but what would something like this entail?

It's not terribly complex. Years ago, I created a system like this for our faculty to rate abstracts.

It's for a non-profit but If I can get more details about the work would you be interested in a side job? Or could you recommend an alternative for them?

I'd consider it.

I'm sort of envisioning a hot-or-not type of site, where you need to register if you want to vote.