Marquette Electronics, Inc.

Marquette Electronics, Inc. BNUMBER: B-262016.2; B-262016.3 DATE: February 15, 1996 TITLE: Marquette Electronics, Inc. ********************************************************************** Matter of:Marquette Electronics, Inc. File: B-262016.2; B-262016.3 Date: February 15, 1996 Jonathan O. Levine, Esq., and Mitchell W. Quick, Esq., Michael, Best & Friedrich, for the protester. William Weisberg, Esq., and William T. Welch, Esq., Barton, Mountain & Tolle, for Hewlett-Packard Company, an intervenor. Nicholas P. Retson, Esq., and Michael J. O'Farrell, Jr., Esq., Department of the Army, for the agency. Christina Sklarew, Esq., and Michael R. Golden, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protest alleging that the awardee's proposal does not meet the solicitation's technical requirements is denied where agency found that awardee's proposal evidenced compliance with the specifications and the protester has not shown that agency's conclusion was unreasonable. DECISION Marquette Electronics, Inc. protests the Department of the Army's award of a contract to Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) under request for proposals (RFP) No. DADA15-94-R-0068, which was issued by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for a patient monitoring and clinical information system with turnkey installation. Marquette alleges that the source selection was flawed by various improprieties and argues that these improprieties, taken together, demonstrate bad faith on the agency's part. We deny the protest. The RFP, issued in December 1994, contemplated the award of a firm, fixed-price contract for delivery and installation of equipment, with six 1-year options for systems maintenance. The equipment included a patient monitoring system, which consists basically of monitors that obtain physiological data such as heart rate, blood pressure, etc. from the patient, and a clinical information system (CIS), which is a computer-based system for the storage, retrieval, display, and archiving of patient data. The CIS would include more than 500 user display terminals and data acquisition from more than 249 patient monitoring devices, covering every significant clinical unit in the medical center. The RFP specified that all requirements must be met with off-the-shelf, commercially available equipment that was in current production at the time proposals were submitted. The RFP cautioned that any equipment that had to be developed to meet the requirements of the specification would be considered unacceptable. The RFP contained more than 100 pages of detailed specifications and required offerors to respond to each one. Offerors were advised to follow the proposal format provided in the RFP and to show how they intended to comply with the technical specifications. As initially issued, the RFP listed the following evaluation factors, in descending order of importance: technical, price, management, and support, and stated that award would be made to the acceptable offeror whose evaluated price might not be the lowest, but whose offer was determined sufficiently more advantageous than the lowest priced offeror so as to justify payment of an additional amount. In addition, the RFP stated that a successful pre-award demonstration must be accomplished before an offeror could be considered technically acceptable. The agency received four initial proposals, including two separate proposals from Marquette. After evaluating the proposals, the agency conducted written discussions with the three firms, and instructed offerors to submit revised proposals. When the technical evaluation panel (TEP) evaluated the revised proposals, it determined that neither of Marquette's proposals was technically acceptable, and the contracting officer excluded them from the competitive range. Marquette protested the rejection of its proposals, and the contracting officer agreed to settle the protest by admitting the protester to the competition. The agency amended the RFP to change the basis of award to "low-priced, technically acceptable offeror" and deleted a number of technical specifications as well as the requirement for a pre-award operational capability demonstration. Offerors were instructed to submit best and final offers (BAFO) based on the amended RFP. BAFOs were evaluated, and HP's offer was determined to be the only proposal that met all of the government's specifications. In addition, HP offered the lowest price. Accordingly, HP was selected for award.