Carlson Wagonlit Travel--Request for Declaration of

Carlson Wagonlit Travel--Request for Declaration of BNUMBER: B-266337.3; B-266338.3; B-266346.3 DATE: July 3, 1996 TITLE: Carlson Wagonlit Travel--Request for Declaration of Entitlement to Costs ********************************************************************** DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE A protected decision was issued on the date below and was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This version has been redacted or approved by the parties involved for public release. Matter of:Carlson Wagonlit Travel--Request for Declaration of Entitlement to Costs File: B-266337.3; B-266338.3; B-266346.3 Date:July 3, 1996 Lars E. Anderson, Esq., J. Scott Hommer III, Esq., and Wm. Craig Dubishar, Esq., Venable, Baetjer and Howard, LLP, for the protester. Marie N. Adamson, Esq., Michelle Harrell, Esq., and Janet Harney, Esq., General Services Administration, for the agency. Andrew T. Pogany, Esq., and Michael R. Golden, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST In resolving requests for declaration of entitlement to costs following corrective action by contracting agency, the General Accounting Office does not deem 38 working days taken by the agency before taking corrective action to be an undue delay where four separate protests were filed simultaneously against the agency; the protests involved complex and detailed evaluation issues; the agency had to review and organize numerous documents to respond to the protester's document production requests; four separate good faith dismissal requests by the agency had to be resolved; and the agency diligently and quickly responded to all requests by our Office to expedite the discovery and protest process. DECISION Carlson Wagonlit Travel requests that our Office declare it entitled to recover the costs of filing and pursuing its protests in connection with three solicitations issued by the General Services Administration (GSA) for commercial travel management services for various agencies.[1] We deny the request. On September 29, 1995, Carlson filed four protests against awards under four separate but very similar solicitations issued by GSA. The protests substantively shared several major protest grounds. Briefly, Carlson argued that the agency allegedly failed to follow the stated evaluation criteria by unreasonably assigning "enhancement credits" to the awardee while ignoring significant enhancements offered by Carlson's proposal that reflected cost savings for the government;[2] that the agency failed to evaluate offerors's past performance in accordance with the terms of the solicitation; that the agency failed to conduct adequate discussions with Carlson; and that GSA improperly waived the RFP restriction prohibiting offerors from submitting their proposals in "alternative proposal formats" to the prejudice of Carlson. Concerning enhancements, Carlson's initial protests were based in substantial part on "information and belief."[3] Along with its protests, Carlson filed detailed discovery requests for evaluation and other documents with the agency. The original due date for the agency's reports was November 6. On October 16, the agency notified our Office of its intent to file requests for dismissal, in whole or in part, with respect to each protest filed by Carlson. At that time, our Office notified GSA that in view of the complexity of the protests and the number of documents requested by Carlson, we were requesting GSA to permit counsel for the protester and counsel for the interested parties direct access to GSA's documents, in the hope of expediting the discovery process by eliminating or reducing potential document disputes; we also requested GSA to produce a protest exhibit file prior to its submission of the agency report in order to early identify any supplemental protests. GSA then requested that our Office, in the interest of limiting document production to issues properly before our Office, issue a ruling on GSA's dismissal requests prior to GSA granting access to counsel to the agency's procurement documents. We granted GSA's request. On October 20, GSA filed four separate requests for dismissal. On October 27, Carlson filed responses to the dismissal requests. On October 31, GSA filed responses to "inaccuracies" allegedly contained in Carlson's responses to GSA's requests for dismissal.