Contrack International, Inc.

Contrack International, Inc. BNUMBER: B-270102; B-270102.2 DATE: February 8, 1996 TITLE: Contrack International, Inc. ********************************************************************** Matter of:Contrack International, Inc. File: B-270102; B-270102.2 Date: February 8, 1996 Edward J. Tolchin, Esq., Fettmann & Tolchin, for the protester. John Kennedy for Gulf Housing & Construction, an intervenor. Bruce H. S. Anderson, Esq., and Ronald W. Breen, Department of the Army, for the agency. Mary G. Curcio, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Procuring agency's decision to award contract to lower-priced, lower technically rated offeror was reasonable, where the solicitation made price the most important evaluation factor and the technical differences between the protester's and awardee's proposal were reasonably found not significant and the price difference was considered significant in the circumstances. DECISION Contrack International, Inc. protests the award of a fixed-price contract to Gulf Housing & Construction Co., W.L.L., under request for proposals (RFP) No. DACA78-95-R-0021, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers for the construction of warehouse and storage facilities in Qatar. Contrack asserts that the award was based on an unreasonable price/technical tradeoff. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND The solicitation provided that proposals would be evaluated against the following criteria, listed in descending order of importance: price; experience; past performance; and management and execution plan. Experience and past performance were to be point-scored and management/execution plan was to be evaluated on a pass/fail basis. Prices were to be evaluated for reasonableness. The solicitation further provided: "Award will be made to the offeror whose proposal contains the combination of those criteria offering the best overall value to the Government. This will be determined by comparing differences in the value of the technical and management features with differences in cost to the Government. "In making this comparison, the Government is more concerned with making an award at the lowest overall cost to the Government than with obtaining superior technical or management features. However, the Government will not make an award based on a proposal with significantly inferior technical or management features to achieve a small savings in cost to the Government. "When making tradeoff decisions during proposal evaluation, offerors should remember that the Government prefers to obtain better offeror experience, past performance and better management execution plan quality rather than to obtain relatively small price savings." Eight offers were received. Based on the evaluation of initial proposals (the technical proposals were evaluated by a technical evaluation team (TET) and the price proposals were evaluated by a cost/pricing team (CPT)), four offers, including the protester's and the awardee's, were included in the competitive range. Both proposals were rated acceptable for the management/execution plan. The protester's proposal received 52 out of 60 points for experience and 56 out of 60 points for past performance, for a total technical score of 108 points. Gulf's proposal received 44 points for experience and 28 points for past performance, for a total technical score of 72. After discussions were held and best and final offers were submitted, Gulf had the lowest priced proposal ($4,201,503), and Contrack the second lowest-priced proposal ($4,394,400). The CPT found that Gulf's proposed price was reasonable and recommended award to Gulf if it met all other solicitation requirements. The contracting specialist performed a pre-award survey of Gulf, during which she contacted several former customers of Gulf. Based on the information she received, she also recommended award to Gulf. The contracting officer reviewed the award recommendation and the evaluation results, and questioned whether an award to Gulf was in accordance with the solicitation criteria. Specifically, he was concerned that Gulf's low past performance score indicated significant inferiority (compared to Contrack) in this area and that Gulf's price appeared to only offer a relatively small price savings. The contracting officer asked the TET to explain the difference in the past performance scores of Gulf and Contrack. In response, the TET stated that those scores were based completely on information that was included in the proposals. Gulf's proposal included relatively little past performance information, while Contrack's included a number of congratulatory letters from former customers; Contrack's higher score was based on these laudatory letters.