Mitel, Inc.

B-270138 Jan 17, 1996 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights A firm protested a Navy contract award for internal telephone systems, contending that the Navy should have determined that the awardee was nonresponsible, since the technical proposal it submitted was inadequate. GAO held that: (1) it would not review an affirmative responsibility determination, unless the protester could provide evidence of fraud or bad faith; and (2) the award was proper, since there was urgent need for the requirement and the Navy waived the solicitation requirement for detailed technical proposals. Accordingly, the protest was dismissed. View Decision Matter of: Mitel, Inc. File: B-270138 Date: January 17, 1996 * REDACTED DECISION In expedited negotiated procurement for urgently required telephone system for naval vessel, where solicitation requirement for detailed technical proposals was waived by the agency for all offerors, the agency's determination of whether proposals were technically acceptable was properly based in the first instance on whether each offeror unequivocally proposed to meet solicitation requirements; agency determination, based on information outside proposals, as to whether or not an offeror was capable of supplying the required product within the required time frame concerns a matter of responsibility which the General Accounting Office does not review except in circumstances not present here. Attorneys REDACTED DECISION 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. DECISION Mitel, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Ericsson, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. N66001-95-R-3602, issued by the Department of the Navy for an internal telephone system for Navy ships designated as a Ship's Service Telephone System (SSTS). [1] In its initial protest, Mitel essentially argued that the agency, by awarding to Ericsson, waived a solicitation requirement that each offeror's system comply with and meet specification No. NAVSEA1-289-I-306 (Rev. D) as a precondition of award. [2] After receipt of the agency report, and recognizing that the RFP did not contain any prequalification requirements for ruggedized equipment or any other qualification requirements that had to be met prior to award, [3] the protester argues that the agency improperly determined the Ericsson proposal to be technically acceptable and as capable of meeting the ruggedized technical requirement by the time of final delivery, scheduled only months after award of the contract, without any reasonable basis for believing that Ericsson could obtain NAVSEA approval for its equipment within that relatively short time frame. We dismiss the protest. This SSTS requirement was urgent because the internal communication system aboard the USS Germantown, based In Sasebo, Japan, had to be urgently upgraded. The agency executed a justification and approval (J&A) and limited competition to the three firms it believed were capable of performing the requirements within the time frame available, including the protester, Ericsson, and AT&T. The agency telephonically contacted each offeror, and because of the urgent time restraints, allowed only 7 days for proposal submission. The RFP stated that award would be made to the responsible offeror whose proposal was technically acceptable and proposed the lowest cost. The RFP did not contain technical evaluation criteria but required, in Section L, that each offeror provide detailed information "to clearly and fully demonstrate that the prospective contractor has a thorough knowledge and understanding of the requirements and has valid and practical solutions for any technical problems." For each specification listed in the solicitation, the RFP permitted each offeror to state whether it intended to comply or take an exception "and explain how [it] complies or how [it] takes exception." The RFP also stated that the government "reserve[d] the right to judge which proposal show the required capability." Three proposals were received. While Section L of the RFP, as stated previously, required offerors to submit detailed and complete technical proposals, none of the offerors apparently did so, presumably because of the time constraints for submission of proposals (7 days). [4] The agency's technical evaluator found as follows: "[W]e have carefully reviewed the proposals submitted by AT&T, Mitel, and Ericsson. It appears that all three of the vendors [have] proposed systems that will meet the minimum requirements listed in the solicitation. Recommend that contract award go to any of the three based on lowest price." In making his findings, the agency's technical evaluator, in the absence of substantive technical proposals, essentially based his decision on personal knowledge of and past experience with the three firms involved.