SRS Technologies

B-270341.2 Mar 01, 1996 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Protest challenging agency's evaluation of proposals for technical support services is denied where the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the solicitation's stated evaluation scheme. Protest that contracting agency should have disqualified the awardee because of organizational conflicts of interest is denied where the awardee certified that it did not have any conflicts of interest and provided a plan for reporting and mitigating any potential conflicts. The contracting officer reasonably determined that the awardee's mitigation plan was a good one and that the awardee had met its conflict of interest obligations under past contracts with the agency. Offerors were allowed to submit proposals for any one or all of the work areas. View Decision Matter of: SRS Technologies File: B-270341.2 Date: March 1, 1996 Protest challenging agency's evaluation of proposals for technical support services is denied where the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the solicitation's stated evaluation scheme. Agency conducted meaningful discussions where it reasonably led the protester into area of its proposal that required amplification or clarification. Protest that contracting agency should have disqualified the awardee because of organizational conflicts of interest is denied where the awardee certified that it did not have any conflicts of interest and provided a plan for reporting and mitigating any potential conflicts, and the contracting officer reasonably determined that the awardee's mitigation plan was a good one and that the awardee had met its conflict of interest obligations under past contracts with the agency. Attorneys DECISION SRS Technologies protests the award of a technical support services contract to Research Triangle Institute (RTI) by the Department of Transportation (DOT) pursuant to request for proposals (RFP) No. DTOS59- 95-R-00006. The protester alleges that the agency did not evaluate technical proposals and conduct a cost/technical tradeoff in accord with the RFP's evaluation scheme, did not hold meaningful discussions, and improperly accepted RTI's offer even though the firm has organizational conflicts of interest. We deny the protest. [1] Issued on March 31, 1995, the RFP solicited proposals for providing technical expertise to DOT's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST) in support of its regulatory safety responsibilities in each of four distinct work areas as follows: Area 1 - Enforcement, Investigations, and Inspections; Area 2 - Commercial Launch Sites and Site Operations; Area 3 - Orbital and Reentry Issues and Strategy; Area 4 - Launch Safety Operations Evaluation. Offerors were allowed to submit proposals for any one or all of the work areas. The RFP stated that contracts would be awarded to those offerors whose proposals represented the best value to the government, cost and other factors considered. The RFP envisioned award of one or more cost-plus-award-fee contracts; each contract would be for a 1-year base period and would include options for 4 additional years. [2] Eleven offers were received by the May 19 closing date. After evaluation of initial proposals, five were included in the competitive range. Discussions were held with all competitive range offerors, and best and final offers (BAFO) were received and evaluated. After reviewing the technical evaluations and considering the evaluated costs of the BAFOs, the contracting officer determined that RTI's highest technically rated proposal would best meet the government's needs even though the proposal was evaluated as highest in total cost. Therefore, on September 29, the contract was awarded to RTI. The agency debriefed SRS on October 26, and SRS filed this protest shortly thereafter. The protester contends that the evaluation of proposals was unreasonable. According to the protester, the evaluation record contains several statements praising SRS's initial proposal regarding SRS's [DELETED]. SRS contends that the evaluators completely reversed themselves and criticized SRS's BAFO as it related to [DELETED]. Conversely, SRS states that the evaluators considered a key weakness of RTI's initial proposal to be related to RTI's [DELETED]. According to SRS, the evaluators inexplicably reversed themselves and praised RTI's BAFO for demonstrating RTI's complete [DELETED]. SRS contends that the contracting officer's cost/technical tradeoff analysis necessarily was flawed because it was based upon the unreasonable technical evaluation. Our Office will question an agency's evaluation of proposals only if the evaluation lacks a reasonable basis or is inconsistent with the stated evaluation criteria for award. See DAE Corp., Ltd., B-257185, Sept. 6, 1994, 94-2 CPD para. 95. A protester's mere disagreement with the agency over its technical evaluation does not establish that the evaluation was unreasonable. Id.