Global Industries, Inc.

Global Industries, Inc. BNUMBER: B-270592.2; B-270592.3; B-270592.4; B-270592.5 DATE: March 29, 1996 TITLE: Global Industries, Inc. ********************************************************************** 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:Global Industries, Inc. File: B-270592.2; B-270592.3; B-270592.4; B-270592.5 Date:March 29, 1996 Richard S. Ewing, Esq., James A. Dobkin, Esq., John D. Roesser, Esq., Arnold & Porter, for the protester. S. Gregg Kunzi, Esq., Thomas L. McGovern III, Esq., and David W. Burgett, Esq., Hogan & Hartson, L.L.P., for Nightingale, Inc., an intervenor. C. Joseph Carroll, Esq., and Jonathan Cramer, Esq., Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, for the agency. Katherine I. Riback, Esq., Glenn Wolcott, Esq., and Paul Lieberman, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Agency failed to conduct meaningful discussions in a procurement for ergonomic chairs where it did not identify evaluated problems with the comfort of the protester's chairs which were of serious concern to the agency's evaluators but were considered to be correctable. DECISION Global Industries, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Nightingale, Inc. by Federal Prison Industries, Inc., doing business under the trade name UNICOR, under request for proposals (RFP) No. IPI-R-0315-95. Global protests, among other things, that the agency failed to conduct meaningful discussions. We sustain the protest. BACKGROUND The RFP contemplated the award of a 5-year fixed-price requirements contract to provide two lines of office chairs, the "Economy Ergonomic" and the "Medium Range Ergonomic." Within each chair line, offerors were required to propose specified models, plus a variety of options, applicable to the different models being offered, such as soft wheel casters, seat angle adjustment, and adjustable lumbar support. The chairs were to be purchased from the awardee in the form of chair kits that would be assembled by inmates, and then marketed by UNICOR. The RFP required that offerors submit written proposals and certified test reports showing compliance with various requirements. In addition, offerors were obliged to make a 90-minute in-person presentation to UNICOR setting forth their approaches to accomplishing the requirements of the statement of work. At the presentation, offerors were required to provide certain production samples for the agency to evaluate and test. The RFP provided that award would be made to the responsible offeror whose proposal represented the best value to the government, taking into consideration price and technical quality, with the technical factor being more important than price. As amended, the RFP listed the following technical subfactors, in descending order of importance: (1) acceptability of components; (2) aesthetics, comfort level, and marketability; (3) manufacturing capability and history of production; (4) vertical integration; (5) product rights; and (6) ease of assembly. The agency received five offers in response to the solicitation. Each offeror made an in-person presentation to UNICOR, which included a question and answer session and an examination of the sample chairs. The technical evaluation panel (TEP) members then discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each proposal and assigned an overall numerical score to each. In evaluating proposals, the evaluators did not assign particular ratings (numerical or adjectival) for any of the six technical factors. Rather, after discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each proposal, the TEP agreed to an overall numerical score which was based on the following evaluation framework: excellent--91 to 100 points (a comprehensive and thorough proposal of exceptional merit with no or only minor weaknesses); very good--71 to 90 points (a proposal where strengths outweigh existing weaknesses, and any major weaknesses are correctable); good--51 to 70 points (a proposal where weaknesses equal strengths, and weaknesses are probably correctable); fair--31 to 50 points (a proposal where one or more weaknesses outweighs any strengths, and these weaknesses could probably be improved, minimized, or corrected); and poor--0 to 30 points (a proposal with one or more major weaknesses that are either difficult to correct or are not correctable). At the hearing conducted by our Office in connection with this protest, the TEP chair testified that the members of the TEP "were aware in our minds of each level of importance" of the individual subfactors, when calculating each proposal's total numerical score.