Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc.

Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc. BNUMBER: B-270966; B-270966.2 DATE: May 28, 1996 TITLE: Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc. ********************************************************************** Matter of:Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc. File: B-270966; B-270966.2 Date:May 28, 1996 J. Patrick McMahon, Esq., and Thomas K. David, Esq., McMahon & David, for the protester. James Y. Miyazawa, Esq., Department of Navy, for the agency. Charles W. Morrow, Esq., and James A. Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Agency properly rejected protester's proposal where its responses to sample tasks designed to determine the offeror's understanding of and the technical approach to satisfying the government's requirements were unacceptable. DECISION Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc. protests the rejection of its proposal under request for proposals (RFP) No. N00600-95-R-1461, a total small business set-aside, issued by the Department of the Navy, for automatic data processing services at the Naval Aviation Depot Operations Center, Patuxent, Maryland, under a fixed-price contract for a base year with four 1-year options. We deny the protest. The RFP provided for award to be made to the offeror whose proposal represented the best value, price and other factors considered. The RFP requested prices for a variety of designated labor categories and informed offerors that cost/price would be evaluated for realism. Technical proposals were to be evaluated under the following criteria listed in descending order of importance: (1) technical approach, (2) key personnel, (3) management plan, and (4) corporate experience. Under technical approach, the proposal preparation instructions required each offeror to provide detailed responses to eight sample tasks, which were said to be representative of the work to be performed under the contract. For each sample task, the offeror's response was to include (1) a description of possible areas to be investigated, (2) a detailed technical approach and detailed step-by-step procedures, (3) identification of additional information that would be required to perform the task, (4) a detailed work plan for implementation, (5) a product outline describing what would be the expected deliverable(s) and/or results of the task, and (6) man-hours by labor category. The RFP provided that the sample tasks would be evaluated to determine the extent of the offeror's understanding of and feasibility/ability to successfully perform the government's requirements. The RFP informed offerors that each technical proposal would be qualitatively evaluated under each technical criterion and subcriterion and categorized as "Outstanding," "Better," "Acceptable," "Marginal," or "Unacceptable." In addition, the RFP stated that an unacceptable rating in one technical criterion could result in the entire technical proposal being found unacceptable, and that: "(a) The government reserves the right to conduct a preliminary evaluation of technical proposals, during which the government will only evaluate offerors' responses to Sample Tasks 1-8. Based on the results of that evaluation, and after consideration of offerors' proposed prices, the government will determine which proposals stand a reasonable chance for award, and will perform a full technical evaluation of those proposals. "(b) Any proposal deemed not to stand a reasonable chance for award following the preliminary evaluation described in (a) above will be removed from further consideration and the offeror so notified. "(c) The results of this preliminary evaluation will not be and should not be construed as a competitive range determination." Eleven proposals, including that of Dimensions (the incumbent contractor), were submitted by the July 19 closing date. The Navy conducted a preliminary evaluation of the offerors' responses to the sample tasks. Six proposals received an overall rating of marginal, and five proposals, including Dimensions's, received an overall rating of unacceptable for their responses to these tasks. The Navy prepared a consensus team summary report on its evaluation of the sample tasks and destroyed the individual evaluators' worksheets. Dimensions's unacceptable proposal received marginal ratings for four of the sample tasks and unacceptable ratings for the other four sample tasks.