Techniarts Engineering

B-271509 Jul 01, 1996 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Contracting agency reasonably eliminated protester's technically acceptable proposal from the competitive range where the protester's experience properly was evaluated as relatively weak and the agency had received several superior proposals at lower prices. Agency was not required to conduct discussions with the protester concerning its corporate experience where the protester's experience was evaluated as acceptable. The information in question was explicitly required by the solicitation. The agency had no reason to believe the protester had not provided all of the relevant specific past performance information which was requested. Which was of lesser importance. The most important element was identified as follows: "(i) Past performance on similar. View Decision Matter of: Techniarts Engineering File: B-271509 Date: July 1, 1996 Contracting agency reasonably eliminated protester's technically acceptable proposal from the competitive range where the protester's experience properly was evaluated as relatively weak and the agency had received several superior proposals at lower prices, as a result of which the protester's proposal had no reasonable chance of being selected for award. Agency was not required to conduct discussions with the protester concerning its corporate experience where the protester's experience was evaluated as acceptable, but not as strong as that of several other offerors, the information in question was explicitly required by the solicitation, and the agency had no reason to believe the protester had not provided all of the relevant specific past performance information which was requested. Attorneys DECISION Techniarts Engineering protests the exclusion of its proposal from the competitive range under request for proposal (RFP) No. TASA12-95-R-0025, issued by the Defense Logistics Agency, Television-Audio Support Activity (T-ASA) for Shipboard Audio Entertainment Systems (SAES). We deny the protest. The RFP, issued on July 20, 1995, contemplated the award of a fixed-price requirements contract for a base period with four 1-year options. The RFP stated that award would be made to a single offeror who submitted the "best overall proposal" considering the stated evaluation factors. The RFP contained two evaluation factors: (1) merit and (2) cost, which was of lesser importance. The merit factor had two subfactors, listed in descending order of importance: (1) Technical Approach (consisting of five elements) and (2) Corporate/Program Management (consisting of four elements). Under the Corporate/Program Management factor, the most important element was identified as follows: "(i) Past performance on similar, or related corporate experience in the production fielding and servicing of entertainment systems in a maritime environment. Experience may be in either commercial or Department of Defense type environments, or both." Several proposals were received by October 6, 1995, the amended date for receipt of initial proposals. The proposals were evaluated by a technical evaluation team (TET), whose initial evaluation revealed that none of the proposals was completely technically compliant and that the majority of them contained substantial deficiencies. Techniarts's proposal was one of those identified by the TET as containing major design and/or management deficiencies and recommended for exclusion from further consideration. Nonetheless, the contracting officer (who was the designated source selection authority) decided to provide all offers an opportunity to remedy deficiencies before excluding any offerors from the competitive range. In a December 28 letter, Techniarts was informed of numerous deficiencies in its technical approach and of deficiencies under the corporate and program management subfactor. Among other things, Techniarts was advised that its proposal failed to provide information needed to make a performance risk assessment because "[I]nsufficient information was provided to evaluate your corporate structure, subcontractor, maintenance or quality assurance procedures." Revised proposals were received and evaluated by the TET. Techniarts's revised proposal contained several technical enhancements which cured the technical deficiencies and, as a result, was considered technically acceptable. However, Techniarts's proposal evaluation was rated lower than several other offers with regard to both technical approach and corporate/program management. With respect to Techniarts's submission regarding past performance, the TET made the following observation: "While the contracts included several highly visible projects, all appeared to be a single event, one-of-a-kind systems in nature. They did not indicate any experience in the production and fielding of multiple units, nor with the shipboard environments.