ABB Power Generation, Inc.

ABB Power Generation, Inc. BNUMBER: B-272681; B-272681.2 DATE: October 25, 1996 TITLE: ABB Power Generation, 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:ABB Power Generation, Inc. File: B-272681; B-272681.2 Date: October 25, 1996 B. Michael Schestopol, Esq., and James F. Nagle, Esq., Oles, Morrison & Rinker, for the protester. Gregory W. Vanagel, Esq., and William A. Hough, Esq., Army Corps of Engineers, for the agency. Tania L. Calhoun, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Protest that contracting agency improperly failed to disclose evaluation guidelines for rating certain proposal features as more desirable or less desirable is denied since agencies are not required to inform offerors of their specific rating methodology. 2. Where record shows that even if protester's proposal had received the maximum possible score in an evaluation area associated with an allegedly inadequately discussed issue, it still would not have been in line for award; there is no basis to conclude that any inadequacy in discussions prejudiced the protester by depriving it of an opportunity for award. DECISION ABB Power Generation, Inc. protests the award of a contract to National Electric Coil (NEC) under request for proposals (RFP) No. DACW21-95-R-0055, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District, to rewind and refurbish four hydroelectric generators at the Hartwell Power Plant in Hartwell, Georgia. ABB principally challenges the Army's evaluation of its proposal. We deny the protests. BACKGROUND Each generator consists of a rotating cylinder inside a stationary cylinder, or stator. Current is produced by induction through coil windings which are part of the stator. The successful offeror would receive a fixed-price contract to design, manufacture, supply, and install new sets of stator coils and to otherwise refurbish the generators in accordance with specified performance requirements. Award would be made to the firm whose proposal offered the best overall value to the government. The RFP stated that the Army was more concerned with obtaining superior technical features than with making an award at the lowest overall price, but would not make an award at a significantly higher overall price to achieve slightly superior features. Proposals would be evaluated based upon four factors, in descending order of importance: technical; previous experience; management; and price. One of the three technical subfactors, at issue here, was winding installation. Offerors were required to submit a completed contractor compliance checklist along with their technical proposals. This checklist repeated the specifications and required offerors to indicate whether they proposed to conform with each specification, including those which could be met in more than one way. Offerors' technical proposals were to have sufficient information and descriptive data to corroborate the checklist and other required information. The Army evaluated each of the six proposals it received and included all of them in the competitive range. Written and oral discussions were conducted, and best and final offers (BAFO) were submitted. The final evaluation results for the four highest-rated offers were as follows:[1] Firm A NEC Firm B ABB Technical 30.1 34.4 28.5 17.2 Previous Experience27.0 16.0 17.0 28.0 Management 9.5 9.0 9.0 9.0 Total 66.6 59.4 54.5 54.2 Price $9,267,023 $5,680,180 $7,619,126[DELETED] The source selection board report identified the advantages and disadvantages of each proposal, and the source selection decision summary contained a comparative analysis of the board's findings. In concluding that NEC offered the best value to the government, the contract specialist stated that although Firm A had a higher score overall, NEC outscored the firm in the technical area, and the risk associated with NEC's previous experience was not considered significant enough to outweigh the cost difference between the two. ABB's lower-rated proposal was not addressed in the contract specialist's cost/technical tradeoff analysis. However, she noted that the firm's side packing system was a "conformance fit" system, as opposed to the superior "interference fit" system offered by NEC, and that ABB's proposed check wedging system did not afford the most optimum method for checking spring deflection, while NEC's description of its check wedge system indicated a superior approach.