Robbins-Gioia, Inc.

Robbins-Gioia, Inc. BNUMBER: B-274318; B-274318.2; B-274318.3; B-274318.4 DATE: December 4, 1996 TITLE: Robbins-Gioia, 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:Robbins-Gioia, Inc. File: B-274318; B-274318.2; B-274318.3; B-274318.4 Date:December 4, 1996 Carl J. Peckinpaugh, Esq., and Eric J. Marcotte, Esq., Winston & Strawn, for the protester. James J. Regan, Esq., Thomas P. Humphrey, Esq., Paul Shnitzer, Esq., John E. McCarthy, Jr., Esq., and Nabil Istafanous, Esq., Crowell & Moring, and Alice M. Crook, Esq., for Lockheed Martin Federal Systems, Inc., an intervenor. Clarence D. Long III, Esq., and Jeffrey S. Titrud, Esq., Department of the Air Force, for the agency. Guy R. Pietrovito, Esq., and James A. Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Admission of an in-house counsel to a General Accounting Office protective order was appropriate over the objection of the contracting agency, where the record showed that the in-house counsel did not participate in competitive decision-making and that there was not otherwise an unacceptable risk of inadvertent disclosure of protected information; the agency's objection that the in-house counsel reported to corporate officials that advise and participate in competitive decision-making does not itself establish that the in-house counsel advises or participates in competitive decision-making herself. 2. In a negotiated procurement for information system modernization and integration, the contracting agency reasonably assessed the protester's proposed immediate implementation of a distributed object computing architecture as representing a moderate risk--potentially causing some disruption of schedule, increase in cost, or degradation of performance--where the agency found that protester's proposed architecture was based upon emerging technology that was not yet fully supported in the marketplace and which would entail a substantial amount of custom software development. 3. Protest that the contracting agency treated the protester and the awardee unequally in the agency's proposal risk assessment of the two firms' proposed architectures is denied, where the protester proposed the immediate implementation of a distributed object architecture with a substantial amount of custom software development, which the agency assessed as a moderate proposal risk, while the awardee proposed the more mature distributed computing environment architecture, emphasized the use of commercial-off-the-shelf software, and promised to evolve into a distributed object approach, as that technology evolved, which the agency assessed a low proposal risk. 4. Protest that the contracting agency did not conduct meaningful discussions with the protester because the agency did not specifically inform the protester that the agency viewed its offer to immediately implement a distributed object computing approach as a moderate risk is denied, where the agency conducted several rounds of written and oral discussions that identified a number of concerns with the protester's proposed architecture and provided the protester with significant opportunities to explain and support its proposed architectural approach. 5. The contracting agency appropriately considered past experience information in its evaluation of the protester's proposal under the development/implementation processes evaluation factor, where that factor specifically provided for consideration of offerors' relevant experience in system engineering, customer training, and life-cycle management support. 6. The contracting agency properly limited its consideration under the performance risk factor of the awardee's performance of major system procurements to procurements that the awardee itself had performed, as opposed to procurements performed by other divisions of the corporation of which the awardee was a part, where the awardee and the other divisions are separate entities within the parent corporation, and the record establishes that the other divisions will not be involved in the performance of the contract to be awarded. 7.