HSQ Technology, B-277048, August 21, 1997

B-277048 Aug 21, 1997 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights DIGEST Agency reasonably rejected proposal as unacceptable where proposal exceeded page limit set out in the solicitation and agency reasonably concluded that proposal without excess pages was unacceptable. Its proposal would have been compliant. It advised that submitting a proposal containing more than 300 pages "will be considered failure to comply with solicitation requirements. Five proposals were received by the amended February 4. The agency reports that HSQ's proposal was rejected because the agency found that it contained approximately 591 pages (2 pages in volume I. With numbered pages interspersed among large blocks of unnumbered pages without any indication as to which portions of the submittal were intended for evaluation. View Decision Matter of: HSQ Technology File: B-277048 Date: August 21, 1997 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION HSQ Technology protests the rejection of its proposal to supply power plant controls for a dam system under Department of the Army request for proposals (RFP) No. DACW45-96-R-0050. The agency excluded HSQ's proposal from further consideration because it contained substantially more pages than permitted under the RFP page limitation. HSQ contends that, had the agency refrained from counting attachments and other items not subject to page limitations, its proposal would have been compliant. We deny the protest. The RFP, issued on December 10, 1996, requested the submission of proposals consisting of four volumes: (1) offer and other documents, (2) qualifications statement, (3) business management/technical, (4) and price. The RFP set out the required print and page margin sizes and required that the overall proposals be "strictly limited" to 300 pages. It advised that submitting a proposal containing more than 300 pages "will be considered failure to comply with solicitation requirements," and that such noncompliance "could result in elimination of the offer from the evaluation process." The RFP also listed subelements to be evaluated under the business management and technical portions of the proposal. Five proposals were received by the amended February 4, 1997, deadline for proposal submission. The agency reports that HSQ's proposal was rejected because the agency found that it contained approximately 591 pages (2 pages in volume I, 12 pages in volume II, 572 pages in volume III, and 5 pages in volume IV). The proposal contained numbered and unnumbered pages, with numbered pages interspersed among large blocks of unnumbered pages without any indication as to which portions of the submittal were intended for evaluation. Because the proposal was put together in this way, the agency concluded that it could not determine which pages were intended to constitute the proposal and that a meaningful evaluation of it was impossible. Further, the Army concluded that HSQ's proposal was outside the competitive range because the first 300 pages of the proposal did not include all material parts of the business management/technical volume of HSQ's proposal or the pricing proposal. Offerors are generally required to establish the acceptability of their proposals within the format limitations set out in the solicitation, such as the page limit at issue here, and offerors assume the risk that proposal pages beyond the page limits will not be considered, since consideration of an offeror's excess proposal pages could give that offeror a competitive advantage. All Star Maintenance, Inc., B-244143, Sept. 26, 1991, 91-2 CPD Para. 294 at 3-4; Infotec Dev., Inc., B-238980, July 20, 1990, 90-2 CPD Para. 58 at 4-5; see also Management & Indus. Techs. Assocs., B-257656, Oct. 11, 1994, 94-2 CPD Para. 134 at 3. Nonetheless, where the solicitation states--as is the case here--that a proposal exceeding a page limit "could" be excluded from consideration, such a proposal may properly be rejected only if there is a reasonable basis for the rejection, such as where the proposal is found unacceptable (or outside the competitive range) when it is evaluated without consideration of pages in excess of the page limit. Macfadden & Assocs., Inc., B-275502, Feb. 27, 1997, 97-1 CPD Para. 88 at 3-4. HSQ contends that its proposal contained fewer than 300 pages and relies on a recent decision of our Office, Macfadden & Assocs., Inc., supra, to argue that the agency's rejection of its proposal was improper. In Macfadden, we found that, where an offeror's proposal was within the solicitation's page limitation, the agency could not automatically reject the proposal simply because, together with its appendices, it exceeded the page limit. HSQ contends that its proposal, like the one at issue in Macfadden, complied with the page limitation.