Professional Gunsmithing Inc., B-279048.2, August 24, 1998

B-279048.2 Aug 24, 1998 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights DIGEST Protest that agency's award decision was affected by an improper conflict of interest between a consultant to the agency technical evaluation panel and the awardee (arising from a possible financial relationship established by a settlement agreement from a trademark infringement lawsuit) is denied where there is no credible evidence that the consultant was in a position to receive any financial benefit as a result of the award of this contract. ProGun argues that the agency's decisions were tainted as the result of an improper conflict of interest arising from a financial relationship between the awardee and an outside consultant hired by the agency to assist in the evaluation process. /1/ We deny the protest. View Decision Matter of: Professional Gunsmithing Inc. File: B-279048.2 Date: August 24, 1998 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Professional Gunsmithing Inc. (ProGun) protests the award of a contract to Springfield Armory, Inc., under request for proposals (RFP) No. 6990, issued by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ProGun argues that the agency's decisions were tainted as the result of an improper conflict of interest arising from a financial relationship between the awardee and an outside consultant hired by the agency to assist in the evaluation process. /1/ We deny the protest. BACKGROUND The RFP, issued on October 25, 1996, sought proposals to provide .45 caliber, semi-automatic, single-action pistols to the various Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams throughout the agency. The RFP, which reflected an effort to standardize the pistols of the various SWAT teams of the FBI, contemplated the award of a fixed-price, indefinite-quantity, indefinite-delivery contract for a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. The RFP advised that award would be made to the offeror whose proposal was most advantageous to the government, and that technical factors were significantly more important than price. Technical proposals were to be evaluated under the following factors, listed in descending order of importance: weapon testing, field suitability and past performance. With regard to weapon testing, the RFP required that each vendor provide five sample weapons for the following tests: physical and technical, abuse, accuracy, endurance, and field suitability. The RFP provided that a proposed weapon, in order to continue the testing process, must pass each test in the order prescribed above. After one test failure, a vendor would have an opportunity to correct any deficiency, and the weapon would be retested. Failure of the weapon during retest would result in elimination from competition. /2/ The pistols to be purchased under this RFP were for distribution to the members of the FBI's SWAT teams in the agency's 56 various field offices. The agency recognized that once these weapons were dispersed across the country any maintenance problems would become more costly and more time consuming, and would sacrifice agent readiness. As an additional measure to help ensure the avoidance of quality control problems, the agency hired a "custom gun builder" as a consultant to advise the agency on the specific technicalities of the weapons. June 26, 1996 letter from Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) to Contract Specialist at 2. The FBI received proposals and pistols for testing from eight offerors by the May 15, 1997 closing date. The evaluation team evaluated the initial proposals and pistols and established a competitive range consisting of the proposals of ProGun and Springfield Armory. Written discussions were conducted with those two firms and, after being notified of deficiencies during testing, both offerors were given the opportunity to resubmit pistols for retesting. For example, ProGun's weapons were returned after they failed the accuracy test. ProGun's weapons were then resubmitted, retested, and found to perform within the acceptable limits. The SWAT evaluation committee performed the final (field suitability) test on the pistols of Springfield Armory and ProGun. That test allowed SWAT agents to subjectively evaluate the weapons based on specific evaluation criteria. This test was conducted twice with two separate groups of 10 shooters over a 2-week period. A total of 5,000 rounds of ammunition were shot through each of the 10 pistols from the two offerors totaling more than 50,000 rounds for this test phase. Operator perception resulting from this test unanimously favored the pistols of Springfield Armory. Numerically, the scores of the Springfield Armory pistols also surpassed ProGun's pistols in each of the 30 evaluation categories of the field suitability test.