Department of Housing and Urban Development--Reconsideration,

B-279575.2 Nov 04, 1998 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Was timely received. Where the bid was not received in the office designated in the invitation for bids until after bid opening. 2. A contracting agency has the discretion to initially determine whether or not it may have been the paramount cause of the late receipt of a bid. Did not act reasonably in determining that the low bid's late receipt at the office designated for receipt of bids was primarily due to government mishandling in the mailroom (which received the bid prior to bid opening) where the bidder did not properly address and mark the envelope containing its bid with the office designated in the invitation for bids (IFB). Was not received at the location designated in the IFB. View Decision Matter of: Department of Housing and Urban Development--Reconsideration File: B-279575.2 Date: November 4, 1998 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requests reconsideration of our decision in Boines Constr. & Equip. Co., Inc., B-279575, June 29, 1998, 98-1 CPD Para. 175, in which we sustained the protest filed by Boines Construction & Equipment Co., Inc. of an award to Pierce Foundations, Inc., under invitation for bids (IFB) No. B-FTW-00041, issued by HUD for demolition of vacant buildings and related site work at public housing projects in Louisiana. We deny the request for reconsideration. We sustained the protest because Pierce's low bid, delivered by commercial carrier to HUD's mailroom prior to bid opening, was not received at the location designated in the IFB--the bid depository in the building's contracting division--by bid opening, as required. We also concluded that HUD's acceptance of Pierce's late bid did not comply with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Sec. 14.304-1(a)(2), 52.214-7(a)(2) standard for consideration of a late hand-carried bid: the late receipt must be due primarily to government mishandling after receipt at the government installation. We found that the lateness of Pierce's hand-carried bid was attributable to that bidder's failure to ensure that the outermost envelope of its bid was addressed to the office designated in the IFB, and marked with the solicitation number and bid opening time and date, as required by the FAR Sec. 52.214-5 bid submission instructions incorporated into the IFB. To prevail on a request for reconsideration, the requesting party must show that our prior decision contains either errors of fact or law or present information not previously considered that warrants the decision's reversal or modification. 4 C.F.R. Sec. 21.14(a) (1998); Department of the Army--Recon., B-271492.2, Nov. 27, 1996, 96-2 CPD Para. 203 at 5. HUD has made no such showing. HUD asserts that the IFB in Boines did not designate a particular office for the receipt of hand-carried bids, so that the receipt of Pierce's bid in the HUD mailroom prior to bid opening should have been sufficient to render Pierce's bid timely received. As support for its position, HUD points to C.R. Hipp Constr. Co., Inc., B-274328, Nov. 20, 1996, 96-2 CPD Para. 195, in which we regarded as timely a mailed bid received in an agency's mailroom by the bid opening time because the solicitation did not designate a particular office for receipt of bids. HUD's reliance on C.R. Hipp is misplaced. In that case, there was the unusual circumstance that no particular office at all was designated in that IFB to which a bidder could address or deliver its bid. /1/ Here, in contrast, the IFB effectively designated the HUD contracting division as the office for receipt of bids. Notwithstanding HUD's objection that the IFB did not explicitly state that the depository for hand-carried bids was located in the contracting division, this can be the only reasonable interpretation of the IFB, since the contracting division was the office designated in the IFB to which bids were to be addressed, and was the office that issued the solicitation and listed its telephone number on the IFB cover sheet for purposes of providing any needed information. (We also note that in its request for reconsideration HUD does not dispute that the bid depository was actually located in the contracting division.) Accordingly, since Pierce's bid was received in the office designated in the IFB (the contracting division) after the exact time set for bid opening, it was a late bid under FAR Sec. 14.304-1, 52.214-7(a). HUD next contends that, even if Pierce's bid was late, our Office erroneously overruled the contracting officer's determination that Pierce's omission from the outermost envelope of its bid of the office designated in the IFB, the solicitation number, and the bid opening time and date did not contribute to the late receipt of the bid.