Ritchie Sawyer Corporation, B-281241.2, January 25, 1999

B-281241.2 Jan 25, 1999 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights DIGEST Protest against agency technical evaluation is denied where protester merely disagrees with the agency evaluators' conclusions. The reasonableness of which are supported by the record. Award was to be made to the offeror whose technically acceptable proposal offered the technical/price relationship that was determined to be most advantageous to the government. The solicitation further provided that price was "secondary to technical" and that award would not necessarily be made to the lowest-priced offeror. Offerors were cautioned that they should submit initial proposals on their most favorable terms as award might be made without discussions. Technical merit was to be evaluated using two factors: (1) Company and Engagement Team Qualifications (up to 80 points). View Decision Matter of: Ritchie Sawyer Corporation File: B-281241.2 Date: January 25, 1999 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Ritchie Sawyer Corporation (RSC) protests the award of a contract to Ghenene & Associates under request for proposals (RFP) No. TDA-98-Q-064, issued as a total small business set-aside by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA) for a program audit of a central African grant which had been awarded in 1995 to perform a feasibility study to develop a cellular/telecommunications switching system, and of a subsequent follow-up contract to a U.S. company. The protester primarily alleges that the agency failed to properly consider the protester's low price in making the award determination and otherwise misevaluated the protester's technical proposal. We deny the protest. The RFP, issued on August 6, 1998, contemplated the award of a fixed-price contract for a program audit to be completed by January 30, 1999. Award was to be made to the offeror whose technically acceptable proposal offered the technical/price relationship that was determined to be most advantageous to the government. RFP Sec. M.2, at 29. The solicitation further provided that price was "secondary to technical" and that award would not necessarily be made to the lowest-priced offeror. Id. Offerors were cautioned that they should submit initial proposals on their most favorable terms as award might be made without discussions. Id. Technical merit was to be evaluated using two factors: (1) Company and Engagement Team Qualifications (up to 80 points); and (2) Proposal (up to 20 points). These factors were subdivided into weighted subfactors. The Qualifications factor was divided as follows: (a) education, training and auditing; (b) demonstrated experience in providing accounting, auditing and management services; (c) education and training in telecommunications systems engineering; (d) demonstrated international business experience with an emphasis on African business experience; and (e) demonstrated editorial experience. The Proposal factor was divided as follows: (a) demonstration of a clear understanding of the scope of the contract, demonstration of the qualifications of the company and staff, and full description of the proposed approach and procedures for completing the program audit; and (b) demonstration through the writing of a well written proposal that offeror is capable of delivering a high quality final report. RFP Sec. M.1, at 28. The RFP required the submission of a detailed employee biographical data sheet for each individual proposed to directly perform under the contract. RFP Sec. J.1, at 20. Also, the proposal instructions prescribed the submission of a table detailing and demonstrating each team member's experience in providing services similar to those for the contract to be awarded; in particular, the table required offerors to identify the member's assignment worked, the contract under which it was worked, the specific tasks performed and the hours worked and date of engagement. RFP Sec. L.7, at 26. Six proposals were received by the August 27 closing date. Evaluations were conducted, as a result of which the following consensus assessment was reported on August 31: Subfactor Scores Total Tech. Price Offeror 1(a) 1(b) 1(c) 1(d) 1(e) 2(a) 2(b) Ghenene 15 19 14 18 10 14 5 95 $ 52,750 Offeror A 14 19 13 17 9 13 5 90 $135,907 Offeror B 14 19 14 12 9 13 5 86 $157,580 Offeror C 13 14 12 17 8 10 2 76 $ 59,300 RSC 13 16 0 0 4 7 2 42 $ 38,410 Offeror D 12 15 0 0 0 1 1 29 $ 57,261 Agency Report, Tab 9. In her September 14 award analysis, the contracting officer (CO) stated: The lowest [priced] proposal from [RSC] was not technically acceptable and promised to add required expertise if awarded. Though this is a fixed price contract, it is not inconceivable that this contractor could ask for additional funding to successfully complete the scope of work required to TDA's satisfaction.