ENMAX Corporation--Modification of Remedy, B-281965.2, July 7, 1999

B-281965.2 Jul 07, 1999 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights DIGEST Protester's request that General Accounting Office modify recommendation in earlier decision sustaining its protest by replacing recommendation that the agency reevaluate the awardees's technical proposal to determine whether it should have been considered acceptable with a directed award to the protester is denied where the record shows that the agency evaluators might have reasonably concluded. That the awardee's proposal was acceptable. Where the circumstances of the procurement do not support a conclusion that the protester would necessarily receive the award even if the awardee's proposal were rejected. Our prior decision recommended reevaluation of Carlisle's technical proposal to determine whether it should have been considered acceptable given the proposal's failure to show experience in certain computing environments identified under one of the three technical evaluation factors. View Decision Matter of: ENMAX Corporation--Modification of Remedy File: B-281965.2 Date: July 7, 1999 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION ENMAX Corporation requests that our Office modify the recommended remedy in our recent decision sustaining its protest of the award of a contract to Carlisle Research, Inc. by the Department of the Air Force for engineering services in support of software development activities at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. Our prior decision recommended reevaluation of Carlisle's technical proposal to determine whether it should have been considered acceptable given the proposal's failure to show experience in certain computing environments identified under one of the three technical evaluation factors. ENMAX requests that our Office instead recommend that the award be made to ENMAX. We deny ENMAX's request. In our earlier decision, we agreed with ENMAX's contention that Carlisle's proposal did not provide information demonstrating 2 or more years of experience in all [deleted] of the enumerated computing environments identified under the third technical evaluation factor. As discussed further below, however, our agreement on this issue did not lead us to conclude that Carlisle's proposal was technically unacceptable, and had to be rejected. In addition, even if we had concluded that Carlisle's proposal could not be accepted as is, directed award to ENMAX is not the appropriate remedy under the circumstances here. ENMAX's contention that Carlisle's proposal was technically unacceptable was ultimately premised on an internal evaluation plan prepared by the Air Force, rather than on the terms of the RFP. As discussed in our earlier decision, the Air Force evaluated proposals by converting the many requirements under each of the RFP's three evaluation factors into separate checklist items, which were graded on a pass/fail basis. ENMAX Corp., B-281965, May 12, 1999, 99-1 CPD Para. ___ at 2, 5. With regard to ENMAX's contentions about the meaning of this checklist, our decision stated unambiguously that evaluation plans are internal agency instructions and as such do not provide outside parties with any rights. Further, regardless of the terms of any evaluation plan it may devise, an agency is required to follow the evaluation scheme set forth in the RFP. Mandex, Inc.; Tero Tek Int'l, Inc., B-241759 et al., Mar. 5, 1991, 91-1 CPD Para. 244 at 7. Our analysis then turned to the language of the RFP, not the evaluation checklist items. The RFP required offerors to "receive a pass' evaluation on all three [evaluation] factors . . . [to] be eligible for award." RFP amend. 0002, Sec. M.B.2. While the RFP did not specify that failure to meet any one of the technical areas under an evaluation factor would result in a finding of technical unacceptability under the factor overall, it did require offerors to "ensure that each and every area of each factor has been addressed." Id. Since there was no evidence in the record that the evaluators considered whether Carlisle's failure to demonstrate all of the specified experience made its proposal technically unacceptable under the third evaluation factor, we sustained ENMAX's protest, and recommended that the agency reevaluate the proposal and consider this issue. In its request that we modify our recommended remedy, ENMAX argues that the Air Force cannot award the contract to Carlisle without changing its evaluation plan, and contends that only one result is possible under that plan--that Carlisle must be found technically unacceptable. According to ENMAX, the checklist is evidence of what the agency intended by its RFP, and evidence of what the evaluators would have concluded had they expressly considered Carlisle's failure to show experience with all [deleted] of the computing environments identified under the third evaluation factor.