N&N Travel & Tours, Inc.; BCM Travel & Tours; Manassas Travel, Inc.;, B-285164.2; B-285164.3, August 31, 2000

N&N Travel & Tours, Inc.; BCM Travel & Tours; Manassas Travel, Inc.;, B-285164.2; B-285164.3, August 31, 2000 TITLE: N&N Travel & Tours, Inc.; BCM Travel & Tours; Manassas Travel, Inc.;, B-285164.2; B-285164.3, August 31, 2000 BNUMBER: B-285164.2; B-285164.3 DATE: August 31, 2000 ********************************************************************** N&N Travel & Tours, Inc.; BCM Travel & Tours; Manassas Travel, Inc.;, B-285164.2; B-285164.3, August 31, 2000 Decision Matter of: N&N Travel & Tours, Inc.; BCM Travel & Tours; Manassas Travel, Inc.; Alamo Travel, Inc.; Ravenel Bros., Inc.; and Bay Area Travel, Inc. File: B-285164.2; B-285164.3 Date: August 31, 2000 Josephine L. Ursini, Esq., for the protesters. John E. Larriccia, Esq., and Mark S. Garrard, Esq., Department of the Air Force; Thomas Y. Hawkins, Esq., General Services Administration; and Kenneth W. Dodds, Esq., Small Business Administration, for the agencies. Ralph O. White, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. The statutory limitation on General Accounting Office bid protest jurisdiction over challenges to the award of a task order under an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract does not apply where the protester's challenge, although triggered by the issuance of a task order, in essence, raises the question of whether the solicitation for the underlying ID/IQ contract properly could be used to procure services which, the protester argues, must be set aside for small businesses. 2. Despite the requirement that protests alleging improprieties in a solicitation must 3. be filed before the time set for receipt of proposals in response to the solicitation, 4 C.F.R. sect. 21.2(a)(1) (2000), a protester's challenge to a solicitation is timely, even though filed after the closing time, where numerous representatives of the federal government--including representatives of the General Services Administration, the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Air Force--led potential small business offerors to conclude that the contract resulting from the solicitation would not be used to procure certain travel services which, the protester argues, must be set aside for small businesses. 4. Protester's contention that the use of a government-wide unrestricted ID/IQ contract to procure travel management services at Travis Air Force Base, California, violates the requirement in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) sect. 19.502-2 to set aside procurements for small businesses where there is a reasonable expectation of receiving fair market price offers from at least two responsible small business concerns is sustained where the record shows that there is a significant pool of small business offerors who have responded to a recent solicitation for precisely these services, and where there is no evidence in the record of any reason why the agency could not set aside the procurement. DECISION N&N Travel & Tours, Inc.; BCM Travel & Tours; Manassas Travel, Inc.; Alamo Travel, Inc.; Ravenel Bros., Inc.; and Bay Area Travel, Inc. jointly protest a decision by the Department of the Air Force to request quotes for travel management services for Travis Air Force Base (AFB), California, using a tailored task order request under contract line item no. (CLIN) 8 of Master Contract No. GS-09F-80607, awarded by the General Services Administration (GSA). All six protesters argue that the Travis AFB task order is beyond the scope of the GSA Master Contract, and that the Air Force violated FAR sect. 7.102 by failing to prepare an acquisition plan, and Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 by converting travel management services from a contracted-out activity to an in-house activity. The four protesters who are currently considered small businesses--BCM, Manassas, Alamo, and Ravenel--argue that the Air Force was required to set aside this procurement for small business. We sustain the protest of the small business offerors that this effort should be set aside for exclusive small business participation. BACKGROUND Since January 1994, N&N has provided travel management services to Travis AFB. At the time of initial award to N&N, the company was considered a small disadvantaged business, and its contract was awarded for a base year followed by three 1-year options. For reasons related to the facts below, but not relevant to resolution of this dispute, N&N's initial contract has been extended several times on a sole-source basis--even though N&N is no longer eligible for award of small business set-aside contracts. At a minimum, the record shows that the most recent of these extensions occurred after the time that N&N lost its status as a small business. Air Force Contracting Officer's (CO) Statement, May 5, 2000, at 2-3.