Cooper Construction, Inc., B-285880, September 18, 2000

B-285880 Sep 18, 2000 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Cooper Construction, Inc., protests the decision by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, to deny its request to correct a mistake in its low bid under invitation for bids No. 50703-4053, issued for demolition and the construction of a new accessible stair and elevator corridor at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma. Cooper contends that the agency's decision was unreasonable. We sustain the protest. View Decision Matter of: Cooper Construction, Inc. File: B-285880 Date: September 18, 2000 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Cooper Construction, Inc., protests the decision by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, to deny its request to correct a mistake in its low bid under invitation for bids (IFB) No. 50703-4053, issued for demolition and the construction of a new accessible stair and elevator corridor at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma. Cooper contends that the agency's decision was unreasonable. We sustain the protest. Bidders were required to submit a single lump-sum bid to perform the solicited work. The details of that work were set forth in narrative specifications and a set of drawings. IFB attach. II, III. On May 19, 2000, Cooper submitted the apparent low bid of $444,000. The remaining two bids were for $594,000 and $614,000. In preparing to award the contract to Cooper, the contracting officer asked the firm to cure several minor omissions in its bid by June 6. /1/ The day before that deadline, Cooper verbally notified the contracting officer that the firm had made a mistake in its bid. Pursuant to the contracting officer's instruction, later that same day Cooper submitted a written claim of mistake in bid accompanied by the firm's handwritten worksheets and a sworn affidavit from the firm's president. Cooper's president attested that he had prepared the worksheets and the bid, and that the worksheets existed prior to bid opening and were the original and only worksheets used to prepare the bid. Cooper's undated worksheets consist of 12 pages of yellow lined paper with handwritten, penciled entries. Ten of these pages are "breakout" pages that itemize and price specific work to be performed under the contract. Each of these pages is numbered sequentially one through ten and, with one exception, has a heading that corresponds with an IFB drawing number. /2/ The itemized work on each breakout page corresponds with the work represented on the relevant IFB drawing. Next to each item on each breakout sheet is a figure generally followed by the letter "k," presumably shorthand for "thousand." Each breakout page totals all of the itemized figures on the page to arrive at a sum. Most of the breakout pages accomplish this by transferring each itemized figure into a column in the left margin of the page and totaling the column at the bottom of the page. This total is then circled. The eleventh page of the worksheets carries forward the headings and totals from each breakout page and adds them together to arrive at the figure of $377,000. In his affidavit, Cooper's president refers to this page of the worksheets as the summary page. The twelfth page of the worksheets carries forward the figure "377" from the summary page and labels that figure as the base bid. The worksheet shows that the base bid amount was multiplied by a specified percentage for profit. To the resulting product, Cooper added a specified fixed amount for overhead and a specified fixed amount for delays and loss of work. The resulting sum, labeled "Bid," is $444,000, the precise amount of Cooper's bid. In his affidavit, Cooper's president stated that the base bid amount of $377,000 was incorrect because it included an incorrect total carried over from one of the breakout pages. On that breakout page, he misaligned some dollar amounts in the summary column, resulting in an incorrect sum. This incorrect sum was carried over to the summary page, resulting in an incorrect base bid, and this incorrect base bid was used to calculate the erroneous final bid price. The breakout page at issue is the second of three breakout pages associated with IFB Drawing A1. The seven items on the page are associated with work described in sections two and four of that drawing. As with all of the breakout sheets, next to each item on the page is a figure and the letter "k." The left margin of the page contains the following column of numbers: 80 15 5 30 -------- 130 13 3 -------- 29K The first four figures in the column correspond with those next to the first four items on the page. All of these items concern work associated with the elevator. The fifth figure in the column, 130, is the correct sum of the first four figures but is clearly misaligned.