MCS of Tampa, Inc., B-288271.5, February 8, 2002

B-288271.5 Feb 08, 2002 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights A firm protested a Department of the Air Force contract award for operation and maintenance services for the base telecommunications system, contending that the Air Force's rating of its past performance was unreasonable. GAO held that: (1) the Air Force reasonably assigned the protester's past performance a neutral rating because the reference listed by the protester for the only contract considered to be relevant to the solicitated work declined to respond to the past performance questionnare, and (2) because the subcontractor's performance under the solicitated work was not major or critical to the overall effort and not reasonably indicative of the protester's performance under the contract. Accordingly, the protest was denied. View Decision MCS of Tampa, Inc., B-288271.5, February 8, 2002 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION MCS of Tampa, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Altech Services, Inc. by the Department of the Air Force under request for proposals (RFP) No. F34608-01-R-0002, to provide operation and maintenance services for the base telecommunications system at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota. We deny the protest. The RFP, issued January 26, 2001 as a competitive section 8(a) set-aside, provided for the award of a fixed-price contract for a base period with four 1-year options. The successful contractor is required to provide all personnel, equipment, material, and tools to operate and maintain the base telecommunications system at Ellsworth Air Force Base, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This includes operations and maintenance of the switching systems, transmission equipment, customer premise equipment, and recurring support services. Offerors were advised that the agency would use the performance/price trade-off (PPT) technique to arrive at a "best value" award decision. Under this technique, first the acceptability of each offeror's proposal is determined; the acceptable proposals are then ranked by evaluated price; and then the past performance of the offerors is evaluated and assigned performance risk ratings of exceptional/high confidence, very good/significant confidence, satisfactory/confidence, neutral/unknown confidence, marginal/little confidence, or unsatisfactory/no confidence. /1/ The RFP stated that "[i]n evaluating the proposal, strong emphasis will be placed on the record of past performance and experience on jobs of comparable complexity and similar technical requirements," and that the "organization itself will be evaluated with respect to the offeror's past experience" in performing similar technical requirements. RFP at 36. The RFP further stated: If the lowest evaluated price, technically acceptable offeror receives a performance risk rating acceptable to the Government, this Offeror's proposal represents the greatest value in accordance with the evaluation criteria contained in this acquisition and award shall be made to this Offeror, subject to a positive responsibility determination. /2/ RFP at 34. The RFP included detailed instructions for the preparation of proposals. The instructions requested, among other things, that the offeror submit detailed information concerning relevant contracts performed within the last 5 years, including the contract's dollar value, a description of what aspects of the contracts are deemed relevant in demonstrating ability to perform the proposed effort, as well as a name, address, telephone number and e-mail address of a point of contact for each reference. RFP at 30-31. The RFP cautioned offerors that failure to provide current addresses and phone numbers might result in an unfavorable past performance rating. RFP at 36. Offerors with no relevant past performance were asked to include data on key personnel who have relevant experience and/or subcontractors that will perform major or critical aspects of the requirement, and all offerors were requested to "[s]pecifically describe the work that major subcontractors will perform so that the evaluation team can conduct meaningful performance risk assessments on each major subcontractor." RFP at 30-31. The agency received four proposals by the RFP's March 8 closing date. Amendment No. 2 to the RFP, issued April 23, clarified that a minimum of four full-time key personnel were required for this contract. The agency held discussions with all offerors, and final proposal revisions were requested and received on June 7. MCS submitted references for five contracts. The Air Force considered only one of these contracts, with a private firm, to be relevant to the past performance risk assessment because it was the only one of "dollar value comparable to the complexity of this requirement." However, the relevant reference did not return the past performance questionnaire or any of the agency's telephone calls.