First American Engineered Solutions, B-289051, December 20, 2001

B-289051 Dec 20, 2001 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights A firm protested a Department of Energy (DOE) contract award for fiber optic overhead ground wire and related hardware, contending that DOE improperly rejected its bid as nonresponsive. GAO found that DOE reasonably determined that the bid was nonresponsive because it offered different option year prices than the solicitation requested. Accordingly, the protest was denied. View Decision First American Engineered Solutions, B-289051, December 20, 2001 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION First American Engineered Solutions protests the award of a contract to ITS Imagineering Enterprises under invitation for bids (IFB) No. DE-FB-65-01-WC-56963, issued by the Department of Energy, Western Area Power Administration, for fiber optic overhead ground wire and related hardware. The protester challenges the rejection of its bid as nonresponsive and contends that it should receive the award under the IFB. We deny the protest. The IFB contemplated the award of an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity fixed-price contract with economic price adjustment for a base year and four option periods to the responsible bidder whose bid, conforming to the IFB's requirements, offered the lowest price. IFB at 34, 36. The IFB provided technical specifications for the advertised products and required the submission of descriptive literature with the bid to demonstrate each offered product's compliance with those specifications. Id. at 35, attach. A. Multiple bids for alternative products were encouraged; each bid needed to provide a price for each item offered. Id. at 30, 34. The IFB contained an economic price adjustment clause providing the formula to be applied to the contractor's base year prices to determine option period prices for two identified contract line items, Nos. 0001 and 0011 (for fiber optic overhead ground wire products). Specifically, the IFB, at Sec. LH.0000-0058, provided that option period prices shall be determined based on the change from the base period Producer Price Index [at the time of award, as issued by the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics] . . . as compared to the most current Producer Price Index in effect at the time of exercising the option. Id. at 22. Bidders were instructed not to provide option prices for these items; instead, they were to insert asterisks or the phrase "To Be Determined" in their bid schedules for the option period requirements for these items. Id. at 23. Bidders were also advised that option period prices to be paid under the contract would be "based solely on the economic price adjustment mandated by this clause . . . ." Id. Section LM.0217-0005 of the IFB again instructed bidders not to insert prices for items 0001 and 0011 in the option periods, since option period pricing under the contract was to be determined under the economic price adjustment clause. For evaluation purposes at bid opening, to determine the low bid, the base year extended totals of item Nos. 0001 and 0011 were to be used for all option periods. Id. at 37. Twenty-two bids were received at bid opening. First American failed to follow the IFB's economic price adjustment provisions and instead offered specific prices for each option period for item Nos. 0001 and 0011, at a 2.5 percent escalation rate. The protester's bid also provided descriptive literature for four fiber optic overhead ground wire products; two products were assumed by the agency to be in response to the IFB's requirement at item No. 0001, and two products were assumed to have been submitted to meet the item No. 0011 requirement. One of the products submitted under each of those item numbers was considered to be technically unacceptable for failing to meet certain requirements regarding encasement of the fibers. The protester's bid provided only one price in its bid schedule for each of those item numbers. After bid opening, the contracting officer questioned First American as to its bid's single line item pricing for the multiple items offered for those line items. In its attempt to clarify its bid, the protester submitted a series of letters to the contracting officer, the first of which provided that, in fact, First American was bidding separate prices for each of the four products. Shortly, thereafter, however, the protester wrote that the same line item price applied to each of the multiple products offered under that line item.