Uniband, Inc., B-289305, February 8, 2002

B-289305 Feb 08, 2002 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Agency's post-protest reevaluation of one aspect of price realism of awardee's quote will be considered and weighed appropriately by the General Accounting Office in rendering its decision. The reevaluation was limited in scope (given that much of the agency's initial price realism evaluation was unobjectionable). Agency's determination that awardee's quote was reasonable and realistic with regard to price is unobjectionable where the agency's price evaluation was relatively detailed and applied a variety of price analysis techniques and considered. Fact that the agency's initial price realism analysis was flawed in one respect does not render the agency's determination unreasonable where this problem was reasonably addressed in a reevaluation performed during the course of the protest and the other aspects of the price analysis supported the agency's determination. 3. View Decision Uniband, Inc., B-289305, February 8, 2002 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Uniband, Inc. protests the award of a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) to ACS Government Services, Inc. under request for quotations (RFQ) No. COW-1-Q-1136, issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Department of Justice, for services in support of the non-immigrant information system (NIIS) and the student/school system (STSC). Uniband argues that the agency unreasonably determined that ACS's price was realistic and that the agency failed to conduct meaningful discussions. We deny the protest. The NIIS and STSC are on-line automated information systems used by the INS and other federal agencies to track and control the recorded entry and departure of non-immigrants to and from the United States. As explained in the RFQ, non-immigrants are aliens who enter the United States for a specified period of time to accomplish a particular objective, such as taking a vacation, attending a university or college, or completing a business trip. The NIIS contains arrival, departure, and other information regarding non-immigrant aliens entering or leaving the United States, while the STSC contains "information regarding the various schools authorized to enroll non-immigrants and individual information on the non-immigrants currently attending these schools." According to the RFQ, the contractor will be required to provide all services "needed to collect, capture, process, and transmit the required data" to be stored in the NIIS and STSC, with the primary deliverables under the contract being "electronic records" developed from completed forms. RFQ at 4-5. The RFQ provided for the award of a single BPA, for a base year with 4 option years, to the vendor holding a current General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contract under the information and technology schedule. RFQ at 6, 9, 14. The solicitation stated that the award would be made to the vendor whose quote represented the best value to the government, and listed the following evaluation factors in descending order of importance: technical approach, past performance, and price. RFQ at 14, 28-30. The RFQ specified that each vendor's price would "be evaluated for price reasonableness and cost realism, as well as total evaluated price." The solicitation recognized here that while the vendors' GSA FSS prices had been deemed fair and reasonable, any proposed discounts from those prices which resulted in quotes that were "unrealistically low in cost(s) [e.g., unrealistic base rates for one or more labor categories] and/or price will be deemed to show an inherent lack of technical competence or failure to comprehend the complexity and risk of the BPA requirements." In this regard, the RFQ specifically informed vendors that the agency "may conduct its price analysis using one or more of the techniques specified in [Federal Acquisition Regulation] FAR Sec. 15.404-1(b) or other means and its realism analysis in accordance with FAR Sec. 15.404-1(d)." RFQ amend. No. 0003 at 3. The RFQ included detailed instructions for the preparation of quotes, and requested that price submissions include "all information necessary to allow for a comprehensive evaluation of the discounts proposed by the [vendor]." The solicitation specified here that the price submission should include "pricing tables and an accompanying narrative that fully describes all assumptions made and conditions stipulated by the [vendor]." The RFQ added that the "[p]ricing [t]ables [would] serve as the mechanism by which the INS [would] order services from the successful [vendor]." RFQ at 24-26. The agency received quotes from Uniband (the incumbent contractor) and ACS (Uniband's subcontractor on the incumbent contract). The submissions of Uniband and ACS were evaluated as "good" under the technical factor, with total proposed prices of $88,248,752 and $73,781,361, respectively. /1/ AR vol.