ViaSat, Inc., B-291152; B-291152.2, November 26, 2002

ViaSat, Inc., B-291152; B-291152.2, November 26, 2002 TITLE: ViaSat, Inc., B-291152; B-291152.2, November 26, 2002 BNUMBER: B-291152; B-291152.2 DATE: November 26, 2002 ********************************************************************** ViaSat, Inc., B-291152; B-291152.2, November 26, 2002 DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE The decision issued on the date below was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has been approved for public release. Decision Matter of: ViaSat, Inc. File: B-291152; B-291152.2 Date: November 26, 2002 James J. Regan, Esq., John E. McCarthy Jr., Esq., Kent R. Morrison, Esq., Daniel R. Forman, Esq., David Z. Bodenheimer, Esq., and Elizabeth W. Newsom, Esq., Crowell & Moring, for the protester. Joseph C. Port Jr., Esq., Robert J. Conlan, Esq., Mark P. Guerrera, Esq., Richard L. Larach, Esq., Beth Ann Isenberg, Esq., Jonathan Adam DeMella, Esq., Courtney J. Edmonds, Esq., and Sally H. Jamieson, Esq., Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, for Titan Systems Corporation, an intervenor. Maj. Ed. Beauchhamp, and Denise Maramma, Esq., United States Army Materiel Command, for the agency. Paul I. Lieberman, Esq., and Michael R. Golden, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Evaluation of protester's past performance as presenting a moderate performance risk is unobjectionable where the agency reasonably based the assessment on consideration of significantly negative performance evaluations under contracts that protester specified as relevant in its proposal; protester's explanations and attempts during discussions to minimize or disavow the relevance of the unfavorably rated performance and to disassociate itself from the adverse performance information were considered by the agency, which reasonably concluded that the explanations did not provide any basis to ignore the poor performance under relevant contracts listed and performed by the protester. 2. Uniformly favorable assessments of awardee's past performance under numerous contracts that explicitly satisfied the relevancy criteria under the solicitation provided a reasonable basis for the agency to evaluate the awardee's past performance as presenting a low performance risk. 3. Protester's contention that various alleged technical enhancements under its proposal were not considered and credited by agency is contradicted by the evaluation record, which reflects that the agency recognized the items at issue and gave protester evaluation credit in several instances where it was warranted, but reasonably declined to credit the protester for other features that constituted nothing beyond satisfying the solicitation requirements, or consisted of unsupported assertions that were not substantiated by the technical proposal. 4. Where the record reflects that agency's evaluation of technical proposals is reasonable and consistent with the solicitation evaluation criteria, protester's repeated disagreements concerning the relative merits of different areas of the respective proposals does not provide a valid basis to question the propriety of the evaluation. 5. Agency's cost realism analysis was reasonably based in part on favorable Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) reports that were provided orally to agency during course of evaluation, as evidenced by e-mail, even though a final DCAA report confirming the previously conveyed interim evaluations was not transmitted until after the award determination had been made. 6. Agency's cost/technical tradeoff and resulting award determination which is reasonable, documented and consistent with the solicitation criteria is unobjectionable. DECISION ViaSat, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Titan Systems Corporation for certain satellite communications systems under request for proposals (RFP) No. DAAB07-02-R-D403, issued by the United States Army Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM). ViaSat objects to numerous aspects of the agency's evaluation of the proposals, most particularly with respect to the performance risk factor, and contends that the resulting award determination is arbitrary and unreasonable. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND The solicitation, issued on May 14, 2002, sought proposals for the design and development of a Ka-Band satellite augmentation terminal (KaSAT) system, a lightweight, mobile, flexible, modular, and scalable integrated tactical military satellite communications terminal system that operates in the military Ka frequency band over the wideband gapfiller satellite system. The RFP calls for the contractor to develop, test, document and deliver 10 developmental KaSAT systems, consisting of 8 transit case systems and 2 shelter-mounted systems.