Sunbelt Design & Development, Inc., B-291490; B-291490.2, January 2, 2003

Sunbelt Design & Development, Inc., B-291490; B-291490.2, January 2, 2003 TITLE: Sunbelt Design & Development, Inc., B-291490; B-291490.2, January 2, 2003 BNUMBER: B-291490; B-291490.2 DATE: January 2, 2003 ********************************************************************** Sunbelt Design & Development, Inc., B-291490; B-291490.2, January 2, 2003 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: Sunbelt Design & Development, Inc. File: B-291490; B-291490.2 Date: January 2, 2003 Johnathan M. Bailey, Esq., Law Office of Theodore M. Bailey, for the protester. John D. Inazu, Esq., and Paul S. Davison, Esq., Department of the Air Force, for the agency. Paula A. Williams, Esq., and Michael R. Golden, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protest of the agency's evaluation of the protester's and the awardee's past performance is denied, where the protester does not demonstrate that the agency's evaluation was unreasonable or inconsistent with the solicitation evaluation criteria. DECISION Sunbelt Design & Development, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Boneal, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. F09603-02-R-72053, issued by the Department of the Air Force, Warner Robins Air Logistics Center (WRALC), for MD-1 universal towbars. Sunbelt contends that the evaluation of past performance was inconsistent with the terms of the solicitation and otherwise unreasonable. We deny the protest. The solicitation, issued June 28, 2002, contemplated the award of a fixed-price requirements contract for a base year with 2 option years to provide an estimated quantity of towbars to satisfy the Air Force and Foreign Military Sales requirements. Offerors were advised that the agency would conduct a performance/price trade-off to make an integrated assessment for a *best value* award decision. Under this procedure, a trade-off would be made between the offerors' present/past performance and price, with past performance significantly more important than price.[1] RFP at 27. As relevant here, in the past performance information volume of its proposal, each offeror was required to provide information for itself and each proposed *critical* subcontractor: for each active or completed contract (with preferably at least one year of performance history) in the past three (3) years, that the offeror considers relevant in demonstrating its ability to perform the proposed effort. If the total number of such contracts exceeds four (4), the offeror shall address its four (4) most relevant contracts. RFP at 25. For each listed contract, the solicitation required the offeror to send an attached past performance questionnaire to knowledgeable sources for return to the agency for itself and each proposed critical subcontractor. The solicitation generally indicated that relevant present/past performance could be for any federal, state and local governments or their agencies, and commercial customers having a performance period completion not earlier than 3 years from the RFP release date. In addition, the agency planned to evaluate the complexity and magnitude of the offeror's previous and current work and its relation to the work required for this procurement. Id. As applicable here, the RFP evaluation criteria provided that the following relevance criteria apply: very relevant (present/past performance involved the magnitude of effort and complexities which was essentially what solicitation requires); relevant (present/past performance involved less magnitude of effort and complexities and includes most of what solicitation requires); semi-relevant (present/past performance involved much less magnitude of effort and complexities and includes some of what solicitation requires); not relevant (present/past performance did not involve any significant aspects of above). RFP at 28. The Air Force received seven proposals by the extended closing date, including those from Sunbelt and Boneal (because the other proposals are not relevant to this decision, we do not address them further). The proposals were forwarded to the appropriate evaluation teams.