Science & Management Resources, Inc., B-291803, March 17, 2003

B-291803 Mar 17, 2003 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights DIGEST Protest that agency misevaluated awardee's past performance and price is denied where record shows that challenge to past performance evaluation is based on misunderstanding of the facts. That price evaluation was legally adequate in context of a fixed-price contract. Award was to be made to the firm submitting the proposal deemed to offer the best overall value to the government. Bionetics was a subcontractor under a prior PMEL contract. SMR maintains that the agency was unaware of this termination when it performed its evaluation. That Bionetics's proposal would have received a lower rating had the agency known all of the facts. The evaluation of past performance is a matter within the discretion of the contracting agency. View Decision Science & Management Resources, Inc., B-291803, March 17, 2003 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Science & Management Resources, Inc. (SMR) protests the award of a contract to The Bionetics Corporation under request for proposals (RFP) No. F34650-02-R-0035, issued by the Department of the Air Force for precision measurement equipment laboratory (PMEL) services at Tinker Air Force Base. SMR maintains that the agency misevaluated Bionetics's proposal. We deny the protest. The RFP sought fixed-price offers for a base year, with four 1-year options. Award was to be made to the firm submitting the proposal deemed to offer the best overall value to the government. Proposals first would be evaluated for technical acceptability and, among the technically acceptable proposals, the agency would make a "best value" selection based on an integrated assessment of past performance (rated as exceptional/high confidence, very good/significant confidence, satisfactory/confidence, marginal/confidence, unsatisfactory/no confidence, or neutral/unknown confidence) and price, with past performance deemed more important than price. After receiving and evaluating proposals, the agency rejected one as technically unacceptable and assigned SMR's and Bionetics's proposals a performance confidence rating of very good/significant. Agency Report (AR), exh. 6, at 2-3. Since both proposals had received the same performance/confidence rating, the agency selected Bionetics as the awardee based on its lower price ($12,296,706.67, versus SMR's price of $13,603,648.50). Id. at 3. SMR asserts that the agency misevaluated Bionetics's proposal in the area of past performance. According to the protester, Bionetics was a subcontractor under a prior PMEL contract, and had its subcontract terminated by the prime contractor. SMR maintains that the agency was unaware of this termination when it performed its evaluation, and that Bionetics's proposal would have received a lower rating had the agency known all of the facts. The evaluation of past performance is a matter within the discretion of the contracting agency, which our Office will review only to ensure that it was reasonable and consistent with the stated evaluation criteria and with procurement statutes and regulations. Sterling Servs., Inc., B-286326, Dec. 11, 2000, 2000 CPD Para. 208 at 2-3. The premise of SMR's allegation--that the agency was unaware of the termination--is incorrect. The record shows that the agency's evaluators were in fact aware of the termination, and that the agency went to some length to obtain information relating to it, as evidenced by a November 5, 2002 memorandum prepared by the agency's contract specialist. The agency conducted two conference calls with representatives of Bionetics relating to the subject, and also contacted the cognizant contracting agency personnel. As a result of these contacts, the agency concluded that the termination occurred principally as a result of a disagreement between the prime contractor and Bionetics as to whether Bionetics was entitled to an adjustment in its compensation under the subcontract as a result of an unanticipated workload increase. Memorandum, Nov. 5, 2002, at 1-2. The agency concluded that, because Bionetics had been the incumbent contractor for that requirement for 15 years prior to performing as a subcontractor, /1/ and had performed without incident, and because performance under the other contract did not improve after Bionetics's subcontract was terminated, the termination did not warrant penalizing Bionetics in its past performance rating. The agency based Bionetics's past performance rating on other materials. Specifically, the agency obtained eight past performance questionnaire responses and six Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) reports, and found that Bionetics's performance had been rated very good to exceptional in the majority of cases. AR, exh. 7, at 5-6.