Venturi Technology Partners, B-292060, June 10, 2003

B-292060 Jun 10, 2003 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Protest is denied where in a competitive procurement under the Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) the record shows that the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the stated evaluation factors. 2. Agency's conduct of discussions with two other FSS vendors without affording protester an opportunity to address technical deficiencies in its proposal is unobjectionable where agency reasonably concluded that protester's proposal should be excluded from further consideration because of reasonable concerns about its technical compliance and its higher price. The objective of this acquisition was to obtain the best available commercial pricing based on the agency's consolidation of all services under a single ISP task order. View Decision Venturi Technology Partners, B-292060, June 10, 2003 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Venturi Technology Partners protests the issuance of a task order to Genuity, Inc. under Genuity's General Services Administration (GSA) FSS contract No. GS-35F-0177J, pursuant to a request for proposals (RFP) issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to acquire Internet service provider (ISP) services. Venturi challenges the evaluation of its proposal and complains that the agency improperly failed to conduct discussions with the firm. The protester also alleges that the agency improperly selected Genuity for award after Genuity had filed for bankruptcy. We deny the protest. The VA's Office of Cyber Security has a requirement for an ISP to provide the agency with a reliable, secure source for intranet connectivity with expansion capability to all VA employees and their designated business partners, support contractors, veterans, and other authorized users. The objective of this acquisition was to obtain the best available commercial pricing based on the agency's consolidation of all services under a single ISP task order. The RFP was issued electronically on October 18, 2002, to five vendors holding current FSS contracts under GSA's commercial information technology schedule. Vendors were notified that this was a Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 8 competition that would "follow the concepts" of FAR Part 12, commercial item acquisition procedures. RFP Cover Letter at 1. The successful contractor is required to provide all personnel, supervision, and other resources to operate and maintain dial-up ISP services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with system availability of at least 99.9 percent. This includes ISP service that is compatible with the Microsoft Windows and MacIntosh operating systems. RFP Statement of Work (SOW) at 1-2. The ISP estimated usage was set forth in the solicitation as 2,000 users at the start of service, 20,000 by the end of Year 1, 50,000 by the end of Year 2, and 100,000 by the end of Year 3. Id. at 1. The RFP contemplated the award of a single fixed-price task order for a base year, with two 1-year options and provided for award on a "best value" basis, price and other factors considered. The solicitation listed technical, management, and past performance as equally weighted non-price factors. RFP at 1. The RFP specifically advised offerors that "if your offer does not present sufficient information to permit complete technical evaluation by the Government, it may be rejected." Id. With respect to price, the RFP requested price proposals that included, among other things, pricing for each offeror's proposed ISP based on the total hours used by all VA users on a monthly basis and discount pricing based on usage. RFP SOW at 5-6. The RFP cautioned that the government intended to make award without discussions, although it reserved the right to conduct discussions if necessary, and advised that offerors should propose the best commercial pricing based on their GSA schedule. RFP Cover Letter at 1. Four offerors (Genuity, the protester and two other firms) submitted timely technical and price proposals on November 1. The technical proposals were evaluated by assigning color/adjectival ratings of purple/exceptional, blue/good, green/satisfactory, yellow/marginal, or red/unacceptable and risk ratings of low, medium, or high under the non-price factors. /2/ Agency Report (AR) exh. 8, Rating Scale. Based on that evaluation, the evaluation team prepared a narrative assessment and overall color/adjectival consensus rating for each offeror. The consensus rating assigned to each initial proposal, is set forth below: Offeror A Blue/good Low risk Genuity Blue/good Medium risk Offeror B Green/satisfactory Medium risk Venturi Green/satisfactory Medium risk AR exh. 5, Contracting Officer's Memorandum for File, at 2. In the evaluation of Venturi's proposal, the evaluators identified numerous weaknesses in its technical approach which will be discussed in detail below.