Jantec, Inc., B-292668; B-292668.2, November 6, 2003

Jantec, Inc., B-292668; B-292668.2, November 6, 2003 TITLE: Jantec, Inc., B-292668; B-292668.2, November 6, 2003 BNUMBER: B-292668; B-292668.2 DATE: November 6, 2003 ********************************************************************** Jantec, Inc., B-292668; B-292668.2, November 6, 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: Jantec, Inc. File: B-292668; B-292668.2 Date: November 6, 2003 Richard B. Oliver, Esq., McKenna Long & Aldridge, for the protester. Brian Koji, Esq., Allen, Norton & Blue, for Call Henry, Inc., an intervenor. Maj. Brent Curtis, Department of the Air Force, for the agency. Jennifer D. Westfall-McGrail, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Evaluators reasonably rated protester as very good/significant confidence under predictive preventative maintenance (PPM) past performance subelement where references reported that protester had not performed PPM and rated its performance for maintenance management generally as very good or satisfactory. 2. Evaluators reasonably determined that awardee had proposed an adequate level of staffing where awardee proposed innovations in its approach to the work that reduced the staffing required. 3. Awardee did not improperly condition its offer by stating that if its health insurance costs increased significantly, it would ask the government to consider adjusting the contract price to reflect the extra cost, since the awardee*s reservation of the right to request an adjustment did not obligate the government to grant the request. 4. Awardee did not improperly condition its offer by expressing confidence that it would be able to perform using the level of staffing that it had derived based on the workload data furnished in the solicitation. DECISION Jantec, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Call Henry, Inc. (CHI) under request for proposals (RFP) No. F04693-02-R-0004, issued by the Department of the Air Force for civil engineering services for Los Angeles Air Force Base (LAAFB). Jantec contends that the Air Force misevaluated its past performance, unreasonably determined CHI*s proposal to be technically acceptable, and failed to perform an adequate price realism analysis of CHI*s proposal. We deny the protest. The RFP, which was issued on February 24, 2003, contemplated the award of a contract encompassing fixed-price and cost-reimbursable items.[1] The performance period consists of a base year and seven 1-year options. The RFP provided for the evaluation of proposals on the basis of three factors: mission capability (which was to be evaluated on a pass/fail basis), present/past performance (which was to result in the assignment of a performance confidence rating of exceptional/high confidence, very good/significant confidence, satisfactory/confidence, neutral/unknown confidence, marginal/little confidence, or unsatisfactory/no confidence), and price. Both mission capability and past performance were to be evaluated on the basis of the following five subfactors, corresponding to the five major categories of services to be furnished under the contract: information technology (IT) management; real property management; housing management; planning, programming, design, and execution (PPD&E); and program management. Award was to be made to the offeror whose technically acceptable (i.e., passing under mission capability) proposal represented the best combination of present/past performance and price, with present/past performance of significantly greater importance than price. With respect to price, the RFP provided that proposals would be evaluated to determine if the proposed prices, including labor rates, direct and indirect costs, and profit rate, were reasonable and realistic for the work to be performed. Five offerors submitted proposals in response to the RFP. The source selection evaluation team (SSET) determined four of the proposals to be technically acceptable and eliminated one from the competition as technically unacceptable. The SSET assigned performance confidence ratings of very good/significant confidence to the four offerors that had submitted technically acceptable proposals and determined the prices submitted by all four to be both reasonable and realistic. Of relevance here, for the five categories of services, the evaluators rated CHI as exceptional/high confidence for IT management and as very good/significant confidence for real property maintenance/management, housing management, PPD&E, and program management.