Allied Materials & Equipment Company, Inc., B-293231, February 5, 2004

B-293231 Feb 05, 2004 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Is denied. The notice informed potential offerors that the proposed closing date was August 20. The RFP was never posted. Whether the new solicitation was intended to replace the earlier solicitation. The contracting officer explained in a brief e-mail that the October 1 solicitation was not meant to replace the earlier solicitation. That only one proposal was received by the August 20 closing date. That award was made to ILC Dover on October 7. It properly placed the RFP on the Procurement Gateway (the protester denies the RFP was posted on this website). DLA argues that Allied was not prejudiced by its actions. Thus there is no basis for sustaining the protest. That the RFP was never posted to either website. View Decision Allied Materials & Equipment Company, Inc., B-293231, February 5, 2004 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Allied Materials & Equipment Company, Inc. protests the award of a contract by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), Defense Supply Center to ILC Dover, Inc., under request for proposals (RFP) No. SP0560-03-R-0186, for chemical-biological filter elements. Allied alleges that the agency's failure to post the solicitation to FedBizOpps, the government-wide point of entry (GPE), as required by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), improperly denied it the opportunity to compete for the contract. We deny the protest. On July 18, 2003, DLA published a synopsis of the proposed RFP on the FedBizOpps website. The notice informed potential offerors that the proposed closing date was August 20, and included contact information for various DLA contracting personnel. Under FAR Sec. 5.102(a)(1), solicitations synopsized on the GPE (i.e., FedBizOpps) must subsequently be posted there as well. Allied states that, following publication of the notice, it began actively monitoring the FedBizOpps and DLA Procurement Gateway websites for the RFP. According to Allied, the RFP was never posted, and it became concerned with the posting delay when it learned that a new synopsis for the same item had been posted on October 1. Allied contacted the contracting officer on October 7 and inquired as to both the general status of the two solicitations, and whether the new solicitation was intended to replace the earlier solicitation. The contracting officer explained in a brief e-mail that the October 1 solicitation was not meant to replace the earlier solicitation, and that the October 1 solicitation would be available on October 16. Thereafter, by letter dated October 14, Allied again requested information about both solicitations. DLA responded in a letter dated October 31, explaining that the RFP in issue had been posted to DLA's own Procurement Gateway website on August 6, that only one proposal was received by the August 20 closing date, and that award was made to ILC Dover on October 7. On November 7, Allied filed this protest in our Office, alleging that DLA's failure to post the RFP on FedBizOpps had improperly denied Allied an opportunity to compete. DLA acknowledges that it failed to post the RFP, as required by the FAR. The agency explains that it normally satisfies the FAR requirement by posting a solicitation on DLA's Procurement Gateway website, and then including a web-link to the solicitation with the FedBizOpps synopsis. DLA states that, here, it properly placed the RFP on the Procurement Gateway (the protester denies the RFP was posted on this website), but it failed to include the necessary link on FedBizOpps. Nevertheless, DLA argues that Allied was not prejudiced by its actions, and thus there is no basis for sustaining the protest, since Allied actually received a copy of the RFP before the closing time, as evidenced by a computer printout that the agency claims demonstrates that Allied downloaded the RFP from the Procurement Gateway on August 20. Allied denies that it downloaded the RFP; indeed, it claims that it monitored both FedBizOpps and the Procurement Gateway daily from August 8 until November 7, and that the RFP was never posted to either website. The Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 generally requires contracting agencies to obtain full and open competition through the use of competitive procedures, the dual purpose of which is to ensure that a procurement is open to all responsible sources and to provide the government with the opportunity to receive fair and reasonable prices. 10 U.S.C. Sec. 2304(a)(1)(A) (2000); Kendall Healthcare Prods. Co., B-289381, Feb. 19, 2002, 2002 CPD Para. 42 at 6. In pursuit of these goals, a contracting agency has the affirmative obligation to use reasonable methods to publicize its procurement needs and to timely disseminate solicitation documents to those entitled to receive them. To that end, FAR Sec. 5.102(a)(1) generally requires that solicitations that are synopsized on the GPE also be available on the GPE.