Noble Solutions, B-294393, September 10, 2004

B-294393 Sep 10, 2004 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Noble Solutions protests the evaluation of its proposal under solicitation No. FY04.1, issued by the Department of Defense (DOD) for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Noble, whose proposal was not selected for award, challenges the agency's evaluation. We deny the protest. View Decision B-294393, Noble Solutions, September 10, 2004 Decision Matter of: Noble Solutions File: B-294393 Date: September 10, 2004 Henry Noble for the protester. Craig S. McCaa, Esq., Department of the Air Force, for the agency. Linda S. Lebowitz, Esq., and Michael R. Golden, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Agency reasonably determined not to select protester's proposal for a Phase I SmallBusiness Innovation Research contract where the agency reasonably evaluated the protester's proposal as technically unacceptable and the protester has not meaningfully challenged the agency's evaluation. DECISION Noble Solutions protests the evaluation of its proposal under solicitation No. FY04.1, issued by the Department of Defense (DOD) for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Noble, whose proposal was not selected for award, challenges the agency's evaluation. We deny the protest. The SBIR program is conducted pursuant to the Small Business Innovation Development Act, 15 U.S.C. 638 (2000), which requires certain federal agencies to reserve a portion of their research and development funds for awards to small businesses. In addition to advancing the role of small businesses and the participation of minority and disadvantaged persons in research and development, the objectives of DOD's SBIR program include stimulating technological innovation in DOD's critical technology area and increasing the commercial application of DODsupported research and development results. The program has the following three phases: Phase I is to determine the scientific, technical, and commercial merit of ideas; Phase II is the principal research and development effort resulting in a well-defined, deliverable prototype; and in Phase III, the small business seeks to obtain private and public funding to develop the prototype into a viable commercial product for sale to military and/or private sector markets. Solicitation 1.1, 1.2. This solicitation sought proposals for Phase I awards to be made by a number of participating DOD component agencies and offices, including the Department of the Air Force. Each component agency identified technical topics. Phase I awards under Air Force topic No. AF04-087, entitled Expert Intelligent Match of Requirements and Solutions, are at issue here. As explained in the solicitation, the objective under this topic is to develop the ability to match descriptions of warfighter requirements to relevant descriptions of proposed solutions. More specifically, the solicitation explained that the government is developing a database that will include both information warfare (IW) warfighter requirements and IW solutions. The referenced database will use a set of multifaceted IW requirements that cut across 11 distinct areas, as follows: counterintelligence; computer network attack; computer network defense; electronic warfare; information assurance; integration; military deception; operations security; physical attack; public affairs operations; and psychological operations. The solicitation noted that the total number of requirements at any one time is usually between 100and 150, and that complex IWsolutions that number in the hundreds also would be included in the database. The solicitation explained that proposed IW solutions could be relevant to multiple requirements in multiple IW areas. Noting that matching warfighter requirements to solutions could be a daunting and timeconsuming effort when done by individuals, the solicitation stated that what was needed was a computer-based means of comparing IW requirements to the database collection of solutions to find those that were relevant to the requirements. The solicitation pointed out that simple, literal, wordbased searches would not be adequate for this effort because the keywords used might not be found in every IW solution document. Solicitation, Topic Document AF04-087. The solicitation outlined the following four stated purposes for Phase I: (1) to investigate emerging and existing relevant methods of intelligent search; (2) to define the approach that would be used to intelligently search for matches between requirements and solutions; (3)to define a method of measuring performance of the search; and (4) to develop an interface prototype. Id. The solicitation contemplated multiple awards of fixed-price Phase I contracts (generally not to exceed100,000 each) to those offerors whose proposals represented the best values to the government.