B-296435.12, Department of Agriculture--Reconsideration, November 3, 2005

B-296435.12 Nov 03, 2005 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights The Department of Agriculture asks that we reconsider our decision in R&G Food Service, Inc., d/b/a Port-A-Pit Catering, B-296435.4, B-296435.9, Sept. 15, 2005, 2005 CPD para.___, sustaining Port-A-Pit's protest of its nonselection for contract award under request for proposals (RFP) No. 49-05-07, issued by the National Interagency Fire Center, Forest Service, for mobile food services in various locations. We deny the reconsideration request. View Decision B-296435.12, Department of Agriculture--Reconsideration, November 3, 2005 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: Department of Agriculture--Reconsideration File: B-296435.12 Date: November 3, 2005 Byron W. Waters, Esq., Department of Agriculture, for the requester. John Lukjanowicz, Esq., Oles Morrison Rinker & Baker LLP, for the protester. John L. Formica, Esq., and Jerold D. Cohen, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Statutory and regulatory mandate that an agency consider cost to the government in evaluating proposals applies to both requirements and indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts; analysis addressing difficulty of doing that necessarily applies to both types of contracts, since in both the exact quantity to be delivered is unknown at contract award. DECISION The Department of Agriculture asks that we reconsider our decision in R&G Food Service, Inc., d/b/a Port-A-Pit Catering, B-296435.4, B-296435.9, Sept. 15, 2005, 2005 CPD para.___, sustaining Port-A-Pit's protest of its nonselection for contract award under request for proposals (RFP) No. 49-05-07, issued by the National Interagency Fire Center, Forest Service, for mobile food services in various locations. We deny the reconsideration request. The RFP provided for multiple awards of fixed-price requirements contracts for a base year and four 1-year options. The successful contractors under the RFP will be required to provide hot and cold meals and various supplemental items at 27 field locations (referred to as designated dispatch points, or DDPs) during wildland fires and other types of activities throughout the contiguous western United States and Alaska by means of mobile food service units (MFSU). The RFP permitted offerors to propose for multiple DDPs, and provided for the award of one contract for each location. The solicitation required offerors to submit unit prices for meal services (e.g., breakfast, sack lunch, dinner), MFSU mileage, and handwashing units, which would form the basis of a requirements-type contract, as well as unit prices for additional refrigeration storage space, additional tents and seating, and supplemental food and beverage items, which would form the basis of a blanket purchase agreement. The solicitation did not provide estimated quantities for any of these items, including the meal services, MFSU mileage, and handwashing units, and as such did not request extended prices or total prices for the services to be provided. The solicitation identified a number of technical evaluation factors, and informed offerors that the technical factors, when combined, were approximately equal in importance to price. Contract awards were to be made to the offerors submitting the proposals determined to meet the minimum requirements of the solicitation and to be the most advantageous to the government. Port-A-Pit received no awards because of the agency's determination that the firm's prices for MFSU mileage were not fair and reasonable. Port-A-Pit protested that the agency's determination was improperly based upon only one component of its proposed price (i.e., its mileage price). The firm argued that given the relative proportions of the items likely to be required under the contracts (meals, mileage, handwashing units), an offer with a higher MFSU mileage price could nevertheless represent a lower overall cost to the government. Port-A-Pit further contended that the Forest Service's price evaluation was irrational because it only considered offerors' unit prices. In sustaining the protest, we found the price evaluation fundamentally flawed because, in considering only the unit prices proposed, it did not reflect the actual cost to the government of the offerors' competing proposals.[1] Specifically, our examination of the record showed that meals were the primary cost for the services to be provided under the contract. As an example, we noted that under a predecessor contract, Port-A-Pit provided a total of [DELETED] meals and drove a total of [DELETED] miles in response to a fire in Ash, Arizona.