B-297391.2; B-297391.3, East-West Industries, Inc., July 19, 2006

B-297391.2; B-297391.3, East-West Industries, Inc., July 19, 2006 TITLE: B-297391.2; B-297391.3, East-West Industries, Inc., July 19, 2006 BNUMBER: B-297391.2; B-297391.3 DATE: July 19, 2006 ***************************************************************** B-297391.2; B-297391.3, East-West Industries, Inc., July 19, 2006 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 Decision Matter of: East-West Industries, Inc. File: B-297391.2; B-297391.3 Date: July 19, 2006 Philip M. Dearborn, Esq., Sandeep S. Kathuria, Esq., and Jennifer L. Andrews, Esq., Piliero, Mazza & Pargament, PLLC, for the protester. Robert A. Brunette, Esq., for Regent Manufacturing, Inc., an intervenor. Maj. Jeffrey Branstetter, Maj. Paul W. Knoth, James C. Caine, Esq., and Maj. LaChandra C. Richardson, Department of the Air Force, for the agency. Paul E. Jordan, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Evaluation of protester's proposal under past performance evaluation factor was unobjectionable where agency reasonably concluded that only one of four prior contracts was of a magnitude and complexity essentially the same as the solicitation's, and thus met the solicitation's definition of very relevant; two of the remaining contracts were reasonably evaluated as only relevant and semi-relevant due to lesser magnitudes of effort, and the fourth contract was reasonably evaluated as not relevant because it was completely unrelated to the solicitation's work. 2. Evaluation of awardee's past performance and risk was reasonable, notwithstanding protester's identification of alleged quality, safety, and delivery issues, where contracting officials did not have personal knowledge of majority of the issues, and fully considered those of which they were aware in finding no negative impact on awardee's past performance rating. DECISION East-West Industries, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Regent Manufacturing, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. FA8518-04-R-70801, issued by the Department of the Air Force for multi-aircraft canopy cranes (MACC). East-West challenges the past performance and risk evaluations of its and Regent's proposals. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND MACCs are used to remove and install various components on numerous types of aircraft, including canopies, ejection seats, wings, stabilizers, rotors, and other components, with sufficient clearance to preclude contact with all primary aircraft structures, such as landing gears, fuel tanks, and maintenance stands.[1] The RFP, a total small business set-aside, contemplated the award of a requirements-type contract with a basic period to include two first articles and related materials, with four options, for a total of 360 production units. Proposals were to be evaluated under four factors--technical, proposal risk, past performance, and price. Technical acceptability was to be determined based on whether the proposed design met the requirements for physical characteristics, system reliability, and system maintainability. Under the proposal risk factor, the agency was to assess the risk associated with the offeror's proposed approach as it related to disruption of schedule, increased cost, or degradation of performance.[2] Under the past performance factor, the agency was to consider the relevance of offerors' prior contracts to the proposed effort, together with the quality of performance of those contracts, in assessing its confidence in the offerors' ability to successfully accomplish the proposed effort.[3] Once a proposal was determined to be technically acceptable, award was to be made on a "best value" basis, with tradeoffs among the remaining factors. Under this procedure, risk and past performance were considered equal to each other and significantly more important than price. Six offerors, including East-West and Regent, submitted proposals by the original closing time in 2004. Based on the initial evaluation, all proposals were considered technically unacceptable and the agency issued evaluation notices (EN). All six offerors responded, but one was determined not to meet the small business size standard and its proposal was eliminated. After several rounds of final proposal revisions (FPR) and additional ENs, the proposals of East-West, Regent, and a third offeror (not relevant here) were included in the competitive range. The evaluators rated both East-West's and Regent's proposals as low risk and very good/significant confidence.