B-299317.4, Department of the Army--Reconsideration, June 8, 2007

B-299317.4 Jun 08, 2007 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights The Department of the Army asks that we reconsider our decision in L‑3 Communications Titan Corp. (L-3), in which we sustained L-3's protest of the award of a contract to Global Linguist Solutions, LLC (GLS) under request for proposals (RFP) No. W911W4-05-R-0001 to provide interpretation and translation services for the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. We deny the reconsideration request. View Decision B-299317.4, Department of the Army--Reconsideration, June 8, 2007 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 the Army--Reconsideration File: B-299317.4 Date: June 8, 2007 DECISION The Department of the Army asks that we reconsider our decision in L'3 Communications Titan Corp., B-299317 et al., Mar. 29, 2007, 2007 CPD para. ___, in which we sustained L-3's protest of the award of a contract to Global Linguist Solutions, LLC (GLS) under request for proposals (RFP) No. W911W4-05-R-0001 to provide interpretation and translation services for the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. We deny the reconsideration request. The RFP provided for award of an indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract for a 5-year period, during which individual task orders would be issued, and advised offerors that award would be based on the proposal offering the best value to the government considering the following evaluation factors: management, past performance, and cost. With regard to the most important factor, management, the solicitation identified the following subfactors: fill rate, experience, sustainment, staffing plan, transition plan and small business participation. In our decision, we found unreasonable the Army's evaluation under the fill rate and experience subfactors, and that the evaluation scheme for transition plans did not support meaningful comparison and discrimination between competing proposals. In requesting reconsideration, the Army takes issue with our findings in all three respects. Fill Rate Subfactor The RFP identified the linguist staffing levels that would be required under the first task order (–task order 1—), and provided that various aspects of the offerors' proposals would be evaluated against the task order 1 requirements. For that task order, the solicitation required offerors to propose enough personnel to fill 7,217 full-time equivalent (FTE) linguist positions, and defined an FTE as follows: –an FTE year will consist of a total of 3,744 total productive hours (12 hours a day; 6 days a week; 52 weeks a year).— Agency Report (AR), Tab 10, at 213. Accordingly, the ultimate requirement, pursuant to task order 1, was to provide enough linguist personnel to perform 27,020,448 productive hours (7,217 FTE x 3,744 productive hours). In this respect, since an FTE was based on productive hours, in order to provide that number of productive hours an offeror necessarily had to propose to hire more than 7,217 people, since additional personnel would be needed to accommodate situations where linguists were on medical leave, family leave, holiday, etc. Section L of the solicitation directed offerors to –identify the number of Full'Time Equivalent (FTE) linguists proposed to satisfy the positional assignments specified in . . . Task Order 1,— and section M advised offerors that the agency would assess the probability that –the Offeror will have available the necessary (Quantity and skill type) of . . . linguists to successfully and timely perform the scope of work of [task order 1].— AR, Tab 10, at 213, 247. In responding to the solicitation's requirement to –identify the number of Full'Time Equivalent (FTE) linguists proposed to satisfy the positional assignments specified in . . . Task Order 1,— GLS stated in its proposal: We estimate the number of Full Time Equivalent linguists necessary to fill post-transition Task Order (T.O.) 1 will be [deleted], with a total number of productive hours being [deleted] hrs/yr. AR, Tab 35, at 1,662. L-3's proposal, in responding to this section L requirement, stated: [T]o . . . meet 100% of Task Order 1 requirements in the future, we estimate that [deleted] Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) will be required. AR, Tab 14, at 434. In evaluating the proposals, the agency criticized L-3's proposal of [deleted] –Full Time Equivalents,— on the basis that it would create a –shortfall— of linguists, stating: L'3 . . . proposes a hire rate of [deleted] while at the same time recognizing a historic linguist non-availability rate of [deleted].