B-299582.4; B-299582.5, Korrect Optical, Inc., September 7, 2007

B-299582.4; B-299582.5, Korrect Optical, Inc., September 7, 2007 TITLE: B-299582.4; B-299582.5, Korrect Optical, Inc., September 7, 2007 BNUMBER: B-299582.4; B-299582.5 DATE: September 7, 2007 **************************************************************** B-299582.4; B-299582.5, Korrect Optical, Inc., September 7, 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: Korrect Optical, Inc. File: B-299582.4; B-299582.5 Date: September 7, 2007 Kristen E. Ittig, Esq., and Caitlin K. Cloonan, Esq., Arnold & Porter LLP, for the protester. Dennis Foley, Esq., Department of Veterans Affairs, for the agency. Jennifer D. Westfall-McGrail, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Protest that awardee's proposal failed to comply with material solicitation requirement and thus could not form the basis for an award is denied where record demonstrates that awardee's proposal did comply with the requirement. 2. Where solicitation provided for award to the proposal determined most advantageous to the government, price and other factors considered, and agency reasonably determined proposals to be essentially equivalent with regard to the non-price factors, selection of the awardee's proposal based on its lower price was reasonable. DECISION Korrect Optical, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Safe-Lite Optical Company under request for proposals (RFP) No. VA-246-07-RP-0002, issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide eyeglasses to eligible veterans at VA Medical Centers in Veterans Integrated Service Network 6. The protester contends that Safe-Lite's proposal was materially deficient for failing to offer the required number of frame styles. The protester also takes issue with the evaluation of its own proposal and the agency's determination that all proposals were essentially equal technically.[1] We deny the protest. BACKGROUND The RFP contemplated the award of a fixed-price requirements contract for eyeglasses incorporating various different types of lenses (e.g., single vision, bifocal, progressive, trifocal, and high index), which are to be fabricated upon receipt of prescriptions furnished by the VA clinics.[2] The solicitation provided for award to the offeror whose proposal was determined to be most advantageous to the government, price and other factors (defined in the RFP as technical capability/quality and past performance) considered, with the non-price factors of greater importance than price. Nine proposals were received by the February 1, 2007 closing date. Two of the nine were immediately excluded from further consideration because the offerors had failed to include sufficient technical information. A technical evaluation panel (TEP) rated the remaining seven technical proposals under 15 criteria pertaining to product quality, five criteria pertaining to technical capability, a single criterion pertaining to quality assurance, and four criteria pertaining to past performance/experience.[3] The proposal that received the highest overall point score for the product quality factors was assigned 35 points; each of the other proposals was then assigned a point score reflecting the percentage of the highest score that its score represented. For example, because its technical point score was 78 percent of the highest score received, Korrect's proposal was assigned a technical score of 27.3 (78 percent of 35).