B-299883, Paraclete Contracts, September 11, 2007

B-299883 Sep 11, 2007 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Paraclete Contracts protests the award of a contract to ISA Corporation under solicitation No. N00104-07-Q-BZ53, issued by the Naval Inventory Control Point (NAVICP) for anti-contamination gloves. Paraclete asserts that NAVICP improperly rejected its offer due to an erroneous interpretation of its proposed price. Paraclete also asserts that ISA's price was unreasonably high and its offer should not have been selected for the award. We deny the protest. View Decision B-299883, Paraclete Contracts, September 11, 2007 Decision Matter of: Paraclete Contracts File: B-299883 Date: September 11, 2007 Jerry Hughen, Paraclete Contracts, for the protester. Richard Martinelli, Esq., Naval Inventory Control Point, for the agency. Eric M. Ransom, John L. Formica, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Protester's offer for anti-contamination gloves was properly rejected where the protester mistakenly entered its prices on a total price rather than per-pair basis and the protester's intended price was not apparent from the face of the offer. 2. Agency properly found the awardee's proposed prices to be fair and reasonable where the prices were lower than prices obtained by the agency over the past several years. DECISION Paraclete Contracts protests the award of a contract to ISA Corporation under solicitation No. N00104-07-Q-BZ53, issued by the Naval Inventory Control Point (NAVICP) for anti-contamination gloves. Paraclete asserts that NAVICP improperly rejected its offer due to an erroneous interpretation of its proposed price. Paraclete also asserts that ISA's price was unreasonably high and its offer should not have been selected for the award. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND On March 13, 2007, NAVICP posted the solicitation on the Navy Electronic Commerce On-line (NECO) website,[1] requesting offers for 433,265 pairs of various sizes of anti-contamination gloves, used by Navy personnel in nuclear environments. NAVICP considers anti-contamination gloves to be –commercial items— within the definition set forth in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) sect. 2.101, and issued the solicitation using simplified acquisition procedures as permitted by FAR sect. 13.500. The solicitation listed the number of pairs of gloves being procured by size, and required offerors to insert their prices for each size of glove on a per-pair basis. The solicitation also incorporated FAR clause 52.212-1(g), which stated the government's intent to evaluate offers and award a contract without discussions.[2] NAVICP received four offers in response to the solicitation. Two were eliminated for failure to include a price for each line item, leaving only ISA and Paraclete in the competition. ISA offered prices of $14 for line item 0001 and $4.75 for all other line items, which were consistent with the price history for each line item. Agency Report (AR), Tab 7, at 2, 7. Paraclete also included prices for each line item, however, Paraclete's prices were dramatically higher than the price history and contained additional notations, as follows; –$6,661.20 Wholesale— for line item 0001 (calling for 1,092 pairs of gloves), –$27,503.25 Wholesale Price per Dozen— for line item 0002 (36,671 pairs), –$3,983.25 Wholesale Price per Dozen— for line item 0003 (5,311 pairs), –$213,562.75 Wholesale Price per Dozen— for line item 0004AA (284,749 pairs), and –$79,081.50 Wholesale Price per Dozen— for line item 0004AB (105,442 pairs). AR, Tab 4, at 3-4. Paraclete also made the entry –$330,790.95— in the NECO –Price Quote No.— box, an area intended for an offeror's internal tracking number.[3] AR, Tab 4, at 1; Tab 5 at 1. Upon reviewing Paraclete's offer, the contracting officer suspected a mistake in the pricing. After additional review, the contracting officer was unable to locate any obvious clerical errors such as apparent misplaced decimal points, and was unable to determine Paraclete's intended price. The contracting officer states that, consistent with his usual practice, he did not review the entry ($330,790.95) in the NECO –Price Quote No.— box, since that area is not intended for the offeror's price submission. Unable to determine Paraclete's intended price, the contracting officer evaluated Paraclete's offer on the basis of the unit prices as provided, resulting in a total evaluated price of $70,187,294,720. The contracting officer then rejected Paraclete's offer due to its extremely high price and recommended award to ISA, whose offer was technically acceptable and whose total evaluated price of $2,068,109.75 was determined to be fair and reasonable.