B-310311.2, Engineering Construction Services, Inc., December 12, 2007

B-310311.2 Dec 12, 2007 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Engineering Construction Services, Inc. (ECS) protests the award of a contract to Environmental Safety & Health, Inc. (ES&H) by the Department of Energy under request for proposals (RFP) No. DE-RP05-07OR23256 for roads, grounds, and heavy equipment maintenance services. The protester challenges various aspects of the technical and price proposal evaluations and alleges that the agency conducted inadequate discussions with the protester. We deny the protest. View Decision B-310311.2, Engineering Construction Services, Inc., December 12, 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: Engineering Construction Services, Inc. File: B-310311.2 Date: December 12, 2007 Telena Moore for the protester. Charmaine A. Howson, Esq., Young Ha Cho, Esq., and Dationa Carter, Esq., Department of Energy, for the agency. Kenneth Kilgour, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1. Protest that awardee materially revised its proposal after the agency established a competitive range and that the agency failed to consider the revisions in its reevaluations is denied where there is no evidence in the record to support the allegation. 2. Protest that the agency failed to conduct several portions of the required evaluations is denied where the record shows that the agency in fact conducted the evaluations. 3. Protest that the agency conducted inadequate discussions is denied where the record shows that the agency included in the first request for revised proposals all of the significant weaknesses identified in the final evaluation of the protester's proposal. 4. Protest that agency improperly evaluated subcontractor's relevant experience is denied where the requirement that relevant experience references must be for contracts that have been in performance for a minimum of 6 months merely established a minimum, and the agency reasonably considered the subcontractor's relative lack of experience as a weakness in the proposal. DECISION Engineering Construction Services, Inc. (ECS) protests the award of a contract to Environmental Safety & Health, Inc. (ES&H) by the Department of Energy under request for proposals (RFP) No. DE-RP05-07OR23256 for roads, grounds, and heavy equipment maintenance services. The protester challenges various aspects of the technical and price proposal evaluations and alleges that the agency conducted inadequate discussions with the protester.[1] We deny the protest. The RFP, issued on December 1, 2006 as a small business set-aside,[2] contemplated the award of an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for a 2-year base period with three 1-year options, under which the agency would issue both time-and-materials and fixed-price task orders. The RFP contained the following three evaluation criteria and percentage weights: technical and business management approach (35 percent); key personnel (35 percent); and relevant experience and past performance (30 percent), with sub-criteria relevant experience (25 percent) and past performance (5 percent). The RFP called for an evaluation of the relevant experience of the offeror and its teaming partners and subcontractors. Proposals would be assigned adjectival scores based on the number of points earned, with a possible perfect score of 1,000 points. The RFP stated that the agency reserved the right to conduct oral or written discussions with all offerors whose proposals were in the competitive range. The RFP specified that the agency would develop an evaluated price by –applying the offeror's proposed labor prices to the labor hours (adjusting for any increase or decrease in estimated hours resulting from the technical evaluation) and material costs (adjusting for any increase or decrease in proposed material costs resulting from the technical evaluation).— Id. sect. M.6(b)(2), Cost/Price Evaluation Criteria. Award was to be made to the offeror whose proposal represented the best value to the government, using the evaluated price. The RFP stated that the agency was more concerned with obtaining a superior technical proposal than in making an award at the lowest evaluated price, but that the agency would not pay a price premium that it considered –disproportionate to the benefits associated with the evaluated superiority of one proposal over another.— Id. sect. M.3, Basis for Contract Award. To the extent that the technical proposals were evaluated as –similar in merit,— the RFP provided that the proposals' evaluated prices could be the deciding factor. Id. The agency received seven timely proposals, including the awardee's and the protester's.