B-311070; B-311070.2, North Shore Medical Labs, Inc.; Advanced BioMedical Laboratories, LLC, April 21, 2008

B-311070; B-311070.2, North Shore Medical Labs, Inc.; Advanced BioMedical Laboratories, LLC, April 21, 2008 TITLE: B-311070; B-311070.2, North Shore Medical Labs, Inc.; Advanced BioMedical Laboratories, LLC, April 21, 2008 BNUMBER: B-311070; B-311070.2 DATE: April 21, 2008 *********************************************************************************************************** B-311070; B-311070.2, North Shore Medical Labs, Inc.; Advanced BioMedical Laboratories, LLC, April 21, 2008 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: North Shore Medical Labs, Inc.; Advanced BioMedical Laboratories, LLC File: B-311070; B-311070.2 Date: April 21, 2008 Adam W. Downs, Esq., Welby, Brady & Greenblatt, LLP, for North Shore Medical Labs, Inc.; and Pamela J. Mazza, Esq., Philip M. Dearborn, Esq., Gunjan R. Talati, Esq., Desiree Lomer-Clarke, Esq., and Isaias Alba IV, Esq., PilieroMazza PLLC, for Advanced BioMedical Laboratories, LLC, the protesters. Capt. Charles D. Halverson, Department of the Army, for the agency. Katherine I. Riback, Esq., and James A. Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protests against cancellation of solicitation are denied where agency reasonably determined that the solicitation did not adequately set forth the agency's needs and that enhanced competition could result from a change in the requirements. DECISION North Shore Medical Labs, Inc. (NSML) and Advanced Biomedical Laboratories, LLC, (ABML) protests the cancellation of request for proposals (RFP) No. W81K04-07-R-0019, a small business set-aside issued by the Department of the Army, for laboratory services. The protesters contend that the agency lacks a reasonable basis for the cancellation and that the agency should instead have amended the solicitation, held discussions and requested revised proposals. We deny the protests. This RFP is for a contractor to provide testing services for the detection of antibodies that work against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) for various military organizations. These services have been provided by a large business since 1997. Based upon market research, the agency decided that this requirement could be set aside for small business concerns. A solicitation for these services, set aside for small business concerns, was issued, but was ultimately cancelled on March 27, 2007. [1] This RFP, also set aside for small business concerns, was issued on August 18. The RFP provided for the award of a indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract, under which fixed-price task orders would be issued to the awardee for a base 1-year period with four 1-year options. The statement of work (SOW) allowed for a 90-day transition period during which the awardee and the incumbent would phase-in/phase-out respectively. RFP at 24. Determination of the most advantageous proposal was to be based on six evaluation factors: (1) technical capability, (2) quality control, (3) management capability and experience, (4) past and present performance, (5) financial capability, and (6) price/cost. Factors (1), (3) and (5) were equal in importance and their combined weight was greater than the combined weight of the equally weighted factors (2) and (4). The combined weight of the non-price/cost factors was more important than price/cost. The first three factors each had four subfactors. RFP at 164. As relevant to this protest, subfactor (1B), standard operating procedures (SOP) manual, required the offeror to "provide a comprehensive SOP manual that specifically delineate[s] the contractor's plan of action for providing services required by this contract, which establishes and explains its methodology for how it proposes to accomplish each function of the SOW requirements," and subfactor (2B), inspection techniques, required the offeror to "provide a description of its current quality control plan and describe what measures and controls will be taken to ensure that quality control inspections are met." RFP at 155-56. The RFP advised that the adjectival ratings of "excellent," "good," "satisfactory," "marginal," and "unsatisfactory" would be used in the evaluation of the technical proposals. RFP at 162-63. The RFP further provided that to receive consideration for award, a rating of satisfactory must be achieved in all factors, and that in order for a factor to be considered satisfactory or above, all subfactors within the factor must be rated at least satisfactory or above. RFP at 162. The agency received four proposals by the September 28 due date for the receipt of proposals.