Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

B-413444.3 Mar 03, 2017 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPEC), of Herndon, Virginia, requests that our Office recommend that it be reimbursed the reasonable costs of filing and pursuing its protests (B-413444, B-413444.2) challenging the award of a contract to IronBrick Associates, of Vienna, Virginia, under request for proposals (RFP) No. W91RUS-16-R-0002, which was issued by the Department of the Army, Army Materiel Command, for information technology support services. HPEC argues that it is entitled to reimbursement of its protest costs because the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action in response to its clearly meritorious protests. We grant in part and deny in part the request. We grant in part and deny in part the request. View Decision 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:  Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company--Costs File:  B-413444.3 Date:  March 3, 2017 J. Scott Hommer, III, Esq., William L. Walsh, Jr., Esq., Miranda S. Riemer, Esq., Keir X. Bancroft, Esq., and Michael T. Francel, Esq., Venable LLP, for the protester. Stacy G. Wilhite, Esq., and Marc J. Rosen, Esq, Department of the Army, for the agency. Jonathan L. Kang, Esq., and Laura Eyester, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1.  Protester’s request for reimbursement of protest costs is granted where the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action in response to a clearly meritorious challenge regarding the evaluation of the realism of offerors’ prices.  2.  Reimbursement of costs is not recommended for protest arguments that are not clearly meritorious and relied upon distinct and unrelated factual and legal bases. DECISION Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPEC), of Herndon, Virginia, requests that our Office recommend that it be reimbursed the reasonable costs of filing and pursuing its protests (B-413444, B-413444.2) challenging the award of a contract to IronBrick Associates, of Vienna, Virginia, under request for proposals (RFP) No. W91RUS-16-R-0002, which was issued by the Department of the Army, Army Materiel Command, for information technology support services.  HPEC argues that it is entitled to reimbursement of its protest costs because the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action in response to its clearly meritorious protests. We grant in part and deny in part the request. BACKGROUND The RFP was issued on December 21, 2015, and sought proposals for support of the Global Enterprise Fabric, which is a cloud enterprise environment that will provide the Army a complete suite of computing enterprise services under three broad areas:  infrastructure as a service, network services, and computer network defense.  RFP at 3.  The solicitation anticipated the award of a fixed-price contract for the delivery of required products and associated monthly services.  Award was to be made to the offeror that submitted the lowest-priced, technically acceptable proposal.  Id. at 40.  The RFP stated that prices would be evaluated as follows:  “[The agency] shall evaluate the offeror’s understanding of the [statement of objectives] technical requirements and the risk associated with the offeror’s technical [proposal].  Offeror[s] may be required to provide documentation supporting the realism of costs proposed.”  Id. at 41.  The Army received proposals from 13 offerors by the closing date of May 27, 2016.  The agency concluded that three of the offerors, including HPEC and IronBrick, submitted acceptable proposals.  Agency Report (AR), Tab 14, Source Selection Decision Document (SSDD), at 2.[1]  The agency found that IronBrick offered the lowest price, and HPEC offered the second-lowest price.  Id.  The Army therefore selected IronBrick’s proposal for award.  Id. at 3. HPEC received a post-award debriefing and filed a protest with our Office (B‑413444) on July 25 challenging the award to IronBrick.  The protester argued that the awardee’s proposal took exception to a material solicitation requirement, which rendered its proposal technically unacceptable, and that the agency failed to reasonably evaluate the realism of the awardee’s proposed price.  Protest (B‑413444) at 10-16.  Prior to the time for filing the agency report, the Army requested that we dismiss the price realism argument because, in the agency’s view, the RFP did not require such an evaluation.  See Agency Request for Dismissal (Aug. 12, 2016) at 4.