STG, Inc.

B-415580.3 Mar 27, 2018 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights STG, Inc., of Reston, Virginia, requests that our Office recommend it be reimbursed the reasonable costs of filing and pursuing its protest of the issuance of a task order to Enterprise Services, LLC, of Herndon, Virginia, by the Department of Homeland Security, United States Customs and Border Protection, under solicitation No. C-3942-0 for network operations center services. We dismissed the protest as academic based on the agency's corrective action. STG argues that the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action in response to a clearly meritorious protest. We deny the request. We deny 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:  STG, Inc. File:  B-415580.3 Date:  March 27, 2018 John E. Jensen, Esq., J. Matt Carter, Esq., and Robert C. Starling, Esq., Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, for the protester. Terrius D. Greene, Esq., Department of Homeland Security, for the agency. Michael Willems, Esq., and Edward Goldstein, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Request for reimbursement of protest costs is denied where the agency did not unduly delay taking corrective action in response to supplemental protest grounds and where the remaining protest grounds were not clearly meritorious. DECISION STG, Inc., of Reston, Virginia, requests that our Office recommend it be reimbursed the reasonable costs of filing and pursuing its protest of the issuance of a task order to Enterprise Services, LLC, of Herndon, Virginia, by the Department of Homeland Security, United States Customs and Border Protection, under solicitation No. C-3942-0 for network operations center services.  We dismissed the protest as academic based on the agency’s corrective action.  STG argues that the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action in response to a clearly meritorious protest. We deny the request. BACKGROUND The agency issued the request for proposals (RFP) on April 5, 2017, to holders of the National Institutes of Health, Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center, “Chief Information Officer–Solutions and Partners 3” governmentwide acquisition contract.  Agency Report (AR), Tab 1, Memorandum of Law at 1; AR, Tab 2, RFP Letter at 1.  The RFP contemplated a best-value award of a task order based on the following three evaluation factors:  (1) technical/management approach, (2) past performance, and (3) price.  AR, Tab 2, Instructions to Offerors at 3.  The technical factor included four subfactors, in descending order of importance:  (1) demonstrated understanding of the requirement; (2) staffing/resource management plan; (3) proactive and predictive analysis plan; and (4) incoming transition plan.  Id. at 3-4.  The RFP provided that all non-price evaluation factors, when combined, were significantly more important than price, but that when considering proposals of substantially equal technical merit, price would become the more significant factor.  Id. at 9. The agency received seven proposals in response to the RFP, including proposals from STG and Enterprise Services, and announced the issuance of a task order to Enterprise Services on September 21, 2017.  Memorandum of Law at 4.  STG received a debriefing on October 5, and submitted additional questions on October 6.  Id.  The agency answered those additional questions on October 13, and STG filed its initial protest on October 18.  Id. STG’s initial protest argued that the agency:  (1) unreasonably failed to assign multiple additional strengths under each technical subfactor, as well as incorrectly assigning weaknesses under two technical subfactors; (2) unreasonably failed to assign a superior rating for some of its past performance references; (3) unreasonably downgraded STG’s overall past performance rating on the basis of two neutral past performance ratings.[1]  Protest at 13-31.  The agency primarily argued in response that its evaluation of STG’s proposal was reasonable, and that STG’s protest arguments amounted to disagreement with the agency’s evaluation.  See, e.g., Memorandum of Law at 4-6. Following the submission of the agency report, STG filed a supplemental protest alleging additional grounds related to the evaluation of its own proposal and disparate treatment in both the technical and past performance evaluations, as well as alleging that the agency had impermissibly double-counted some of the awardee’s technical strengths.  Supplemental Protest at 2-18.  Prior to filing a supplemental agency report, the agency notified our Office that it intended to reevaluate technical proposals and past performance submissions and make a new source-selection decision.  Agency Notice of Corrective Action at 1. ...