Northstate Heavy Equipment Rental

B-416821 Dec 19, 2018 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Northstate Heavy Equipment Rental, a small business concern of Cottonwood, California, protests its failure to receive a blanket purchase agreement for handwashing stations under request for quotations No. 129J6118Q7010 issued by the Department of Agriculture, United States Forest Service. The protester contends that the agency unfairly conducted negotiations. We deny the protest. We deny the protest. View Decision Decision Matter of:  Northstate Heavy Equipment Rental File:  B-416821 Date:  December 19, 2018 Aaron Harvey for the protester. Azine Farzami, Esq., and Mark Garrett, Esq., Department of Agriculture, for the agency. Elizabeth Witwer, Esq., and Jennifer D. Westfall-McGrail, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protest that the agency's discussions were misleading is denied where the discussions were sufficient to lead the protester into the areas of its quotation which required revision. DECISION Northstate Heavy Equipment Rental, a small business concern of Cottonwood, California, protests its failure to receive a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) for handwashing stations under request for quotations (RFQ) No. 129J6118Q7010 issued by the Department of Agriculture, United States Forest Service.  The protester contends that the agency unfairly conducted negotiations.[1] We deny the protest. BACKGROUND The agency issued the RFQ on January 19, 2018, seeking quotations for potable and gray water trucks and trailer-mounted handwashing stations for the Pacific Southwest Region (Forest Service Region 5).[2]  RFQ at 1.  The agency contemplated establishing BPAs under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) § 13.303 with multiple vendors.  Id. at 5, 15; Agency Notice, Nov. 7, 2018.  The RFQ provided that the agency would evaluate quotations under three factors:  price, operational acceptability, and past performance.  RFQ at 6.  The RFQ further provided that BPAs would be established with vendors with:  (a) reasonably priced resources, (b) operationally acceptable resources, and (c) a low or unknown performance risk.  Id.  The price factor is the only evaluation factor relevant to Northstate's protest. The RFQ provided that vendors' prices would be evaluated for reasonableness and that "[p]rice reasonableness may be based upon competition, government estimates, commercial pricing, historical data, etc."  Id.  Important here, prior to the evaluation of quotations, the agency prepared an independent government cost estimate (IGCE), in which the agency established a maximum daily rate that it considered to be reasonable for each type of equipment.[3]  MOL at 4; Contracting Officer's Statement (COS) at 1; AR, Tab 9, Agency Price Analysis & IGCE.  The maximum daily rate served as the upper limit of what the agency considered to be an acceptable price for that piece of equipment. With regard to discussions, the RFQ provided that, in accordance with FAR provision 52.212-1, the agency intended to establish BPAs without discussions, but reserved the right to conduct discussions if determined to be in the agency's best interest.  RFQ at 45.  With respect to the type 1 handwashing stations at issue here, the agency received timely quotations from 18 vendors, including Northstate.  COS at 1; AR, Tab 6, Northstate Initial Quotation, at 4-5.  The agency identified those vendors proposing prices that exceeded the agency's predetermined maximum daily rate and entered into price negotiations with those vendors.  MOL at 4-5.  Northstate's proposed daily rates for its type 1 handwashing stations exceeded the maximum daily rate.[4]  Id. at 5; COS at 1.  Accordingly, on August 21, the agency sent a negotiation memorandum to Northstate.  AR, Tab 11, Negotiation Memorandum.  The memorandum provided, in pertinent part as follows: [T]he following item(s) need your attention: Price analysis conducted has found the daily rates submitted for your Equipment ID's, as follows, [] to be TOO HIGH and not within this year's acceptable price range:  Handwashing Type 1 4RL7747 4NV2794 4DD2142 1WX7155 4RL7750 Recent historic agreement rates (2017) for the Pacific Southwest Region can be viewed at www.fs.fed.us/business/incident/vipr . . . [.]  Id.