The First Choice, LLC

B-417196,B-417196.2,B-417196.3 Mar 25, 2019 Jump To FULL REPORT VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights The First Choice, LLC (TFC), of Fort Washington, Maryland, a small business, protests the award of a contract to RER Solutions, Inc., of Herndon, Virginia, also a small business, under request for proposals (RFP) No. 73351018R0010, issued by the Small Business Administration (SBA) for commercial data analysis and loan recommendation services for the SBA Office of Disaster Assistance (ODA). TFC argues that the SBA misevaluated the proposals and made an unreasonable source selection decision. We deny the protest. 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:  The First Choice, LLC File:  B-417196; B-417196.2; B-417196.3 Date:  March 25, 2019 Megan Mocho Jeschke, Esq., Elizabeth N. Jochum, Esq., and Amy L. Fuentes, Esq., Holland & Knight LLP, for the protester. Jonathan T. Williams, Esq., Julia Di Vito, Esq., Jacqueline K. Unger, Esq., and Meghan F. Leemon, Esq., PilieroMazza PLLC, for RER Solutions, Inc., the intervenor. Sam Q. Le, Esq., and Meagan K. Guerzon, Esq., Small Business Administration, for the agency. Paul N. Wengert, Esq., and Tania Calhoun, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1.  Protest that agency misevaluated the protester’s proposal under the technical and past performance factors is denied where the evaluations were reasonable and consistent with the solicitation.  2.  Protest challenging the agency’s evaluation of the protester’s fixed price as unrealistic is denied where the solicitation stated that the evaluation would assess whether the offered prices reflected a clear understanding of the requirements, posed risk, or would otherwise have an impact on technical evaluation, and where the agency performed an adequate realism assessment in the context of a fixed-price commercial item procurement by comparing elements of the protester’s price to the agency’s independent estimate.   3.  Protest that agency should have rejected awardee’s proposal is denied where contracting officer considered that awardee’s price was higher than agency estimate and other offered prices, and exercised business judgment to determine that awardee’s price was nevertheless reasonable.  DECISION The First Choice, LLC (TFC), of Fort Washington, Maryland, a small business, protests the award of a contract to RER Solutions, Inc., of Herndon, Virginia, also a small business, under request for proposals (RFP) No. 73351018R0010, issued by the Small Business Administration (SBA) for commercial data analysis and loan recommendation services for the SBA Office of Disaster Assistance (ODA).  TFC argues that the SBA misevaluated the proposals and made an unreasonable source selection decision.  We deny the protest.  BACKGROUND The RFP, issued on September 7, 2018, requested proposals from small businesses to provide services under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for a 1-year base period and four option years, and for the issuance of the initial 1-year task order.  RFP at 13.  The statement of work provided that the contractor would be given loan application data that it would use to obtain and analyze additional data from other sources; prepare a loan recommendation based on industry standard loan-making practices; and transmit its recommendation (in particular, to approve or decline the loan application) along with the supporting data used to make the recommendation to the agency electronically within 10 minutes of receiving the application.  Id. at 8, 12; RFP amend. 1 at 25‑27.  Orders were to be issued either on a fixed-price or a time-and-materials/labor hour basis, and offerors were required to provide fully-loaded fixed-price labor rates, and fixed prices for each loan recommendation, which could include tiered prices (that is, discounts for larger quantities of recommendations).  RFP at 4-5.  The contract (including the first task order) would be awarded to the offeror whose proposal provided the best value under four factors, in descending order of importance:  technical approach, information technology (IT) security plan, past performance, and price.  Id. at 40.  The RFP listed a detailed set of seven subfactors under the technical approach factor, and four subfactors under the IT security plan factor.  Id. at 41-43.  The past performance evaluation would assess whether the past performance demonstrated a probability of success on the required effort, which would include assessing “past performance of managing contracts of at least $5 million annually as well as the past performance on prior similar efforts” to the RFP statement of work.  Id.