Cotton & Company, LLP (80HQTR19Q0006)

B-418380.4 Mar 10, 2021 Jump To FULL REPORT VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Cotton & Company, LLP (Cotton), of Alexandria, Virginia, protests the issuance of a task order to Ernst & Young LLC, of New York, New York, under request for quotations (RFQ) No. 80HQTR19Q0006, issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for the NASA Annual Financial Statement Audit (NAFSA). Cotton challenges the agency's evaluation of quotations and the 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:  Cotton & Company, LLP File:  B-418380.4 Date:  March 10, 2021 Thomas O. Crist, Esq., Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff, LLP, for the protester. Craig A. Holman, Esq., and Thomas Petit, Esq., Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, for Ernst & Young LLP, the intervenor. James A. Vatne, Esq., Amber M. Hufft, Esq., Ian Rothfuss, Esq., and Jessica M. Sitron, Esq., National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for the agency. Katherine I. Riback, Esq., and Evan C. Williams, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protest that agency misevaluated vendors’ past performance is denied where the record shows that the agency’s evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation.  DECISION Cotton & Company, LLP (Cotton), of Alexandria, Virginia, protests the issuance of a task order to Ernst & Young LLC, of New York, New York, under request for quotations (RFQ) No. 80HQTR19Q0006, issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for the NASA Annual Financial Statement Audit (NAFSA).  Cotton challenges the agency’s evaluation of quotations and the source selection decision. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND On July 18, 2019, NASA issued the RFQ under the procedures of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 8.4.  The RFQ was issued to vendors holding a contract under the General Services Administration’s, Federal Supply Schedule Number 00CORP, PSS, entitled Professional Services Schedule; Financial and Business Solutions, SIN (special item number) 520-7, Financial & Performance Audits.  Agency Report (AR), Tab 1, RFQ at 5.[1]  The purpose of the solicitation is to obtain an independent full-scope audit of the agency’s annual financial statements, performed in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards (i.e, GAO’s Government Auditing Standards) and Office of Management and Budget audit requirements, using statement of work-specified American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) procedures.  Id. at 42.  The solicitation contemplated the award of a fixed-price task order for a base period of 1-year and four 1-year option periods on a best-value tradeoff basis, considering the following evaluation factors:  technical, past performance, and price.  Id. at 5, 7, 107. Under the RFQ, the agency would first evaluate the technical factor on a pass/fail basis, and then would evaluate quotations which received a technical rating of pass under the past performance and price factors.  Id.  The solicitation stated that the price factor was less important than past performance, and that a quotation with the lowest price may not be selected if award to a higher-priced vendor with more competitive past performance was determined to be most advantageous to the government.[2]  Id.  The solicitation also established that the agency would evaluate the quotations in accordance with FAR subpart 8.4.  Id. at 101. Of relevance to this protest, regarding past performance, the RFQ instructed vendors to provide certain specified information for no more than five of their most relevant contracts.  Id. at 103.  The solicitation stated that if a contract reference was deemed recent (i.e., ongoing or completed within prior five years), and met the minimum average annual cost/fee incurred of at least $1,000,000, the agency would then consider the contract reference’s degree of relevance based on content and performance.  Id. at 108.  Specifically, the RFQ provided that the content relevance evaluation would primarily focus on the following: The content relevance evaluation will primarily focus on the following specific areas of relevance:  (1) audit of government owned, contractor-held property, (2) audit of environmental liability estimates, (3) use, knowledge, and understanding of the SAP [systems, applications and products] financial system, and (4) advanced knowledge of computer networking, including widely used protocols, firewall design, network and host-based intrusion detection system (IDS) deployment, and secure domain name system (DNS) implementation. Id.