Martin Brothers Construction (W912HY21R0012)

B-420797.6 Feb 01, 2024 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights BC Site Services, LLC (BCSS), a small disadvantaged business of Carrollton, Georgia, protests its exclusion from consideration for award under request for proposals (RFP) No. W912HY21R0012, issued by the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers (Corps) for horizontal construction in the Corps's Galveston District and Southwestern Division. The protester challenges the agency's evaluation of the firm's proposal. 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: BC Site Services, LLC File: B-420797.6 Date: February 1, 2024 Robert J. Symon, Esq., and Lisa A. Markman, Esq., Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, for the protester. Clark Bartee, Esq., Department of the Army, for the agency. Samantha S. Lee, Esq., and Peter H. Tran, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protest challenging agency’s evaluation of protester’s proposal and resulting elimination from competition is denied where record shows that evaluation was reasonable, and elimination was consistent with solicitation’s two-phase selection process. DECISION BC Site Services, LLC (BCSS), a small disadvantaged business of Carrollton, Georgia, protests its exclusion from consideration for award under request for proposals (RFP) No. W912HY21R0012, issued by the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers (Corps) for horizontal construction in the Corps’s Galveston District and Southwestern Division. The protester challenges the agency’s evaluation of the firm’s proposal. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND The Corps issued the RFP on an unrestricted basis, with a portion of the awards reserved for small businesses, on March 21, 2022, providing that offerors would “be evaluated under the Two-Phase Design Build Process.”[1] Agency Report (AR), Exh. 6, RFP at 5, 20.[2] The solicitation contemplated award of indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ), multiple-award task order contracts (MATOCs) for 8-year terms to the offerors whose proposals were determined to represent the overall best value to the government, using a tradeoff process. Id. at 20-21. The RFP stated that the Corps intended to award “a target of 15” MATOCs “with the target of five (5) awards to Small Businesses for the Small Business Reserve[.]” Id. at 20. Task orders would be competed among the IDIQ contract holders, with the total value up to $7 billion for the entire pool of contracts. Id. at 20-21. For phase one of the competition, offerors were required to submit proposals to address the following evaluation factors, listed in descending order of importance: (1) past performance; (2) construction execution approach; and (3) organization/management team. Id. at 21-22. These evaluation criteria were the same for both unrestricted and small business reserve offerors, but the solicitation identified some different standards under the criteria for the small business reserve. See, e.g., id. at 29 (establishing the required bonding capacity of $350 million for the unrestricted offerors but reduced to $50 million for the small business reserve). Relevant here, the RFP advised that only those offerors selected to participate in phase two would be invited to submit a phase two proposal. Id. at 21. The agency reserved “the right to allow proposal revisions in accordance with FAR 15.306(d)(5) Exchanges with Offerors After Receipt of Proposals, if deemed necessary to determine the most highly qualified Offerors.” Id. at 30. Based on the evaluation of phase one proposals, the Corps would select the most highly qualified offerors and invite them to submit phase two proposals, with “a target” of 13 unrestricted and 7 small business offerors. Id. at 20. The agency received 36 phase one proposals, including one submitted by BCSS--which competed under the small business reserve standards--by the April 21, deadline for receipt of proposals. AR, Exh. 23, Phase One Down Select Document at 8. The agency first contacted nine of the offerors, including BCSS, providing them with “Evaluation Notices” for the offerors to address. AR, Exh. 10, Initial Phase One Down Select Document at 73-76. After receiving the offerors’ responses to the evaluation notices, the source selection evaluation board (SSEB) finalized its phase one evaluation and briefed the source selection authority (SSA). Id. at 76-83. On May 24, the SSA identified 10 unrestricted offerors and 9 small business reserve offerors as the most highly rated and invited those 19 offerors to submit phase two proposals. Id. at 83-84. On June 3, BCSS filed a protest with our Office challenging the agency’s evaluation and exclusion of BCSS from phase two of the competition.