Protest challenging an agency’s restriction on quotation revisions after amending the solicitation in response to an earlier protest is sustained, where the amendment materially impacted aspects of the protester’s quotation outside of the areas permitted by the agency for revision.
Castro & Company LLC protested the terms of a Transportation Security Administration solicitation for financial audit and internal control support services, arguing that the agency unreasonably restricted the scope of quotation revisions allowed by the corrective action taken in response to an earlier protest.
As part of its corrective action, the agency issued an amendment to the solicitation deleting language from an optional task CLIN and modifying the CLIN language. The agency restricted offerors to amending their quotations only in relation to this task and advised that any other revisions would not be evaluated.
Castro protested this restriction, arguing that the restriction inherently prejudices the procurement against any offeror whose existing staffing strategy incorporated taking advantage of perceived efficiencies in Tasks 1 and 2 to address the potential needs of Task 3.
Further, Castro asserted that by amending the solicitation to require three full-time staff in Task 3 without providing the option to make corresponding adjustments to the remainder of the staffing strategy, the agency made decisions on behalf of some (but not all) offerors regarding the hours and staffing mix of those personnel previously proposed across all three tasks.
In response, the agency argued that the amendment merely clarified an ambiguity in the agency’s staffing requirement for Optional Task 3, and, as such, the amendment could not have had any effect on other aspects of the quotation. The agency further argued that since task 3 was optional, it is a separate requirement that is inherently severable from the rest of the scope of work. According to the agency, offerors cannot assume that such an optional task will be exercised by the agency, and therefore they cannot assume to propose efficiencies in their staffing and/or pricing premised on the concept that they will perform the optional task.
However, GAO disagreed. According to GAO, while optional task 3 is severable, this fact alone does not preclude any amendment to the optional task 3 scope of work from impacting a vendor’s quotation strategy. GAO found that Castro’s strategy for performing optional task 3 included utilizing personnel and labor hours outside of the number of personnel specifically proposed for the optional task 3 CLIN. Castro’s revised quotation shows that the firm quoted at least two personnel to perform across all three tasks. Further, Castro revised its response to optional task 4 by deleting the personnel it proposed to directly perform the task and revising the labor hours for personnel who were proposed to work across all tasks specified in the scope of work.
Accordingly, GAO concluded that the solicitation amendment materially impacted aspects of Castro’s quotation outside of the areas permitted by the agency for revision, and therefore the agency’s limitation on revisions was unreasonable. GAO sustained the protest.
The protester is represented by Thomas Castro, Castro & Company LLC. The government is represented by Michael Kiffney, Department of Homeland Security. GAO attorneys Robert T. Wu and Peter H. Tran participated in the preparation of the decision.