Protest challenging the agency's evaluation and award decision is denied, where the agency was not required to defend an earlier evaluation and response to a protest after it had taken corrective action. GAO found that the agency's reevaluation and award decision did not rely on the same rationale as the initial award decision and therefore the protester had no basis to re-raise its earlier challenge. GAO also found the agency adequately documented its findings in comparison to the initial evaluation, in which it failed to support its conclusion that the awardee had addressed weaknesses in its proposal.
Prior to this protest, OGSystems LLC challenged challenging the award of a contract to Higgins, Hermansen, Banikas, LLC to provide base operations support the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. OGS argued that NGA’s technical evaluation lacked detail, and that the best value tradeoff was flawed. GAO sustained that protest and NGA took corrective action by reevaluating proposals and making a new award decision.
After the reevaluation, NGA again awarded the contract to HHB. OGS then filed a second protest with GAO, raising the same issues it raised in the initial protest.
In the first protest, OGS had argued that NGA had failed to explain how risks identified in HHB’s initial proposal had been resolved in its revised proposal. NGA claimed the risks had been resolved because the agency had revised its understanding of the solicitation. GAO sustained the first protest, in part, because NGA did not explain how its understanding of the solicitation changed and how this change resolved the risks identified in HHB’s initial proposal.
As part of the second protest, OGS contended that NGA had still failed to explain how its changed understanding of the solicitation had affected the evaluation of HHB’s revised proposal. But GAO found that the reevaluation was not required to explain or defend NGA’s response to the initial protest. NGA's reevaluation included a new rationale for its evaluation of HHB that did not rely on a changed understanding of the solicitation. The lack of detail that warranted corrective action in the first protest did not provide a basis to sustain the second protest.
OGS also argued that NGA’s reevaluation failed to explain how HHB’s proposal was acceptable under the space and interior division support subfactor. In the first protest, GAO had found that NGA’s evaluation of HHB under this subfactor lacked detail because, once again, it failed to explain how risks identified in HHB’s initial proposal with regard to furniture installation had been resolved in the proposal revision. But GAO determined that the reevaluation after corrective action more clearly explained how those furniture installation risks had been resolved.
Next, OGS contended that the NGA’s reevaluation failed to explain how risks identified with the number of hours proposed in HHB’s initial proposal had been resolved in the final proposal. Once again, GAO disagreed, finding that this time around, NGA had adequately explained that it resolved the risks by considering narrative explanations in the revised proposal regarding HHB’s approach to the requirements and subcontractor experience.
OGS further argued that a spreadsheet disclosed as part of the agency report had identified deficiencies in HHB’s proposal but that the agency had failed to resolve those concerns. Specifically, the spreadsheet had noted that HHB would be ready to perform “relatively soon after award.” OGS believed this showed that HHB was technically unacceptable because it was not able to perform the full requirements upon award. GAO rejected this argument, stating that this was merely a notation regarding performance soon after award, not an assessment of a deficiency.
Finally, OGS argued that the best value tradeoff was flawed because NGA unreasonably determined that evaluated advantages in OGS’s higher-priced proposals were not discriminators in favor of an award to OGS. GAO found that while certain comparisons of the proposal in the award decision could be viewed, in isolation, to discount the advantages of the OGS’s proposal, the record on the whole showed that the SSA had reasonably considered the relative merits of proposals in the context of the price difference.
OGS is represented by Cameron Hamrick, Peter Dungan, Jason A. Blindauer, and Christopher S. Denny of Miles & Stockbridge P.C. Higgins, Hermansen, Banikas, LLC is represented by Peter B. Ford, Timothy F. Valley, and Meghan F. Leemon of PilieroMazza PLLC. The government is represented by Kenneth W. Sachs and Daniel Lamb of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. GAO attorneys Jonathan L. Kang and Laura Eyester participated in the preparation of the decision.
GAO - OGSystems