The protester challenged its exclusion from the competitive range. The protester argued the agency had disparately established the range. For offerors in the range, the agency had determined that flaws in their proposals could be addressed with discussions. The protester alleged flaws in its proposal could also be addressed in discussions, so it should have been included in the range, too. GAO didn't agree. The flaws in the protester’s proposal were more severe than problems in other offerors’ proposals.
Octo Consulting Group, Inc., GAO B-420988, B-420988.2
Background
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) issued a solicitation seeking support for the agency’s geospatial search and retrieval system. NGA received eight proposals, including a proposal from Octo Consulting. NGA established a competitive ranged of the two highest-rated proposals. Octo was not included in the range, so it protested.
Analysis
Technical Evaluation
Octo alleged the agency failed to assign strengths to its technical approach and unreasonably assessed a weakness. GAO found these arguments amounted to disagreement with the agency’s evaluation conclusions.
Price Reasonableness
Octo contended that one of the offerors in the competitive range had proposed an unreasonable price. Octo noted this offeror’s price was more double the lowest-price offeror's.
But GAO found the agency had properly evaluated reasonableness. NGA had calculated the mean of proposed prices and then determined whether prices fell within a standard deviation of the mean. The price Octo objected to was high, but it was less than two standard deviations from the mean.
Professional Compensation
Another offeror in the competitive range had a price $20 million lower than Octo’s. Octo argued this offeror must have proposed unrealistic professional compensation.
NGA acknowledged that it was unable to evaluate this offeror’s compensation plan, because the offeror had not provided detailed salary information. Nevertheless, NGA thought it could obtain this information through discussions. GAO was cool with this. While an award based on missing information would be improper, nothing requires the agency to exclude an offeror from the competitive where the agency concludes a deficiency could be addressed through discussions.
Disparate Treatment
Octo contended NGA had disparately established the competitive range. For offerors in the range, NGA had determined that problems with their proposals could be addressed through discussions. Octo reasoned that problems with its own proposal could also have been addressed through discussions. But when it came to Octo, NGA had been as magnanimous.
GAO, however, found that Octo had not demonstrated that the flaws in its proposal were equal to the problems in other offerors’ proposals. In particular, Octo had received a “Fail” rating under one the evaluation factors. Moreover, Octo’s proposal had fewer strengths than the offerors included in the competitive range.
Octo is represented by Damien C. Specht, James A. Tucker, and Victoria Dalcourt Angle of Morrison & Foerster LLP. The agency is represented by Mark B. Grebel and Kenneth W. Sachs of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. GAO attorneys Uri R. Yoo and Alexander O. Levine participated in the decision.
--Case summary by Craig LaChance, Senior Editor