Multiple protesters challenged the agency's evaluation of the awardee's prior experience. One of the awardee's contract references had a period of performance that overlapped the five-year recency window specified in the solicitation. COFC ruled there was no requirement for the agency to break down the contract experience into individual delivery orders to fit within the recency window. The agency properly considered the entire contract.
Red Cedar Harmonia, LLC v. United States, COFC Nos. 24-1862, 24-1863, 24-1875 (consolidated)
- Background - Multiple protesters challenged a contract award for IT support services. Each protester challenged the agency's evaluation of the awardee and their own proposals.
- Prior Experience - Two protesters objected to the agency's evaluation of the awardee's "demonstrated prior experience." They argued the agency should have disregarded most of the work under the awardee's first contract reference because the performance period overlapped with the five-year recency window specified in the solicitation. They suggested the contract should have been broken into delivery orders performed before and during the recency window. The court didn't agree. Although individual delivery orders are also contracts, the agency wanted a contractor with a comprehensive approach to fulfilling a BPA. Thus, master contracts were more probative of the offeror's fitness. The Court therefore found the agency properly considered the entire contract.
- Past Performance - The protesters also claimed the agency made substantive errors in its past performance evaluation:
- Awardee's Past Performance: One of the protesters argued that some favorable findings were irrational. For example, the protester asserted that the agency ignored how the awardee only managed the field sites instead of independently supporting them, performed contracts that were smaller in scope and complexity, and only restated the solicitation's minimum requirements. COFC found these arguments were belied by the record.
- Protester 1: This protester claimed the weaknesses assessed to its past performance evaluation contradicted the record. The Court noted that even if the weaknesses were expunged, it may not have mattered for Protester 1. Regardless, the Court still evaluated and rejected Protester 1's arguments that the agency deviated from the solicitation when it considered the internal user base size instead of the total user base size.
- Protester 2: Protester 2 argued the agency applied unstated evaluation criteria when it assigned its proposal a weakness for proposing a security management approach similar to the status quo. It claimed security management was not a subtask listed in subfactor 4. The Court was unpersuaded. Protester 2 elected to discuss security management in this area of the proposal. It could not now claim the agency should have ignored it.
- Price Evaluation - The protesters collectively pointed out that the awardee was able to propose such drastically lower prices because it mapped lower-paying LCATs to the BPA roles. They asserted either the solicitation or the FAR required the agency to consider whether, for each offeror and each BPA role, the role description matched the job description of the proposed LCAT, and document its findings. The Court disagreed.
- FAR: The protesters cited FAR 8.405-3(b)(2)(vi) to say the agency was "responsible for considering the level of effort and the mix of labor proposed to perform, and for determining that the proposed price is reasonable." The Court found the protester's contention proved too much. Requiring a heightened correlation between BPA role descriptions and LCAT job descriptions amounted to a price realism analysis, not the price evaluation required here.
- Solicitation: The protesters also argued the solicitation directed quoters to consider the BPA Role Description as a basis for labor category mapping. The Court was unpersuaded. The cited solicitation language called for a complete and accurate submission. To this end, the record showed that the agency had thoroughly checked the awardee's price submission for "completeness and accuracy."
The Protesters were represented by John Davidson Levin of Womble Bond Dickinson; Samuel S. Finnerty of PilieroMazza PLLC; and Tracye Winfrey Howard of Wiley Rein LLP. The agency was represented by Sosun Bae of DOJ. The defendant-intervenor was represented by Elizabeth Newell Jochum of Blank Rome LLP.
-- Case summary by Joshua Lim, Assistant Editor.