Request that GAO recommend reimbursement of the cost of pursuing a protest challenging the agency’s corrective action is granted, where the corrective action amounted to a change to the terms of the solicitation and therefore the agency should not have limited proposal revisions. GAO found the agency lacked a legally defensible position for limiting proposal revisions and that it unduly delayed its second corrective action until after the agency report and protester’s comments were filed.
CSRA LLC asked GAO to recommend that it be reimbursed the costs of filing and pursuing its protest challenging the Marine Corps’ corrective action in response to CSRA’s earlier protest of the award of a contract to C4Planning Solutions LLC.
CSRA’s initial protest argued the agency unreasonably evaluated the awardee’s technical proposal and the offerors’ price proposals. CSRA alleged that C4PS’s proposal identified three CSRA personnel who were performing on the incumbent contract, even though the individuals did not give the awardee permission to use their names. As corrective action, the agency requested revised staffing proposals that did not identify specific individuals to perform the work, but did not allow offerors to revise their technical or price proposals.
CSRA protested the terms of the corrective action, arguing that the agency had amended the terms of the solicitation, but had improperly restricted the scope of revisions to offerors’ revised proposals. After the filing of the agency report and the protester’s comments, the agency agreed to allow both parties to revise other aspects of their proposals.
In its request for costs, CSRA argued the agency’s initial decision to limit proposal revisions was unreasonable and that the corrective action itself was taken to avoid a decision by GAO on the merits. Specifically, CSRA argued that the required changes to the staffing proposal affected other areas of its proposal, and that the agency did not have a reasonable basis for the limitations imposed on revisions.
In response, the agency argued that its initial decision to limit proposal revisions was reasonable, and therefore the protest was not clearly meritorious. The Crops argued that its direction to offerors to remove the names of proposed personnel in their proposals did not affect any other part of the offerors’ proposals.
The agency explained that the RFP did not require offerors to identify the names of proposed personnel, and instead stated that the agency would evaluate how offerors would meet the solicitation requirements. Because the requested redaction did not materially change the RFP’s requirements, the agency argued that the clarification of its requirements with regard to staffing was not a solicitation amendment that triggered the obligation to permit offerors to make unlimited changes to their proposals.
However, while the circumstances did not dictate that the agency should amend the solicitation, GAO explained the agency should have used its discretion to amend the solicitation to clarify an ambiguous solicitation provision.
The staffing element required offerors to explain how they would provide and maintain personnel to perform the requirement. Though resumes were not required, offerors were to provide a narrative explaining how they would provide personnel with the required experience, list the proposed labor categories for supporting each IT system, and discuss their capacity to meet increased requirements.
Both CSRA and C4PS interpreted the RFP as permitting offerors to name specific individuals, and that each offeror provided information concerning those individuals’ intended roles and their qualifications and experience. GAO found this interpretation reasonable, as nothing expressly prohibited offerors from submitting the names of specific individuals, or from providing information regarding their qualifications or experiences.
GAO concluded that the corrective action represented a solicitation amendment that resolved a potential ambiguity with regard to whether offerors could demonstrate the merits of their technical approaches by identifying specific individuals and their qualifications and experience. The agency’s corrective action instructed offerors to submit revised proposals following this clarification of the RFP’s proposal requirements for offerors’ staffing approaches. As a result, GAO found the agency was required to allow offerors to revise all areas of their proposals, absent a reasonable expectation that the revisions would not have a material impact on other parts of the offerors’ proposals.
Next, GAO considered whether the required revisions would in fact have a material impact on other parts of offerors’ proposals. CSRA argued it did, asserting that it relied on the qualifications and experience of its proposed personnel—particularly experienced incumbent personnel—as set forth in the staffing plan, to bolster the credibility of its proposed approach under the other elements of the technical evaluation factor. According to the protester, because it cannot rely on descriptions of the qualifications and experiences of its proposed personnel, it must revise its entire proposal to account for a different approach to explaining how it will meet the solicitation’s requirements.
The agency disagreed, arguing that because its prior evaluation of offerors’ proposals under the technical evaluation factor did not specifically cite or rely on the qualifications of specifically-named individuals, the requirement to remove the names of individuals could not have any effect on the proposals or the evaluation of those proposals.
However, GAO did not agree that the requested proposal revisions were so narrow. CSRA explained that it prepared its proposal based on the assumption that the identification of specific individuals and their capabilities would enhance the merit of its proposal. For this reason, GAO agreed that the removal of the names of specific individuals from offerors’ staffing plans was linked to other parts of the offerors’ proposals, and that the agency should have permitted revision to these parts of the proposals as well.
Having found the protest grounds were clearly meritorious, GAO also concluded the agency’s response was unduly delayed, because its corrective action was not taken until after the submission of the agency report and the protester’s comments.
However, GAO found no merit to the protester’s allegation that the agency’s corrective action was a pretext to avoid a decision the merits of its case. GAO also concluded the protest grounds were severable from the clearly meritorious grounds and declined to recommend costs for this argument.
CSRA LLC is represented by David M. Hibey and Nathaniel Castellano of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP. The government is represented by Lisa L. Baker, United States Marine Corps. GAO attorneys Jonathan L. Kang and Laura Eyester participated in the preparation of the decision.