The agency said the protester’s absurdly fast response time—10-15x faster than the solicitation required—evinced a misunderstanding of requirements. The protester argued the agency failed to appreciate the subtleties of the response time it proposed. The COFC said that if the agency had to dig into subtleties, then the protester had not submitted a well-written proposal.
SSI Claimnset v. United States, COFC No. 23-581C
- Solicitation – The VA issued a solicitation seeking a contractor to convert paper health records into an electronic format. Three offerors submitted proposals. The VA selected one of them. The two unsuccessful offerors protested.
- Response Time Weakness – One of the protesters challenged a weakness it received for its response time—that is, the time it took to convert a record. The protester claimed its response time was 10-15x faster than the solicitation’s 20-second minimum. The agency said this response time was too fast and indicated a misunderstanding of the requirements.
- Well-Written Proposal – The protester contended this response time was its own speed with respect to the 20-second requirement and did not necessarily reflect the total turnaround time for a transaction. Indeed, the protester argued that an exhibit to its proposal had noted the VA may require an additional 4-5 seconds of response. But the court found the protester had not clearly explained the subtleties of its response time. And the agency was not obligated to sift through the proposal to discern what the protester meant by its response time.
- Performance Risk – The protester argued the agency had not explained how its response time created performance risk. The court rejected this argument, reasoning that the problem with the protester’s response time was not performance risk. Rather, it was that the response time was absurdly fast, indicating the protester fundamentally misunderstood the requirement.
- Unequal Treatment – One of the protesters alleged the VA credited the awardee for its involvement in certain workgroups but did not credit the protester for a similar level of involvement. The court agreed with the protester. The agency had disparately evaluated the offerors’ involvement in workgroups. Nevertheless, the protester had not been prejudiced by the error. The awardee may have received a strength for its workgroup involvement, but that strength had no role in the award decision.
- Price Reasonableness – Another protester argued the agency mailed it in on the price reasonableness evaluation. The court disagreed, finding the agency had performed a thorough reasonableness analysis, which complied with the FAR. The agency had compared prices to a government estimate, averaged prices together, and conducted a standard deviation analysis.
- Unbalanced Pricing – A protester complained that the agency unreasonably found its prices were unbalanced. But the court didn’t see a problem. The protester had overstated prices on three high-quality CLINs. The agency reasonably concluded this imbalance created price risk.
- Technical Weaknesses – One of the protesters objected to weaknesses assessed to its technical proposal for a hosting requirement and payer identification requirement. The court, however, found the protester had not adequately explained its approaches to these requirements so the weaknesses were justified.
–Case summary by Craig LaChance, Editor in Chief
