Protest challenging the agency’s evaluation of the protester’s key personnel is denied, where the agency reasonably concluded that the resume submitted for the protester’s proposed senior analysis demonstrated only five of the eight years of required experience. Because the agency reasonably assigned a deficiency to this aspect of the protester’s proposal, rendering it unawardable, GAO declined to consider the protester’s other arguments.
Systems Kinetics Integration Inc. protested the Army’s award of a contract for technical, analytical, and financial services to MDB Group LLC. SYSKIN alleged the Army misevaluated two of its key personnel and that it would have received the contract but for the agency’s errors.
First, SYSKIN challenged the deficiency assigned to its proposed senior analyst. The solicitation required that senior analysts have a minimum of 8 years of force development experience at senior levels of the Army and that education could be substituted for some of this experience.
SYSKIN argued that the agency failed to consider force development requirements; placed extreme focus on other areas, including planning, programming, budgeting, and execution experience and doctrine organization, training, materiel, leadership, education, personnel, and facilities experience; and assessed credit unequally between its senior analyst and its senior operations research systems analyst.
In response, the Army maintained that it properly credited SYSKIN’s senior analyst for 61 months of FD experience, which included 12 months for the candidate’s master’s degree and 49 months for two of the 10 positions on the candidate’s resume. However, the Army found that the eight other prior positions/assignments on the resume did not provide adequate experience in materiel and/or force development and validation, PPBE, and DoD acquisitions. Specifically, the agency found that the candidate’s positions did not demonstrate the interdisciplinary skill set required for the procurement.
GAO found the Army’s evaluation SYSKIN’s proposed senior analyst unobjectionable. GAO rejected the protester’s assertion that all of the senior analyst’s assignments were FD assignments that should considered qualifying experience, as well as its assertion that the Army assessed credit for educational achievement unequally between SYSKIN’s proposed senior analyst and senior ORSA. GAO found the agency’s evaluation of the qualification requirements for the senior analyst reasonable. GAO also found the solicitation reserved the agency’s right to substitute education for FD experience and that the protester’s arguments to the contrary were due to a fundamental misreading of the solicitation.
Based on the agency’s reasonable evaluation of SYSKIN’s senior analyst, GAO declined to address SYSKIN’s challenge to the evaluation of its proposed senior ORSA. GAO noted that the solicitation expressly stated that a proposal assessed one or more deficiencies would be unacceptable and unawardable, and therefore SYSKIN’s proposal would remain unacceptable even if the Army erred in its evaluation of the other key personnel.
Systems Kinetics Integration Inc. is represented by E. A. Dever Jr. The government is represented by Tamiesha C. Robinson-Asbery and Wade L. Brown, Department of the Army. GAO attorneys Pedro E. Briones and Peter H. Tran participated in the preparation of the decision.