Protest challenging agency’s decision to exclude protester from the competitive range is denied. The protester contended it had been wrongly penalized for lack of detail in its technical proposal. Under the solicitation’s definition of acceptable, the protester argued, offerors only needed to provide minimal detail. The court reasoned that minimal detail was a necessary but not a sufficient condition of an acceptable proposal. Just providing minimal detail did not get the protester’s proposal across the line. The protester also claimed the agency applied unstated criteria. But the court found that the agency merely applied criteria intrinsic to the stated evaluation factors.
The Department of Veterans Affairs posted a solicitation seeking to award an IDIQ contract for information technology services. The solicitation set forth a two-step evaluation process. In step 1, offerors were required to submit technical and price proposals responding to a sample task order. Following the step 1 evaluation, the VA would establish a competitive range and select offeror for step 2.
Summit Technologies, LLC submitted technical and price proposals for the step 1 evaluation. The VA, however, found that Summit’s technical proposal contained major errors that indicated a lack of understanding. The VA did not select Summit for the competitive range. Summit protested.
Summit argued that the VA failed to properly apply the solicitation’s criteria. The VA had faulted Summit’s approach for a lack of detail. But Summit argued that the solicitation’s definition of Acceptable only required “minimal detail.” Summit claimed that it had provided enough detail to qualify as acceptable.
The court, however, noted that the solicitation’s definition of acceptable required “at least minimal detail,” but did not guarantee that all responses with minimal detail would be acceptable. Minimal detail was a necessary but not sufficient for an acceptable proposal.
Next, Summit complained that it was unreasonably faulted for omitting “Enterprise High Level Planning” in its proposal. The phrase “Enterprise High Level Planning” did not appear in the solicitation, so the VA had must have applied unstated evaluation criteria.
The court noted that a solicitation need not identify criteria intrinsic to the stated evaluation factors. An agency applies unstated criteria when it uses a significantly different basis for evaluating proposals than that disclosed in the solicitation. In this case, the criteria the VA reviewed under the heading “Enterprise High Level Planning” were included in the sample task order and the performance work statement. Each of the areas the agency identified as weaknesses in Summit’s proposal logically correlated to the PWS’s list of things a successful offerors would need to perform.
Summit objected to a weakness it received for not sufficiently addressing HVAC requirements. The solicitation stated that contractors would be responsible for air-conditioning equipment. Summit argued it addressed temperature control to cool hardware, but should not have been expected to address HVAC more broadly. The court found that this argument amounted to disagreement with the court’s evaluation conclusions.
Summit asserted that the VA glibly evaluated its proposal, only looking for keywords. But the court saw no indication the VA only looked for keywords. The VA used some keywords, but those terms were included in the PWS and appeared as part of a reasoned explanation of the weaknesses assigned to Summit’s proposal.
Summit contended that the VA improperly criticized its failure to address the proposed labor mix in the sample task order. Summit argued that the solicitation did not required offerors to discuss the labor risk in their technical proposals. Alas, the court found that the VA did not evaluate Summit’s labor mix, but rather faulted the company for failing to address the requirement that offerors provide appropriate personnel for specific tasks.
Lastly, summit alleged that VA failed to consider its price in establishing the competitive range. The court found that the VA had evaluated price precisely as set forth in the solicitation. The SSA had found that while some unacceptable offerors had lower prices, none of those prices were low enough to overcome the unacceptable technical proposals.
Summit is represented by Theodore P. Watson. The government is represented by Evan Wisser, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Robert R. Kirschman, Jr., and Reginald T. Blades, Jr. of the Department of Justice as well as Frank V. DiNicola, Desiree A. DiCorcia and Tara Nash of the Department of Veterans Affairs.