Protest objecting to the evaluation of the protester’s proposal is denied. The protester argued that it had been improperly penalized for using too many acronyms without providing a reference list for the acronyms. The protester claimed the agency had understood its acronyms. The court found that regardless of whether the agency understood the acronyms, the fact remained that the protester did not provide a glossary for its acronyms. The protester also alleged that the agency disparately evaluated proposals because the awardee also had an acronym-heavy proposal. But the court found that the protester had not been merely downgraded for its using acronyms; rather, it had been penalized for having tables filled with acronyms that failed to map the protester's experience to the statement of work. The awardee’s proposal, on the other hand, did not suffer from the same deficiencies.
The U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) issued a solicitation seeking to award an IDIQ contract for Special Operations Forces Core Services Support. People, Technology& Processes, LLC (PTP) submitted a proposal in response to the solicitation. USSOCOM, however, found that PTP’s proposal was unacceptable under the solicitation’s management factor and did not select PTP for award. PTP filed a protest with the Court of Federal Claims.
PTP argued in various ways that the unacceptable rating it received under the management factor was arbitrary and capricious. First, PTP argued that the evaluators’ written evaluation misreported the contents of the proposal tables to the SSA. The court, however, found that the SSEB’s evaluation was coherent and reasonable and did not misrepresent PTP’s proposal.
PTP contended that USSOCOM ignored the narrative portions of its proposal or misevaluated the proposal as requiring a narrative explanation for every task in the statement of work. The court found that nothing in the record supported these allegations.
PTP alleged that the agency’s evaluation under the management factor was inconsistent with its past performance evaluation. But the management portion and past performance portions of the proposal were submitted different volumes. The solicitation provided that each volume would be evaluated on a stand-alone basis. PTP’s argument, which would have required the agency to cross reference volumes, contravened the terms of the solicitation.
The agency had penalized PTP for using an overabundance of acronyms in its proposal without providing a reference list for the acronyms. PTP claimed that it shouldn’t have been penalized because during debriefing, the agency cy admitted that it understood the acronyms in PTP’s proposal. The court reasoned that regardless of whether the agency understood PTP’s acronym’s, the solicitation had invited offerors to provide an acronym reference list, and PTP had not provided one.
PTP contended the agency disparately evaluated proposals because the awardee used “acronym-heavy capabilities tables” to map its experience to the statement of work but was not downgraded for its use of acronyms. But the court found that PTP was misconstrued the agency’s evaluation of its proposal. USSOCOM did not downgrade PTP’s proposal simply because it used acronyms. Rather, it was because PTP’s proposal had table filled with acronyms that failed to explain how the proposal mapped to statement of work's capabilities requirements. The awardee’s proposal sufficiently explained how it would meet the capabilities. The proposals were thus dissimilar, and the agency did not err in evaluating them differently.
PTP is represented by Craig A. Holman, Kara L Daniels, and Nathaniel E. Castellano of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP. The government is represented by Sosun Bae, Patricia m. McCarthy, Robert E. Kirschman, Jr., and Jeffrey Bossert Clark of the Department of Justice as well Isabelle P. Cutting and Major Michelle E. Gregory of the Air Force.