BNUMBER: B-270966; B-270966.2
DATE: May 28, 1996
TITLE: Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc.
**********************************************************************
Matter of:Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc.
File: B-270966; B-270966.2
Date:May 28, 1996
J. Patrick McMahon, Esq., and Thomas K. David, Esq., McMahon & David,
for the protester.
James Y. Miyazawa, Esq., Department of Navy, for the agency.
Charles W. Morrow, Esq., and James A. Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the
General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.
DIGEST
Agency properly rejected protester's proposal where its responses to
sample tasks designed to determine the offeror's understanding of and
the technical approach to satisfying the government's requirements
were unacceptable.
DECISION
Dimensions International/QSOFT, Inc. protests the rejection of its
proposal under request for proposals (RFP) No. N00600-95-R-1461, a
total small business set-aside, issued by the Department of the Navy,
for automatic data processing services at the Naval Aviation Depot
Operations Center, Patuxent, Maryland, under a fixed-price contract
for a base year with four 1-year options.
We deny the protest.
The RFP provided for award to be made to the offeror whose proposal
represented the best value, price and other factors considered. The
RFP requested prices for a variety of designated labor categories and
informed offerors that cost/price would be evaluated for realism.
Technical proposals were to be evaluated under the following criteria
listed in descending order of importance: (1) technical approach, (2)
key personnel, (3) management plan, and (4) corporate experience.
Under technical approach, the proposal preparation instructions
required each offeror to provide detailed responses to eight sample
tasks, which were said to be representative of the work to be
performed under the contract. For each sample task, the offeror's
response was to include (1) a description of possible areas to be
investigated, (2) a detailed technical approach and detailed
step-by-step procedures, (3) identification of additional information
that would be required to perform the task, (4) a detailed work plan
for implementation, (5) a product outline describing what would be the
expected deliverable(s) and/or results of the task, and (6) man-hours
by labor category. The RFP provided that the sample tasks would be
evaluated to determine the extent of the offeror's understanding of
and feasibility/ability to successfully perform the government's
requirements.
The RFP informed offerors that each technical proposal would be
qualitatively evaluated under each technical criterion and
subcriterion and categorized as "Outstanding," "Better," "Acceptable,"
"Marginal," or "Unacceptable." In addition, the RFP stated that an
unacceptable rating in one technical criterion could result in the
entire technical proposal being found unacceptable, and that:
"(a) The government reserves the right to conduct a preliminary
evaluation of technical proposals, during which the government
will only evaluate offerors' responses to Sample Tasks 1-8.
Based on the results of that evaluation, and after consideration
of offerors' proposed prices, the government will determine which
proposals stand a reasonable chance for award, and will perform a
full technical evaluation of those proposals.
"(b) Any proposal deemed not to stand a reasonable chance for
award following the preliminary evaluation described in (a) above
will be removed from further consideration and the offeror so
notified.
"(c) The results of this preliminary evaluation will not be and
should not be construed as a competitive range determination."
Eleven proposals, including that of Dimensions (the incumbent
contractor), were submitted by the July 19 closing date. The Navy
conducted a preliminary evaluation of the offerors' responses to the
sample tasks. Six proposals received an overall rating of marginal,
and five proposals, including Dimensions's, received an overall rating
of unacceptable for their responses to these tasks. The Navy prepared
a consensus team summary report on its evaluation of the sample tasks
and destroyed the individual evaluators' worksheets.
Dimensions's unacceptable proposal received marginal ratings for four
of the sample tasks and unacceptable ratings for the other four sample
tasks. The Navy found that Dimensions's proposal did not demonstrate
an understanding of the sample tasks or provide evidence that it could
provide a reasonable logical approach to satisfying the government's
requirements; that the responses to the tasks, even those rated
marginal, were not written in a clear or complete manner and failed in
many parts to specifically address the required elements beyond a
cursory level; that overall the sample tasks failed to meet the
minimum requirements and had many gross omissions; and that the
proposal would have to be completely rewritten in order to be made
acceptable. The Navy further concluded that, given Dimensions's
apparent lack of understanding of the sample tasks, it was not
reasonable to assume that its proposed price represented an accurate
forecast of the work to be performed under the contract.
Of the six marginally rated proposals, the Navy found that four should
not be rejected. Two of these proposals' marginal ratings were found
generally attributable to a lack of attention to minor details; these
proposals were found to have the potential to exceed the government's
requirements if corrected. Another proposal had only one unacceptable
sample task. The fourth proposal included in the competition had four
acceptable sample task responses and four marginal responses; three of
the four marginal responses could be made acceptable with only minor
corrections. The Navy found a distinct break point between these four
proposals and the other seven submitted, which were excluded from
further consideration.
Dimensions contends that the Navy's evaluation of its proposal as
unacceptable is not reasonably supported by the record. To this
effect, Dimensions asserts that its performance under the incumbent
contract demonstrates its understanding of the work and should have
been considered. Dimensions also argues that its protest should be
sustained because the Navy has admitted destroying the individual
evaluators' worksheets and the record allegedly does not reasonably
support the evaluation.
In determining the propriety of an agency's evaluation decision, we
examine the record to determine whether the judgment was reasonable
and in accord with the evaluation criteria listed in the solicitation.
Southwest Marine, Inc.; American Sys. Eng'g Corp., B-265865.3;
B-265865.4, Jan. 23, 1996, 96-1 CPD para. 56. Although such judgments are
by their nature often subjective, their exercise in the evaluation of
proposals must be reasonable and must bear a rational relationship to
the announced criteria upon which competing offers are to be selected.
Implicit in the foregoing is that these judgments must be documented
in sufficient detail to show that they are not arbitrary. Id. In
particular, the agency's technical evaluation documentation is
required to include "[a]n analysis of the technically acceptable and
unacceptable proposals, including an assessment of each offeror's
ability to accomplish the technical requirements." Federal
Acquisition Regulation sec. 15.608(a)(3)(ii). While an agency is not
required to retain every document or worksheet generated during its
evaluation of proposals, the agency's evaluation must be sufficiently
documented to allow review of the merits of a protest. Southwest
Marine, Inc.; American Sys. Eng'g Corp., supra; KMS Fusion, Inc.,
B-242529, May 8, 1991, 91-1 CPD para. 447. In this regard, evaluators'
notes and workpapers may or may not be necessary to determine the
reasonableness of the agency's evaluation. KMS Fusion, Inc., supra;
see Department of the Army-Recon., B-240647.2, Feb. 26, 1991, 91-1 CPD para.
211. Where an agency fails to document or retain evaluation
materials, it bears the risk that there is inadequate supporting
rationale in the record for the source selection decision and that we
will not conclude that the agency had a reasonable basis for the
decision. Southwest Marine, Inc.; American Sys. Eng'g Corp., supra;
Engineering and Computation, Inc., B-261658, Oct. 16, 1995, 95-2 CPD para.
176; American President Lines, Ltd., B-236834.3, July 20, 1990, 90-2
CPD para. 53.
We find no basis to object to the Navy's evaluation and subsequent
rejection of Dimensions's proposal. While we think the Navy's
destruction of the individual evaluators' worksheets may have been
premature, this is insufficient reason to disturb a procurement where,
as here, the protest record is otherwise adequate for our review. See
Southwest Marine, Inc.; American Sys. Eng'g Corp., supra. The Navy
prepared a composite evaluation report of the offerors' responses to
the sample tasks, which was based upon the individual evaluators'
evaluation.[1] This document discusses in detail how Dimensions's
responses to the sample tasks failed to satisfy minimum RFP
requirements and contained gross omissions, such that they failed to
evidence either an understanding of, or an acceptable technical
approach to satisfying, the government's requirements. This document
also contains each proposal's consensus rating for each sample task
response and for each of the six required elements of the sample task
responses, together with detailed narratives documenting the reasons
for these ratings.
Under a protective order, Dimensions had the opportunity to review
this consensus report. Yet Dimensions has not presented any specific
evidence disputing any of the factual findings pertaining to its or
any other offeror's proposal. Instead, Dimensions argues that the
Navy's methodology for determining the individual overall adjectival
ratings was unreasonable. For example, Dimensions complains that
under task 6, Dimensions received acceptable ratings for three of the
elements and unacceptable ratings for the other three elements, yet
its overall rating was considered unacceptable; Dimensions argues that
the rating should have been averaged to result in an overall rating of
marginal. We find no requirement that the ratings of the sample task
response elements be averaged and nothing unreasonable in the agency's
conclusion that an unacceptable rating in three of the six evaluated
elements of a sample task response rendered the sample task response
unacceptable overall, given the agency's documented reasons for its
unacceptable rating. See Wesley Medical Resources, Inc.; Human
Resource Sys., Inc., B-261938.5; B-261938.6, Nov. 20, 1995, 95-2 CPD para.
230. Specifically, with regard to Dimensions's response to task 6,
Dimensions's response simply failed to provide any discussion of what
additional information would be required to respond to this task or a
detailed work plan; in addition, the response generally did not
reference labor categories provided for under the RFP. The agency
reasonably found that these failures on Dimensions's response to task
6, as well as its other responses, were indicative of
Dimensions's lack of understanding of the government's requirements
and an unacceptable technical approach.
Dimensions argues that the agency should have also considered its past
experience as the incumbent, instead of simply considering the sample
task responses. However, the RFP put offerors on notice that they
were to provide a detailed response to the sample tasks and that an
inadequate response could result in summary rejection. It is
incumbent on an offeror to submit an adequately written technical
proposal for the agency to evaluate. Baker Support Servs., Inc.,
B-257054.2, Jan. 20, 1995, 95-1 CPD para. 29. No matter how competent a
contractor may be, the agency may elect to base an offeror's technical
evaluation entirely on the information submitted with the proposal.
Thus, an offeror runs the risk of being rejected if its fails to
submit an adequately written proposal. Id.
In sum, we find that the Navy had a reasonable basis for rejecting
Dimensions's proposal, without regard to its price, because the
proposal had to be completely rewritten in order to become acceptable.
See Counter Technology, Inc., B-260853, July 20, 1995, 95-2 CPD para. 39.
While the protester complains that the retained proposals were only
rated marginal and that all the proposals should therefore have been
retained, the record shows that the retained proposals were
significantly superior to Dimensions's unacceptable proposal and did
not need to be rewritten to be made acceptable.[2]
The protest is denied.
Comptroller General
of the United States
1. The Navy also prepared similar documentation for the other
competing offerors.
2. Dimensions argues that the provision permitting the preliminary
elimination of proposals was improper. This aspect of the protest is
untimely. A protestable issue that is apparent prior to the time set
for the receipt of initial proposals must be filed prior to that time.
See 4 C.F.R. sec. 21.2(a)(1) (1996).