BNUMBER:  B-272525
DATE:  October 21, 1996
TITLE:  C-Cubed Corporation

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Matter of:C-Cubed Corporation

File:     B-272525

Date:October 21, 1996

James P. Gallatin, Jr., Esq., Popham Haik, for the protester.
Thomas J. Touhey, Esq., Bastianelli, Brown, Touhey & Kelley, for 
Semcor, Inc., an intervenor.
Anita Dixon Polen, Esq., Department of the Navy, for the agency.
Mary G. Curcio, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General 
Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

Agency decision to eliminate protester's proposal from consideration 
for award was reasonable where it was not clear from best and final 
offer that protester had committed to providing personnel meeting the 
solicitation's education and experience requirements.

DECISION

C-Cubed Corporation protests the rejection of its proposal under 
request for proposals (RFP) No. N00189-94-R-0131, issued by the 
Department of the Navy for professional and technical engineering 
services for shipboard electronic and electrical equipment.

We deny the protest.

BACKGROUND

The solicitation, which contemplated award of a time-and-materials, 
delivery order contract for a 1-year base period, with four 1-year 
options, listed categories of personnel that would be required to 
perform the contract, as well as specific education and experience 
requirements for each.  The electronics assembler was required to have 
a high school degree, and the junior engineering technologist was 
required to have successfully completed 2 years of study at a school 
of higher education; there were no experience requirements for either 
category.  The nine miscellaneous support trades listed required a 
high school diploma and experience varying from 2 to 6 years in the 
specific trade.  Thus, for example, a sheet metal worker was required 
to have 5 years of experience fabricating, assembling, installing and 
repairing sheet metal products and equipment.

C-Cubed proposed (for the first time) in its best and final offer 
(BAFO) to employ individuals from the Virginia Apprenticeship Program.  
Its proposal stated that:

     "those are the individuals which are bid under the category of 
     Electronics Assembler.  Upon graduation from the program, the 
     individuals will be elevated to either Jr. Engineering 
     Technologist or Miscellaneous Support Trades."   

The contracting officer rejected C-Cubed's BAFO as unacceptable 
because he found it unclear whether the apprentices from the Virginia 
program would meet the education and experience requirements for the 
positions which they would fill.  More specifically, the BAFO did not 
indicate that the apprentices would have a high school degree, as 
required for the electronics assembler and miscellaneous support 
trades; did not indicate that the apprentices would complete the 2 
years of higher education required for the junior engineering 
technologist; and did not indicate that the apprentices would have the 
required years of experience when promoted to the miscellaneous 
support trades.

C-Cubed maintains that the information furnished was sufficient to 
establish compliance with the education and experience requirements, 
and that rejection of its proposal therefore was improper.  The 
protester points out that the apprentices in the Virginia program 
range in age from 16 to 24 years old, a range encompassing apprentices 
old enough to have completed high school (as required for the 
electronics assembler and miscellaneous support trades), and 2 years 
of higher education (as required for the junior engineering 
technologist).  Similarly, with respect to the experience required for 
the various support trade labor categories into which it proposed to 
promote apprentices, C-Cubed notes that two trade categories under the 
Virginia program (carpenter and pipefitter) have apprenticeship 
periods long enough to meet the experience requirements for the 
support trade positions listed in the solicitation, and that its BAFO 
identified another category under the Virginia program--electrical 
worker--with an apprenticeship period (4 to 5 years) sufficient to 
meet the experience requirement for all but one category of the 
miscellaneous support trades.[1]  C-Cubed concludes that it identified 
in its proposal a pool from which it could obtain adequately educated 
and experienced personnel, and that the Navy, in finding its proposal 
unacceptable, improperly assumed that C-Cubed would select from this 
pool individuals who do not meet the solicitation requirements;[2] 
this conclusion, C-cubed asserts, was inconsistent with the statement 
in its proposal that "this proposal is fully responsive to the 
mandatory requirements of the RFP."

In a negotiated procurement, any proposal that takes exception to a 
material solicitation requirement, or otherwise fails to conform to 
the material terms and conditions of the solicitation, is unacceptable 
and may not form the basis for an award.  See Scientific-Atlanta, 
Inc., B-253343 et al., Mar. 14, 1994, 94-1 CPD  para.  325.  Where an 
evaluation is challenged, we will review the matter to determine 
whether it was reasonable and consistent with the evaluation factors.  
Dylantic, Inc.,         B-261886, Oct. 30, 1995, 95-2 CPD  para.  197.  The 
Navy reasonably evaluated and rejected C-Cubed's proposal.  

While the pool of employees identified in C-Cubed's BAFO contained 
some individuals who would be able to satisfy the education and 
experience requirements, not all of the individuals in the pool could 
satisfy the requirements.  By identifying only the pool, without also 
indicating that only qualified individuals would be selected from the 
pool, C-Cubed's BAFO was unclear as to whether the firm was proposing 
to comply with the education and experience requirements, or was 
taking exception to those requirements by proposing participation in 
the Virginia program as a substitute for the specific education and 
experience requirements in the RFP.

C-Cubed's failure to commit to meeting the education requirements was 
a sufficient basis for rejecting its proposal as unacceptable.  
However, we also note that          C-Cubed's BAFO did not adequately 
indicate that the experience requirements would be satisfied.  C-Cubed 
is correct that certain of the apprenticeship periods under the 
Virginia program--carpenter, pipefitter, and electrical worker--are 
long enough to meet the number of years of experience required for the 
corresponding support trades under the RFP.  However, C-Cubed's BAFO 
did not state that only carpenter, pipefitting, and electrical worker 
apprentices would be hired from the Virginia program (for the 
electronics assembler positions), or that the individuals hired would 
be promoted from the electronics assembler position only into the 
carpenter, pipefitter, and electrical worker support trades.  In this 
regard, C-Cubed's argument ignores the fact that the solicitation 
required not just a specific number of years of experience for the 
support trades, but that the experience be in the specific trade in 
which the individual will be employed.  Thus, without some 
representation in C-Cubed's proposal that it would hire (and 
subsequently promote) only carpenter, pipefitter, and electrical 
worker apprentices, the agency had no assurance that the individuals 
in the support trade positions would satisfy the experience 
requirements for each position. 

C-Cubed's argument that there was no basis for the agency to assume 
that it would deliberately violate the terms of the solicitation 
misses the point.  The agency was not assuming that C-Cubed would 
violate the RFP terms but, rather, was anticipating that, in 
performing the contract, C-Cubed could assert that the agency had 
accepted its proposal to substitute apprenticeship in the Virginia 
program for the education and experience requirements in the RFP.  
While C-Cubed states that it intended to fully comply with the RFP 
requirements in selecting and promoting individuals from the Virginia 
program, the Navy was not obligated to accept the risk that C-Cubed 
would assert that the language of its proposal permitted it to select 
or promote individuals who did not meet the RFP requirements.  It is 
an offeror's obligation to submit a proposal fully demonstrating that 
it intends to comply with the solicitation terms.  Diagnetics, Inc., 
B-261712, Sept. 28, 1995, 95-2 CPD  para.  165.  A blanket offer of 
compliance, such as C-Cubed's statement that its proposal meets the 
requirements of the solicitation, does not meet this burden.  See 
Marylou's Transp. Serv., supra.[3]

The protest is denied.

Comptroller General
of the United States

1. C-Cubed also states that it was told that the contracting officer 
initially found that the apprentices met the requirements of the 
solicitation for the Electronics Assembler.  The contracting officer's 
statement, however, referred to the experience requirement, not the 
education requirement.

2. Noting that the technical evaluation team found that its BAFO was 
acceptable, C-Cubed questions how the contracting officer could 
determine that its BAFO was unacceptable.  The technical team, 
however, found that C-Cubed's revised proposal, not its BAFO, was 
fully acceptable.  Where an offeror introduces changes into its BAFO, 
it takes the risk that those changes may render its previously 
acceptable proposal unacceptable.  Marylou's Transp. Serv., B-261695, 
Sept. 28, 1995, 95-2 CPD  para.  154.

3. C-Cubed asserts that the Navy provided an inadequate debriefing.  
This is a  procedural matter concerning agency actions after award 
which are unrelated to the validity of the award; we generally will 
not review such matters.  Infotec Dev., Inc., B-258198 et al., Dec. 
27, 1994, 95-1 CPD  para.  52.