BNUMBER: B-272780
DATE: October 28, 1996
TITLE: Inte-Great Corporation
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Matter of:Inte-Great Corporation
File: B-272780
Date:October 28, 1996
Ron Schenk for the protester.
Donald F. Hassell, Esq., Brian T. Kildee, Esq., and Robin B. Teichman,
Esq., Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for the agency.
Jennifer D. Westfall-McGrail, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq.,
Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of
the decision.
DIGEST
Agency properly declined to give protester the opportunity to make an
oral presentation and to demonstrate its software where request for
proposals (RFP) provided for such presentations/demonstrations only by
offerors whose software complied with the RFP's mandatory
requirements, and protester did not establish compliance with the
mandatory requirements in its written proposal.
DECISION
Inte-Great Corporation protests the rejection of its proposal as
technically unacceptable under request for proposals (RFP) No.
NRC-ADM-96-157, issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for
replacement of its automated property management system. The
protester contends that it should have been permitted to make an oral
presentation to demonstrate the technical acceptability of its
proposed software package.
We deny the protest.
BACKGROUND
The RFP, which was issued on April 5, 1996, sought offers to provide a
commercial off-the-shelf software package, including customization of
the software as necessary to meet the NRC's needs, and all necessary
services and supplies to replace the NRC's existing property
management system. The solicitation identified mandatory[1] and
desirable requirements for the software, and informed offerors that
those whose proposed software complied with the mandatory requirements
would be given an opportunity to make oral technical presentations and
to demonstrate their products to validate their performance. Offerors
were instructed that prior to the time set for receipt of initial
proposals under the RFP, they should submit to the NRC "a matrix
showing how each NRC mandatory requirement is satisfied in the
proposed software."[2]
Six offerors submitted proposals prior to the established closing
time. The technical evaluators concluded that two of the six
proposals demonstrated compliance with the RFP's mandatory
requirements and scheduled these two offerors for oral presentations.
The remaining four proposals, including Inte-Great's, were determined
to be technically unacceptable. By letter dated June 19, the NRC
notified Inte-Great that its proposal had been eliminated from the
competition since it had not demonstrated compliance with the RFP's
mandatory requirements.
DISCUSSION
Inte-Great contends that its proposal "clearly indicated an
affirmative response to all of the [RFP's] mandatory
requirements"--which, according to the protester, is all that the
solicitation required--and that it therefore should have been invited
to make an oral presentation and to furnish a demonstration to
validate its software's capabilities. We disagree with the
protester's characterization of both the solicitation's requirements
and its own response.
As a preliminary matter, the protester's technical proposal did not
clearly indicate an affirmative response to each of the RFP's
mandatory requirements. On the contrary, the proposal simply did not
address a number of the mandatory requirements regarding security; for
example, it did not address the requirement that the software be
capable of attributing each transaction to the individual initiating
it or the requirement that it be capable of detecting and documenting
all access and attempted access. Thus, even under the protester's
interpretation of the RFP (i.e., that an affirmative response to each
of the mandatory requirements was all that the RFP required), its
proposal was unacceptable because it did not in fact furnish an
affirmative response to each of those requirements.
Further, the RFP did not require merely an affirmation that each
mandatory requirement would be met; it required written documentation
"showing how" each requirement would be met. We think that a
reasonable offeror should have understood this to mean that it needed
to describe the features of its software in sufficient detail to allow
the agency to determine if it met the mandatory requirements.
Many of the protester's responses did not convey this information, and
thus we think that the agency reasonably determined that the responses
were insufficient to establish compliance with the mandatory
requirements. For example, the RFP required that the software
"[c]reate audit trails for all property transactions including the
capability to archive all such transactions." Inte-Great's brief
response essentially parroted the language of the RFP as follows:
"[The software offered] creates an audit trail for all property
record transactions and changes. These audit trails may be
archived as necessary."
The same repetition of the RFP language is evident in Inte-Great's
response to the four specific security requirements; Inte-Great's
general statement[3] provided no detail as to how these requirements
would be met, and, in fact, as noted above, did not address some of
the requirements at all. Similarly with respect to the requirement to
maintain self-calculating depreciation schedules, the protester's
response---that its software "maintains self-calculating depreciation
schedules by month or year"--was too general to show how it met the
requirement.[4]
Where a solicitation provides for demonstrations by offerors to
validate compliance with mandatory requirements, the agency reasonably
may restrict the demonstrations to offerors who have established
compliance with the mandatory requirements in their written proposals.
See Informatics, Inc., B-194926, July 2, 1980, 80-2 CPD para. 8. Here,
the RFP required offerors to first demonstrate in writing that their
software met the RFP's requirements in order to be eligible to make an
oral presentation and demonstration. Inte-Great did not furnish
enough information in its proposal to enable the agency evaluators to
conclude that its software would satisfy the RFP's mandatory
requirements. Accordingly, we think that it was reasonable and
consistent with the RFP for the agency to decide not to consider
Inte-Great's proposal further by inviting it to make an oral
presentation.
The protest is denied.
Comptroller General
of the United States
1. Mandatory requirements included the following property management
capabilities and features: the ability to generate management reports
integrating all combinations of available data fields; the ability to
maintain specified standard and NRC-specific property data field
records and user records; the ability to create--and archive--audit
trails for all property transactions; incorporation of a
state-of-the-art inventory control subsystem supported by a
scanner/barcode capability; the ability to provide a maintenance
history of each item; and the ability to maintain self-calculating
depreciation schedules.
Additional mandatory requirements (focusing on security) included the
capability to attribute every transaction to a particular individual;
the provision of barriers between users and protected resources; and
the ability to provide for different levels of access among users.
2. Although not relevant in the context of this protest, the
solicitation also set forth an evaluation scheme to be used in
selecting an awardee from among those offerors whose proposed software
satisfied the mandatory requirements.
3. The relevant portion of Inte-Great's proposal provides as follows:
"[The software offered] allows the user to specify any
degree of security access imaginable. The security
sub-system will let the user give access, view rights,
edit rights, delete rights and other restrictions down to
the field level. It meets all of the levels stated in the
Statement of Work."
4. In comparison, the proposal that was included in the competitive
range described in detail the features of the software offered which
were responsive to the mandatory requirements.