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.