BNUMBER:  B-276874.2 
DATE:  June 2, 1997
TITLE: Pentec Environmental, Inc., B-276874.2, June 2, 1997
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Matter of:Pentec Environmental, Inc.

File:     B-276874.2

Date:June 2, 1997

Marvin L. Gray, Jr., Esq., and John H. Parnass, Esq., Davis Wright 
Tremaine LLP, for the protester.
Mark Langstein, Esq., Department of Commerce, for the agency.
Peter A. Iannicelli, Esq., and Michael R. Golden, Esq., Office of the 
General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

Where a protest is based upon information obtained during a debriefing 
held more than 1 month after the agency first offered to debrief the 
protester and the 1-month delay in conducting the debriefing was 
attributable solely to the protester's repeated requests that the 
debriefing be delayed so that the protester could obtain and evaluate 
information under the Freedom of Information Act and so that the 
protester's employee could attend an unrelated business conference and 
take a vacation, the protester did not diligently pursue its basis for 
protest because it could have received the same information forming 
the basis for protest if it had accepted the agency's offer to conduct 
the debriefing 1 month earlier.

DECISION

Pentec Environmental, Inc. protests the Department of Commerce's award 
of a contract to Marine Research Specialists (MRS) for a follow-on 
contract to continue studying the biological impact of the 1989 Exxon 
Valdez oil spill and subsequent cleanup efforts pursuant to 
solicitation No. 50ABNC700012.  Pentec protests that MRS' proposal is 
nonresponsive to a material term of the solicitation and that the 
agency improperly evaluated Pentec's proposal.   

We dismiss the protest.

Pentec initially alleged that MRS' proposal was nonresponsive in a 
protest it filed in our Office on April 28, 1997.  In that protest 
Pentec stated that it first became aware of its protest ground on 
April 14, when it received portions of MRS' proposal from the agency 
in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  We 
dismissed Pentec's initial protest on April 30 as untimely under 
section 21.2(a)(2) of our Bid Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R.  sec.  
21.2(a)(2) (1997), which requires that a protest of other than an 
apparent impropriety in a solicitation be filed not later than 10 
calendar days after the basis of protest is known to the protester, 
because Pentec did not file its protest in our Office until the 14th 
day after Pentec knew its protest basis.  

Pentec does not argue that we improperly dismissed its initial protest 
as untimely.  Instead, Pentec asserts that its initial untimely 
protest became timely because, on April 28, subsequent to the filing 
of the initial protest, the agency provided Pentec a debriefing and 
Pentec refiled its initial protest allegation in a timely manner as 
part of the current protest (filed in our Office on May 7, 1997) in 
accord with section 21.2(a)(2) of our Regulations (i.e., within 10 
days of the debriefing).[1]  

Pentec's initial protest letter mentioned that Pentec expected to be 
debriefed by the agency on April 28, but contained no detail 
indicating when the protester requested the debriefing, whether the 
debriefing was a "required" debriefing,[2] or why the anticipated 
debriefing was scheduled to take place more than 1 month after Pentec 
was notified of the award to MRS.[3]  If we had been able to determine 
that Pentec requested its debriefing in a timely manner and that the 
agency had first offered to debrief Pentec on April 28, we would have 
dismissed Pentec's initial protest as premature.  (Our Office will not 
consider a protest challenging a procurement conducted on the basis of 
competitive proposals where a debriefing is requested and required, if 
the protest is filed before the debriefing date offered to the 
protester (even if the protest basis is known to the protester before 
the debriefing).  The Real Estate Center, B-274081, Aug. 20, 1996, 
96-2 CPD  para.  74.)  However, because Pentec's initial protest contained 
no detailed information from which we could determine whether the 
debriefing was in fact a required debriefing, we concluded that 
Pentec's initial protest, which specifically stated that the protest 
was filed more than 10 days after the protester learned the basis for 
protest, was untimely.

Pentec's effort to reinstate its initial protest through its current 
protest must fail because we consider the current protest also to be 
untimely.[4]  Pentec states that the information upon which the 
current protest is based was learned by Pentec during the April 28 
debriefing.  However, as noted above, the record shows that the agency 
offered to debrief Pentec as early as March 27 and that the debriefing 
was delayed more than 1 month to accommodate Pentec's repeated 
requests that the debriefing be delayed so that Pentec could obtain 
and review information under the FOIA and so that a Pentec employee 
could attend an unrelated business conference and take a vacation.  
Thus, Pentec could have obtained the information which formed the 
basis for its current protest more than 1 month earlier simply by 
allowing the agency to debrief it at the earlier offered date.  
Instead, Pentec chose to delay the debriefing in order to pursue 
additional information under the FOIA and for reasons unrelated to the 
protest.  A protester's failure to utilize the most expeditious 
approach to obtain the information that ultimately forms its basis for 
protest constitutes a failure to diligently pursue that information; 
to consider such a protest would be inconsistent with our goal of 
resolving protests expeditiously without unduly disrupting or delaying 
the agency's procurement process.  See Automated Medical Prods. Corp., 
B-275835, Feb. 3, 1997, 97-1 CPD  para.  52 at 2  for a discussion of a 
protester's obligation to diligently pursue information that may form 
its basis for protest through the debriefing process.  

The protest is dismissed.

Comptroller General
of the United States  

1. Pentec's current protest repeats verbatim the initial protest 
allegation that MRS' proposal was nonresponsive and also alleges for 
the first time that the agency improperly downgraded its proposal in 
several different categories because the evaluators deemed its 
statistical support as inferior to MRS'.

2. Where an unsuccessful offeror requests a debriefing within 3 days 
after receiving notification of award, the agency is required to 
debrief the unsuccessful offeror "within, to the maximum extent 
practicable, 5 days after receipt of the request."  
41 U.S.C.  sec.  253b(e) (1994).  Under our Regulations, where a debriefing 
is timely requested and, therefore, is required, a protester is 
allowed 10 calendar days after the date of the required debriefing to 
file its protest even though the protester may have known its basis of 
protest before the debriefing was held.  4 C.F.R.  sec.  21.2(a)(2).

3. In response to our request, the agency provided a number of 
documents (i.e., letters and notes of telephone conversations) that 
were created during the period between the notification of award and 
the debriefing.  The contemporaneous documents show that the agency 
offered to debrief Pentec as early as March 27, but that Pentec 
repeatedly requested that the debriefing be delayed so that Pentec 
could (1) obtain and review MRS' proposal and the agency's evaluation 
of it under the FOIA; (2) Pentec's vice president/senior biologist 
could attend an unrelated business conference; and (3) Pentec's vice 
president/senior biologist could take a vacation.

4. We therefore need not decide whether an initial protest dismissed 
under these circumstances can be revived based upon a subsequently 
provided debriefing.