BNUMBER: B-276903
DATE: July 31, 1997
TITLE: MTP (JV), B-276903, July 31, 1997
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Matter of:MTP (JV)
File: B-276903
Date:July 31, 1997
John Lukjanowicz, Esq., Oles Morrison & Rinker, for the protester.
Karen S. Hindson, Esq., for D.E.W. Joint Venture, an intervenor.
Elizabeth Rivera Bagwell, Esq., Department of the Navy, for the
agency.
C. Douglas McArthur, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Office of the
General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.
DIGEST
Where solicitation contained specific qualification requirements for
project manager, including educational requirements (high school
diploma and community college certificate, for which candidate could
substitute experience) and experience requirements (3 years in food
service, with 2 years as a supervisor); protester provided no
information on time periods during which candidate for project manager
worked at positions listed on resume; and agency advised protester
during discussions that it had failed to provide information for
evaluation of project manager's qualifications, protester should have
recognized need to provide basic information necessary to evaluate its
proposal, notwithstanding that agency specifically identified only
failure to provide information on high school diploma as aspect of
qualifications not addressed.
DECISION
MTP (JV), a joint venture of Traction Systems, Inc. and McClean's
Restoration Services, protests the award of a contract to D.E.W. Joint
Venture under request for proposals (RFP) No. N00604-96-R-0063, for
mess attendant services at the Marine Corps base, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
MTP contends that discussions were inadequate to alert it to the
omission from its proposal of information necessary to establish the
qualifications of its project manager.
We deny the protest.
On October 16, 1996, the agency issued the RFP for a firm, fixed-price
contract, to provide labor and supplies to serve food and clean the
dining halls at the base, for a base period (established through
subsequent amendment as 6 months), with four 1-year option periods.
The solicitation provided for evaluation of technical and past
performance factors, in addition to price. The RFP stated that past
performance was more important than price and that the agency intended
to make award to the responsible offeror whose proposal met the
government's minimum technical requirements and offered the best past
performance.
The RFP stated that the evaluators would consider whether offerors met
minimum technical requirements in the areas of key personnel, manning
charts, quality control program, strike/job plan, and
housekeeping/cleaning plan. Initially, the agency considered the
positions of project manager and alternate project manager as key
personnel; the Navy subsequently modified the solicitation to delete
the requirement for an alternate project manager.[1] The RFP required
key personnel to submit two forms attached to the solicitation, a
"personnel qualifications sheet" and a "personnel data form" (PDF),
demonstrating that they possessed the necessary education/training and
experience for the position.
The education/training requirements for the project manager, set out
in paragraph L101c.(2)(a)(1)A., were as follows:
(i) Must possess, at a minimum, a high School Diploma or
equivalent, and
(ii) Successful completion of a Community College Certificate in
Food Service or similar course work. Based on curriculum which
included courses in food service operations and food service
management
(iii) Substitution for paragraph A.(ii) shall equal not less
than five years of institutionalized, e.g., military, hospital,
prison, school or college, food service.[2]
The experience requirements, set out in paragraph L101c.(2)(a)(1)B.,
were as follows:
(i) Three years in government/commercial galley/kitchen and
dining room facilities with equipment and operations equivalent
to that involved in the performance of this contract, and
(ii) Two years of work experience as a manager over work force
described in previous paragraph.
The RFP provided instructions on preparation of the PDF, directing
offerors to identify the areas of work experience pertinent to the
required effort. It specifically mentioned the need to indicate the
periods of time served in the qualifying positions.
On December 10, the agency received nine proposals, which it referred
to a technical evaluation board (TEB). On January 14, 1997, the TEB
advised the contracting officer that, of the nine, only one was
technically acceptable as submitted. The agency determined that all
nine offerors were in the competitive range and opened discussions.
With respect to MTP, the firm had simply failed to include any dates
on the project manager's resume, making it impossible to determine how
long he had served in the positions indicated. There was no
indication that the individual had the required high school degree.
There was no claim that the individual had a community college
certificate in food service or, absent any meaningful information on
the individual's experience, whether the protester intended to offer
experience as a substitute for the certificate. Absent any
information on the length of time involved in the jobs listed, the
evaluators found the proposal unacceptable for every portion of the
required qualifications for the project manager.
By letter of February 20, the agency requested information regarding
certain areas of MTP's proposal, advising the protester that failure
to submit the "required information, corrections, and/or
clarifications" might result in rejection of the proposal. With
regard to key personnel, the agency advised the protester as follows:
Insufficient information was provided to review the
qualifications of the proposed Project Manager. Clause
[L101c.(2)(a)(1)A.] states that the Project Manager must possess,
at a minimum, [a] high school diploma or equivalent.
Thus, although the agency generally advised the protester that it had
failed to provide information necessary to review the candidate's
qualifications, it made a specific reference only to the high school
diploma requirement. It made no specific reference to the remaining
educational and experience requirements that the protester had failed
to provide--the community college certificate in food service or
substituted institutional experience, the 3 years experience in
equivalent facilities, or the 2 years experience as a manager. With
the discussion questions, however, the agency did issue amendment No.
0005 to the RFP, requiring submission of the PDF,[3] which calls for
offerors to identify the experience requirement to which each job
experience related, along with the time periods involved.[4]
With its revised proposal, MTP provided a revised resume, indicating
that its candidate met the minimum educational qualifications in that
he had graduated from high school in 1963. MTP did not provide the
required PDF. Although the revised resume did indicate that one job,
involving caretaker services, had lasted from April 1993 to April
1996, it still omitted any indication of how long the individual had
served in five of the six positions. While the resume did contain a
statement that the list of positions represented 30 years of military
experience, only one of the positions involved mess attendant
services; the remaining experience involved quality of life programs,
personnel work, and inventory control not obviously relevant to the
instant effort. The resume stated that the individual was a
"certified food service sanitation instructor" and contained a list of
courses taken (generally quartermaster courses); it did not address
the community college certificate or how any of the employment might
substitute for the certificate. As a result, the evaluators were
unable to determine whether the candidate had the required 3 years
experience in food service or 2 years managerial experience in food
service. Further, MTP's proposal did not demonstrate that the
candidate met the minimum education requirement--either a community
college certificate in food service or 5 years of experience. As a
consequence, the TEB found MTP's proposal technically unacceptable
because it contained insufficient information to establish that the
protester was offering a project manager who met the mandatory
qualification requirements.
Overall, the TEB determined that five of nine offers were acceptable;
all five offerors received "excellent" past performance ratings. On
March 6, and again on March 14, the agency requested the submission of
BAFOs from the offerors remaining in the competitive range.[5] After
review of the BAFOs, the agency selected D.E.W. for award based on its
low price and excellent past performance rating, which was equal to
that of the offerors remaining in the competitive range. After a
debriefing by telephone on April 21, MTP filed this protest with our
Office.
The protester contends that, by failing to alert MTP explicitly to its
failure to provide information on the project manager's experience,
the Navy breached its statutory duty to inform the protester of
deficiencies in its proposal and engage in meaningful discussions.
The protester points out that while the record indicates that the TEB
specifically noted MTP's failure to address five of the six
qualification requirements of the solicitation, the agency only
brought one of these failures to the protester's attention during
discussions.[6] Further, the protester asserts, the agency did not
identify this concern as a deficiency but merely as a point needing
clarification. Prior to rejecting the proposal, after submission of
BAFOs, the agency never expressed concern over the proposed project
manager's experience. The agency misled it, MTP argues, by asking
only whether the candidate had a high school degree, obscuring the
concern over experience and denying MTP the opportunity to revise its
proposal to meet the agency's concerns.
The Competition in Contract Act of 1984 and the Federal Acquisition
Regulation (FAR) require that written or oral discussions be held with
all responsible offerors whose proposals are within the competitive
range. See 10 U.S.C. sec. 2305(b)(4)(A)(i) (1994); FAR sec. 15.610(b). In
order for discussions in a negotiated procurement to be meaningful,
contracting agencies must furnish information to all offerors in the
competitive range as to the areas in their proposals which are
believed to be deficient so that offerors may have an opportunity to
revise their proposals to satisfy the government's requirements. FAR sec.
15.610(c)(2); Pan Am World Servs., Inc. et al., B-231840 et al., Nov.
7, 1988, 88-2 CPD para. 446 at 11. In evaluating whether there has been
sufficient disclosure of deficiencies, the focus is not on whether the
agency describes deficiencies in such detail that there could be no
doubt as to their identity and nature, but whether the agency imparts
sufficient information to the offeror to afford it a fair and
reasonable opportunity in the context of the procurement to identify
and correct deficiencies in its proposal. Huff & Huff Serv. Corp,
B-235419, July 17, 1989, 89-2 CPD para. 55 at 3. Agencies are only
required to reasonably lead offerors into those areas of their
proposals needing amplification, given the context of the procurement.
Eagan, McAllister Assocs., Inc., B-231983, Oct. 28, 1988, 88-2 CPD para.
405 at 5. Here, we conclude that the agency reasonably led MTP into
the area of its proposal needing revision.
As an initial matter, the failure to provide any dates for the
candidate's experience reflects gross carelessness by MTP, frustrating
any attempt to determine whether the candidate met the RFP
requirements. Further, having made the error in its initial proposal,
even a cursory review prior to the submission of BAFOs should have
alerted MTP to the omission of information relative to the candidate's
qualifications. In addition, in the discussions letter the agency
specifically advised the protester of the omission ("insufficient
information was provided to review the qualifications of the proposed
Project Manager") and, overall, the RFP itself sets the requirements
out very simply and very specifically. (As noted above, they include,
in addition to the high school diploma, the community college degree
(or experience), 3 years food service experience, and 2 years
supervisory experience.) Moreover, during discussions the agency
issued an amendment to the RFP which required submission of the PDF, a
form which specifically calls for offerors to provide the kind of
information missing from MTP's proposal.
Under the circumstances here, we cannot conclude that a reasonably
prudent offeror, reviewing the agency's question in conjunction with
the material that it had submitted with its proposal, could have
failed to recognize the need to provide the basic information
necessary for evaluation of its proposal. See Textron Marine Sys.,
B-243693, Aug. 19, 1991, 91-2 CPD para. 162 at 8 (although agency orally
ascribed a deficiency to the wrong key employee proposed by protester,
a reasonably prudent offeror would have ensured that each of its
proposed key personnel met the requirements of the RFP, given the
specificity of the RFP requirements for education and experience, and
general written guidance and oral advice from the agency regarding key
personnel qualifications). Given this conclusion--that MTP received
sufficient notice that its proposed project manager did not meet the
RFP requirements--we see no basis to conclude that the agency failed
to hold meaningful discussions with MTP because it did not more
specifically identify the omissions in MTP's proposal. Accordingly,
in light of the protester's failure to demonstrate that its proposed
project manager had the qualifications required by the RFP for the
position, we further conclude that the evaluation and determination
that MTP's proposal was technically acceptable were reasonable and
consistent with the RFP. Jet Invs., Inc., B-276215, B-276215.2, May
22, 1997, 97-1 CPD para. 193 at 2-3.
The protest is denied.
Comptroller General
of the United States
1. The agency failed to delete all references to the requirement and
discovered, after receipt of best and final offers (BAFO), that one
offeror had included an alternate project manager in its proposal.
The agency issued an amendment clarifying the issue and allowed the
offeror to submit a new offer, without the alternate project manager
position. There was no effect on the protester or the awardee and the
error has no relevance to the protest issues here.
2. In the initial version, subparagraph (iii) contained the phrase
"minimum education necessary" after the reference to paragraph A.(ii)
and the list beginning with "e.g." was contained by parentheses
through the word "college."
3. As initially issued, the RFP stated that "[k]ey personnel must
submit a resume (refer to Attachment 2-'Personnel Qualifications
Sheet' and Attachment 3-'Personnel Data Form')" demonstrating the
required education/training and experience. Amendment No. 0005
changed this reference to the two forms to a requirement, stating that
"[k]ey personnel shall submit Attachment 2-'Personnel Qualifications
Sheet' and Attachment 3-'Personnel Data Form'. . . ." (Emphasis
added.)
4. That is, whether the job served as a substitute for the community
college certificate, whether it satisfied the requirement for 3 years
experience in institutional food service, or whether it satisfied the
requirement for 2 years supervisory experience in an institutional
food service setting.
5. The agency included the five acceptable proposals in the
competitive range established for March 6; it included two proposals
in the final competitive range.
6. Five of the requirements are those set out in paragraph
L101c.(2)(a)(1)A.(i)-(iii), and paragraph L101c.(2)(a)(1)B.(i)-(ii),
quoted above. The sixth requirement, from paragraph
L101c.(2)(a)(1)G., was for a letter of intent or commitment from
individuals not employed by the offeror.