BNUMBER:  B-277241.12; B-277241.13 
DATE:  December 29, 1997
TITLE: Aalco Forwarding, Inc., et al., B-277241.12; B-277241.13,
December 29, 1997
**********************************************************************

Matter of:Aalco Forwarding, Inc., et al.

File:     B-277241.12; B-277241.13

Date:December 29, 1997

Alan F. Wohlstetter, Esq., and Stanley I. Goldman, Esq., Denning & 
Wohlstetter; James M. McHale, Esq., Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & 
Geraldson; Thomas M. Auchincloss, Jr., Esq., Leo C. Franey, Esq., and 
Brian L. Troiano, Esq., Rea, Cross & Auchincloss, for the protesters.
Thomas J. Duffy, Esq., Maj. Jonathan C. Guden, and Ramon Morales, 
Esq., Department of the Army, for the agency.
David R. Kohler, Esq., and Timothy C. Treanor, Esq., for the United 
States Small Business Administration.
Adam Vodraska, Esq., and James A. Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the 
General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

In a solicitation implementing a pilot program to reengineer the 
Department of Defense's current program for the shipment and storage 
of the personal property of military service members and civilian 
employees, challenged requirements that each offeror serve all points 
in a traffic channel and that each offeror provide both household 
goods and unaccompanied baggage transportation services do not 
constitute improper bundling of requirements, where they reasonably 
reflect the agency's needs and are necessary to implement the pilot 
program's goals of reducing administrative burdens on the agency and 
improving the reliability and quality of service.

DECISION

Aalco Forwarding, Inc. and 96 other self-certified small business 
concerns protest the terms of request for proposals (RFP) No. 
DAMT01-97-R-3001, issued by the Military Traffic Management Command 
(MTMC), Department of the Army, for all personnel, equipment, 
materials, supervision, and other items necessary to provide 
transportation and transportation-related services for 50 percent of 
the eligible Department of Defense (DOD) and United States Coast 
Guard-sponsored personal property shipments from North Carolina, South 
Carolina, and Florida, to any or all of 13 destination regions in the 
continental United States (CONUS) and/or any or all of 5 destination 
regions in Europe.[1]  The solicitation implements a pilot program to 
reengineer DOD's current program for shipping and storing the personal 
property of its military service members and civilian employees.  In 
these protests, the protesters contend that the RFP unnecessarily 
bundles certain contract requirements to the detriment of small 
business concerns. 

The protests are denied.

This procurement was the subject of a prior decision in Aalco 
Forwarding, Inc., et al., B-277241.8, B-277241.9, Oct. 21, 1997, 97-2 
CPD  para.  110, which denied various protests primarily against the 
acquisition of these services under Federal Acquisition Regulation 
(FAR) part 12 commercial item procedures.  That decision contains much 
of the background for this procurement, which will not be repeated 
here.

As described in our earlier decision, the current program is 
administratively burdensome for MTMC.  Currently, a DOD shipping 
office (which covers shipments from a relatively small area) may have 
to contact several carriers on its traffic distribution roster before 
finding a carrier willing to accept a shipment, and each move involves 
significant amounts of paperwork.  MTMC reports that resource 
constraints at its shipping offices have reduced the functions those 
offices customarily perform (such as movement counseling and quality 
control monitoring).  Because of these resource constraints, as well 
as problems experienced with the quality of services provided by 
moving companies, MTMC reports that it cannot continue to do business 
under the current program and that it must find a streamlined, 
efficient way to move its personnel while ensuring high quality moves.  
Reflecting these concerns, the reengineering effort aims to improve 
the quality of personal property shipment and storage services 
provided to DOD, and to simplify the administration of the program so 
as to be able to focus more of the resources of the shipping offices 
towards customer service and away from the administrative burdens 
associated with the current program.  Various congressional committees 
agreed that MTMC must pursue a higher level of service from the moving 
industry with greater reliance on commercial standards of service and 
business practices.[2] 

MTMC's market research and benchmarking survey revealed that large 
commercial shippers and other organizations had successfully 
reengineered their employee relocation programs to obtain superior 
service, reduce administrative burdens, and adopt better business 
practices.  In particular, many of these organizations have contracted 
with one prime contractor or a small number of prime contractors to 
ship an employee's household effects anywhere that is required (rather 
than using multiple vendors for the various segments of the move), 
utilized "one-stop shopping" (one point of contact for assistance to 
the employee), and outsourced various aspects of the management of the 
relocation process to the contractor.

In implementing the pilot program through this solicitation, MTMC 
seeks to emulate these commercial practices.  The agency recognizes, 
however, that not all of these practices can be adopted without 
modification by DOD.  For example, while a large commercial shipper 
contracting for moving services may have contracts with a small number 
of companies (or even only one) who commit to shipping a customer's 
household goods anywhere (at least domestically), such an arrangement 
is not feasible for DOD, given the large number of moves (hundreds of 
thousands each year) of service members and employees throughout the 
nation and the world.  Rather, MTMC considered a variety of contract 
approaches for dividing its traffic among contractors in order to meet 
its needs to reengineer the program.  During the planning process, 
MTMC invited and received comments from industry.  

In response to congressional direction to assess the impact of the 
proposed pilot program on small business concerns,[3] MTMC proposed, 
in order to accommodate small business concerns, to award a single 
contract for each "traffic lane," that is, for all shipments from an 
origin shipping office's relatively small area of responsibility to a 
destination shipping office's area of responsibility.  However, many 
household goods industry representatives objected to the single-award, 
"winner-take-all" nature of this proposal.  In addition, some 
companies told MTMC that this proposal would be administratively 
burdensome, because thousands of contracts would need to be let and 
administered by the agency in order to have a separate contract 
covering every possible combination of shipping offices.  MTMC also 
reached this conclusion, calculating that between 9,000 and 17,000 
separate contracts would be needed, which it states it does not have 
the resources to manage.  MTMC thereafter informed congressional 
committees in an updated small business impact report that, because of 
opposition from industry and concerns about administrative burden, it 
was replacing its "winner-take-all" traffic lane concept with a pilot 
contemplating multiple awards for all transportation services from a 
single multi-state origin region.  Industry opposed this latter pilot 
proposal as well because of the large geographic scope of such an 
approach.

Following congressional direction to DOD and industry to reach a 
mutually agreeable program to pilot,[4] a DOD/industry working group 
convened and came to a consensus on a number of issues including that 
the pilot program should be based on "traffic channels," each of which 
covers all traffic from an origin state (encompassing all shipping 
offices within the state) to a destination region (encompassing all 
shipping offices within a multi-state or overseas region).  However, 
the DOD/industry working group could not reach agreement on the 
approach to take for the pilot or on various details of the program, 
and DOD and industry presented separate pilot proposals.  DOD's 
proposed pilot program, based on traffic channels from certain origin 
states to certain destination regions, became this solicitation.[5]  

The solicitation was issued pursuant to the commercial item procedures 
of FAR part 12, and contemplates the award of firm, fixed-price, 
indefinite quantity/indefinite delivery contracts for a base year with 
2 option years.  The RFP allows the government to award task order 
contracts for the same or similar services to either one or multiple 
sources; MTMC anticipates making multiple awards to various 
contractors for all the possible services within each traffic 
channel.[6]  Portions of 27 of the "high volume" traffic channels are 
set aside for small business concerns.[7]  The government will award 
contracts to the responsible offerors whose offers represent the best 
overall value based on an integrated assessment of past 
performance/experience, subcontracting plan, and price.  After certain 
contract minimums are met, follow-on task orders will also be issued 
on a best value basis.  

The protesters and the Small Business Administration (SBA) contend 
that the solicitation is unduly restrictive of competition by small 
business concerns because the RFP requires that (1) an offeror serve 
an entire traffic channel, and (2) that an offeror must provide 
transportation services for unaccompanied baggage[8] as well as for 
household goods.  The protesters and the SBA contend that MTMC has 
improperly bundled into a single large contract requirements that were 
previously solicited and awarded separately by each shipping office.  
They explain that such bundling precludes otherwise qualified small 
business carriers from the competition because small moving companies 
may only have resources, facilities and/or agents at one or a limited 
number of shipping offices within an origin state and may transport 
shipments only to a limited number of destinations, and may only 
handle household goods or unaccompanied baggage, but not both.  
According to the SBA:

     Presently, MTMC contracts with carriers on a case-by-case basis 
     for moving services.  Carriers offer to do the work they are able 
     to do and do not offer on job orders that are outside the scope 
     of their abilities.  Some carriers are capable of transporting 
     only unaccompanied baggage and thus offer only on those job 
     orders . . . .

     Under the terms of the solicitation, on the other hand, the 
     successful offerors for any given channel must serve every 
     geographic location in the origin state for that channel and 
     every geographic location in the destination CONUS Region or 
     foreign country for that channel.  Contractors may not refuse an 
     assignment unless they are already doing a pre-agreed level of 
     work for MTMC.  Moreover, successful offerors must move both 
     household goods and unaccompanied baggage whenever MTMC directs 
     them to do so.  

The protesters and the SBA argue that the agency's justification for 
consolidating its traffic distribution system and the unaccompanied 
baggage and household goods moving services is not supported by 
personnel or budgetary reductions, and amounts to nothing more than a 
claim of mere administrative convenience, which is not a sufficient 
justification for restrictions on competition.  See Airport Markings 
of Am., Inc., et al., 69 Comp. Gen. 511, 514 (1990), 90-1 CPD  para.  543 at 
4-5.

The Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, 10 U.S.C.  sec.  2305(a)(1) 
(1994), generally requires that solicitations permit full and open 
competition, and contain restrictive provisions and conditions only to 
the extent necessary to satisfy the needs of the agency.   Since 
bundled, consolidated, or total-package procurements combine separate, 
multiple requirements into one contract, they have the potential for 
restricting competition by excluding firms that can furnish only a 
portion of the requirement.  Advanced Elevator Servs., Inc., B-272340, 
B-272340.2, Sept. 26, 1996, 96-2 CPD  para.  125 at 3.  We review such 
solicitations to determine whether the approach is reasonably required 
to satisfy the agency's needs.  Border Maintenance Serv., Inc., 
B-260954, B-260954.2, June 21, 1995, 95-1 CPD  para.  287 at 2; The Sequoia 
Group, Inc., B-252016, May 24, 1993, 93-1 CPD  para.  405 at 4.
  
It is apparent that by awarding contracts to a limited number of prime 
contractors responsible for each channel, rather than maintaining the 
current traffic distribution system, and by requiring that the 
contractors service both household goods and unaccompanied baggage, 
one of MTMC's goals is to ease the administration of its household 
goods shipping and storage program.  The record also shows, however, 
that under the pilot program, MTMC's contracting on a traffic channel 
basis, and requiring both household goods and unaccompanied baggage 
transportation services from each contractor, are not solely for 
purposes of administrative convenience, but are driven by other goals 
of the reengineering program.  

Specifically, MTMC reasonably determined that in order to obtain 
superior service, reduce administrative burdens, and adopt better 
business practices, it needed to consolidate the transportation 
services, that are currently arranged with numerous contractors on an 
individual order basis by each shipping office, with a program 
utilizing several prime contractors, who will be solely responsible 
for managing most aspects of the movement of the household goods and 
unaccompanied baggage of service members and employees.[9]  The 
solicitation's establishment of long-term binding commitments with 
fewer contractors, who will potentially be provided greater shipping 
volumes than under the current program should help DOD achieve 
economies of scale.  In addition, using fewer contractors should 
provide greater accountability of performance as well as more reliable 
and higher quality service.  Moreover, the solicitation's best value 
selection criteria for initial awards and for follow-on task orders 
should improve service quality through greater contractor 
accountability, fewer claims, and increased emphasis on customer 
satisfaction.  Finally, with fewer contracts to administer, and with 
some of the functions of the shipping offices (such as movement 
counseling) outsourced to the contractors, the agency is seeking cost 
savings and the flexibility to staff and manage its shipping offices 
according to its needs.  This includes focusing more of the attention 
of shipping office staff on providing customer service, rather than 
administering the burdensome traffic distribution process of the 
current system.

Likewise, the solicitation's requirement that contractors service both  
unaccompanied baggage and household goods is a reasonable need of the 
agency.  The use of a single contractor for each move will allow for 
"one-stop shopping" and alleviate the burden associated with 
administering the household goods and unaccompanied baggage programs 
on a separate basis.  In addition, combining the two programs under 
the solicitation advances the goals of the reengineering effort by 
subjecting each contractor to the same requirements designed to 
improve the quality of the moving and storage program, such as higher 
liability limits for lost and damaged goods, direct claims procedures, 
and contractor responsibility for the entire shipment of a service 
member's or employee's household goods, regardless of the arrangements 
made by each contractor to transport the various components of the 
shipment.  While we appreciate the distinction the protesters and the 
SBA have described between the transportation of unaccompanied baggage 
and household goods, they have not persuasively shown why requiring 
contractors to service both types of requirements under the 
solicitation is unreasonable, given the goals of the reengineering 
effort.

In sum, the award of contracts on a traffic channel basis and the 
requirement that the contractors provide both household goods and 
unaccompanied baggage transportation services reasonably reflect the 
agency's needs under the pilot program, and, accordingly, the agency 
may so structure its solicitation, even if this means that some small 
businesses are less able to compete.[10]  See Border Maintenance 
Serv., Inc., supra, at 3-4.

The protests are denied.

Comptroller General 
of the United States

1. The following firms are involved in these protests:  Aalco 
Forwarding, Inc.; AAAA Forwarding, Inc.; Air Van Lines International, 
Inc.; Allstates Worldwide Movers; Aloha Worldwide Forwarders, Inc.; 
Alumni International, Inc.; American Heritage International 
Forwarding, Inc.; American Shipping, Inc.; American World Forwarders, 
Inc.; Apollo Forwarders, Inc.; Arnold International Movers, Inc.; 
Astron Forwarding Company; BINL Incorporated; Burnham Service Company, 
Inc.; Cavalier Forwarding, Inc.; Classic Forwarding, Inc.; Davidson 
Forwarding Company; Deseret Forwarding International, Inc.; Foremost 
Forwarders, Inc.; Gateways International, Inc.; Great American 
Forwarders, Inc.; Hi-Line Forwarders, Inc.; International Services, 
Inc.; Island Forwarding, Inc.; Katy Van Lines, Inc.; Lincoln Moving & 
Storage; Miller Forwarding, Inc.; Northwest Consolidators; Ocean Air 
International, Inc.; Senate Forwarding, Inc.; Shoreline International, 
Inc.; Stevens Forwarders, Inc.; Von Der Ahe International, Inc.; Wold 
International, Inc.; Zenith Forwarders, Inc.; Acorn International 
Forwarding Company; AAA Systems, Inc.; A.C.E. International 
Forwarders; Apex Forwarding Company, Inc.; Armstrong International, 
Inc.; Art International Forwarding, Inc.; Coast Transfer Company, 
Inc.; Crystal Forwarding, Inc.; CTC Forwarding Company, Inc.; Diamond 
Forwarding, Inc.; Dyer International, Inc.; Harbour Forwarding 
Company, Inc.; HC&D Forwarders International, Inc.; Jag International, 
Inc.; The Kenderes Group, Inc.; Pearl Forwarding, Inc.; Rainier 
Overseas, Inc.; Rivers Forwarding, Inc.; Ryans's World; Sequoia 
Forwarding Company, Inc.; A-1 Relocation, Inc. d/b/a A-1 Movers of 
America; A-1 Moving & Storage, Inc.; Able Forwarders, Inc.; Andrews 
Van Lines, Inc.; A. Arnold & Son Transfer & Storage Company, Inc.; Art 
and Paul Moving & Storage; Associated Forwarding, Inc.; Associated 
Storage and Van, Inc.; Carlyle Van Lines, Inc.; Carrier Transport 
International, Inc.; Coastal Moving Company, Inc.; Conrad Group, Inc.; 
Davidson Transfer & Storage Co., Inc.; Denoyer Brothers Moving & 
Storage Co.; Door To Door Moving & Storage Co.; Exhibit Transport, 
Inc.; Ferriss Warehouse & Storage Co.; Fogarty Van Lines, Inc.; Horne 
Storage Company, Inc.; Lynn Moving and Storage, Inc.; A.D. McMullen, 
Inc.; Mid-State Moving & Storage Inc.; Movers Unlimited, Inc.; Nilson 
Van & Storage; Northwest Consolidators, Inc.; Ogden Transfer & 
Storage, Co.; OK Transfer & Storage, Inc.; Pan American Van Lines, 
Inc.; Riverbend Moving & Storage, Inc.; Royal Forwarding, Inc.; Sells 
Service, Inc.; South Hills Movers, Inc.; Stanley's Transfer Company, 
Inc.; Starck Van Lines, Inc.; StarTrans International, Inc.; Stearns 
Forwarders, Inc.; Stearns Moving & Storage of Kokomo, Inc.; Von Der 
Ahe Van Lines, Inc.; Wainwright Transfer Co. of Fayetteville, Inc.; 
and Weathers Bros. Transfer Co.-NC.

2. H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 104-450, at 762 (1996); H.R. Rep. No. 104-131, 
at 164 (1995).

3. H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 104-344, at 58 (1995); H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 
104-261, at 58 (1995).

4. S. Rep. No. 104-267, at 270 (1996); H.R. Rep. No. 104-563, at 268 
(1996).

5. The protesters dispute the agency's characterization of the 
consensus agreement, essentially contending that industry would never 
have agreed to structuring the pilot program on a traffic channel 
basis if they had known the solicitation would also require each 
offeror to commit a daily capacity and to service all shipping offices 
in a traffic channel, requirements that the protesters assert restrict 
the ability of small businesses to compete.

6. There are 53 traffic channels in the pilot program, 38 domestic and 
15 international.

7. The protesters have also protested to our Office that the set-aside 
decision was unreasonable.  In addition, various protests have been 
filed against certain provisions contained in a recently issued 
amendment to the solicitation.  These protests will be the subject of 
a future decision.

8. Unaccompanied baggage is that portion of the service member's or 
employee's prescribed weight allowance of personal property shipped 
separately from the bulk of the personal property, usually via an 
expedited mode, because it is needed immediately, or soon after, a 
member's or employee's arrival at destination for interim housekeeping 
pending arrival of the major portion of his or her property.  
According to the protesters, a small number of firms specialize in 
providing unaccompanied baggage transportation services, which 
requires consolidation and tracking of many very small shipments in a 
manner not required for the movement of household goods.

9. In making multiple awards to different contractors on a traffic 
channel basis, the agency is also mitigating the "winner-take-all" 
aspect and the large geographic scope of the earlier proposals for the 
pilot program objected to by industry, while being able to let and 
administer a manageable number of contracts.  

10. The protesters contend that the requirement for offerors to commit 
daily capacity at each shipping office in each origin state is 
unreasonable and unduly restricts the ability of small business 
carriers to compete for contracts because small business may not be 
able to obtain agency representation at certain shipping offices with 
low traffic volumes.  However, as stated in our previous decision, we 
believe that the agency has reasonably established a need for the 
committed daily capacity requirement.  Aalco Forwarding, Inc., et al., 
supra, at 20.