BNUMBER:  B-278451 
DATE:  January 30, 1998
TITLE: COMPA Industries, Inc., B-278451, January 30, 1998
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Matter of:COMPA Industries, Inc.

File:     B-278451

Date:January 30, 1998

Robert W. Tate, Esq., The Beles Group, for the protester.
Paul R. Davis, Esq., and Gena E. Cadieux, Esq., Department of Energy, 
for the agency.
Jacqueline Maeder, Esq., and Paul Lieberman, Esq., Office of the 
General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

Protest that award of contract to same offeror for two of four support 
service categories, for which solicitation sought separate offers, is 
precluded by an eligibility restriction intended to alleviate conflict 
of interest concerns is denied where the restriction, as amended, can 
only reasonably be interpreted to mean that offerors are eligible for 
awards for different service categories, and requires only that 
services provided under one category be independent of one clearly 
specified area under other support service categories.  

DECISION

COMPA Industries, Inc. protests the award of a contract for two 
separate task categories to Informatics Corporation under request for 
proposals (RFP) No. DE-RP06-97RL13732, issued by the Department of 
Energy (DOE) for support services at its Hanford, Washington site.  
COMPA contends that the solicitation precluded the award of both task 
categories to the same offeror and that the agency failed to follow 
the solicitation evaluation criteria.   

We deny the protest.

The solicitation, issued June 25, 1997, via the Internet, sought 
contractors to perform support services in four separate service or 
task categories, including project management and engineering services 
(task 1); environment, safety, health and security services (task 2); 
financial and administrative services (task 3); and independent 
assessment services (task 4).  Task 1 was open to all firms; tasks 2, 
3 and 4 were set aside for small businesses.  The solicitation 
contemplated the award of fixed unit price, labor hour contracts for a 
3-year base period with two 1-year options.  Specific work to be 
performed under each contract was to be set out in task orders which 
would be issued as needed during the life of the contract.  Awardees 
under each task compete for individual task orders on the basis of 
Fiscal Year Work Plans (FYWP).[1] 
 
The RFP provided detailed descriptions of the work to be performed 
under each of the four service categories.  As relevant here, task 4 
required the contractor to assist DOE personnel in their coordination, 
administration, and management of independent, expert review panels.  
Originally, DOE hoped to establish independent, expert review panels 
in many different areas affecting the Hanford site.  Therefore, to 
avoid situations where a contractor was managing an expert panel 
charged with reviewing work performed by the contractor's own company 
under a different task, the RFP precluded offerors from submitting 
offers on both task 4 and any of the other tasks.  Specifically, the 
solicitation originally stated at paragraph L-8: 

     Note:  Because of the nature of activities to be performed under 
the
     Independent Assessment Services category, offerors are restricted
     from submitting offers for all or any combination of the 
remaining
     support services categories when proposing on the Independent
     Assessment Services.  Offers received inconsistent with this Note
     will be considered nonresponsive.  

The agency subsequently determined that there would not be the need or 
the funds to have independent expert review panels in the many areas 
originally anticipated; rather, the need for independent review panels 
was not likely for any area other than Tank Waste Remediation System 
(TWRS) privatization, which includes certain issues related to spent 
nuclear fuels.  Consequently, prior to receipt of initial proposals, 
DOE issued amendment 002, which revised the RFP to more accurately 
describe the services required and the eligibility guidelines.  
Specifically, in the cover letter to amendment 002, the agency advised 
offerors that the requirements relative to the service category 
entitled Independent Assessment Services had been revised and that 
under this service category "the support services provided must remain 
independent from support services provided to TWRS privatization and 
the Spent Fuels Project work."  Amendment 002 revised paragraph L-8 to 
state:

     Note:  Because of the nature of activities to be performed 
     under the Independent Assessment Services category,
     offerors awarded a contract for this service category will
     not be eligible for award of a FYWP or individual task orders
     for TWRS Privatization related work under contract(s) for 
     the other three service categories.

The RFP provided for award to the offerors whose conforming proposals 
represented the best overall value to the government and advised that 
DOE intended to award on the basis of initial offers without 
discussions.  The RFP identified experience and past performance as 
evaluation factors, listing various subfactors under each.  Past 
performance and experience were equally weighted, and when combined 
were more important than price.

DOE received 41 proposals by the August 25, 1997, closing date, 38 of 
which were determined to be acceptable.  COMPA submitted an acceptable 
proposal for task 4; Informatics submitted acceptable proposals for 
tasks 3 and 4.  The proposals were evaluated by evaluation teams and a 
cost analyst.  Based on the evaluations, COMPA did not receive an 
award and Informatics was awarded a contract for task 3 and for task 
4.  This protest followed, in which COMPA seeks to have Informatics 
disqualified from performing task 4, and to have a contract for that 
task awarded to COMPA.

The crux of COMPA's protest is that the RFP proscribed the award of a 
contract to one offeror for both task 4 and any of the other three 
tasks.  In particular, the protester argues that paragraph L-8, as 
amended, states that an offeror awarded a contract to perform task 4 
is not eligible for award of TWRS privatization related work or any 
FYWP related work.  Because the bulk of the work to be awarded under 
tasks 1 through 3 is essentially FYWP work, COMPA contends that 
offerors awarded contracts that include task 4 are not eligible for 
awards under any of the other three tasks.  

Where a dispute exists as to the meaning of a solicitation provision, 
our Office will resolve the matter by reading the solicitation as a 
whole and in a manner that gives effect to all its provisions; to be 
reasonable, an interpretation of a solicitation must be consistent 
with the solicitation when read as a whole.  Lithos Restoration, Ltd., 
71 Comp. Gen. 367, 370 (1992), 92-1 CPD  para.  379 at 4; Innovative Tech. 
Sys., Inc., 
B-260074, May 24, 1995, 95-1 CPD  para.  258 at 8. 

COMPA's interpretation of the language in amendment 002 is 
unreasonable in context.  The original solicitation prohibited the 
award of a contract for task 4 and any of the other three tasks.  
DOE's cover letter to amendment 002, as noted above, explained that 
support services provided under the independent assessment services 
category--task 4--"must remain independent from support services 
provided to TWRS privatization and the Spent Fuels Project work."  The 
letter identifies no other services from which task 4 services must 
remain independent.  The amendment language set forth this same 
requirement by stating that offerors awarded a task 4 contract would 
not be eligible for award of FYWP or individual task orders for TWRS 
privatization related work.  This language, read in conjunction with 
the cover letter explanation of the amendment, can only reasonably be 
interpreted to mean than an offeror awarded a contract for independent 
assessment services would not be eligible for an award under an FYWP 
for TWRS privatization related work, or an award of any other 
individual task order for TWRS privatization related work.  The 
amendment is intended to, and does, open competition under task 4 to 
offerors who may be awarded contracts on any of tasks 1 through 3, and 
simply prohibits them from receiving any task orders related to TWRS 
privatization.  In this regard, the shift in the proscribing language 
from designating such offers "nonresponsive" to limiting 
"eligib[ility] for award" of such work serves to permit the agency to 
control any possible conflicts by the allocation of appropriate task 
order awards, while opening up the field of competition.   

The protester's suggestion that the amendment language that task 4 
services must remain independent of all FYWP related work as well as 
independent of TWRS privatization related work is implausible.  Under 
this interpretation, amendment 002 is identical in meaning to the 
original solicitation and thus serves no purpose, notwithstanding the 
explicit explanation to the contrary in the amendment cover letter.  
That is, under the original language of the RFP, an offeror awarded a 
contract for task 4 could not compete for or be awarded a contract on 
any other task.  Similarly, under the protester's interpretation of 
the revised provision, an offeror could not be awarded a contract for 
task 4 work and for any other task, since work under these tasks 
consists primarily of FYWP work.  COMPA's interpretation reflects a 
cramped reading of the language of amendment 002 and a disregard for 
the stated purpose of the amendment. 

COMPA next argues that the agency failed to follow the stated 
evaluation criteria in determining the best overall value to the 
government. 

Section M of the original solicitation included a table of contents 
and six paragraphs describing how proposals would be evaluated and how 
the agency would determine which proposal offered the best value to 
the government, including M-5, Relative Importance of the Factors, 
and, M-6, Determining Best Overall Value, which stated that:  "In 
order to determine which offeror represents the best overall value, 
the Source Selection Official will make a series of paired comparisons 
among only those offerors who submitted acceptable offers 
(proposals)."  Paragraph M-6 went on to explain how selections would 
be made from each paired comparison, repeating the process until the 
official identified the offeror representing the best overall value.  

Amendment 001, among other things, deleted paragraph M-4, and revised 
M-6 to state that the best value would be determined by evaluating the 
offeror's capability along with the estimated price and then assessing 
whether the difference between or among competing offerors' proposals 
indicates a superiority from the standpoint of (1) what the difference 
might mean in terms of anticipated performance and (2) what the impact 
of the cost would be as estimated based upon the government's 
estimated price.  Because of the deletion of M-4, the revised M-6 
became M-5.  However, the agency inadvertently failed to delete M-4 
from the table of contents listing.  Thus, while the table of contents 
listed six paragraphs in section M, only five paragraphs were actually 
included.  Amendment 002 correctly deleted M-4 from the table of 
contents and correctly re-numbered the remaining paragraphs.  No 
additional revisions were made to M-5, Determining Best Overall Value.  

In its report, DOE stated that it had made the award selection in 
accordance with the RFP, citing M-5, Determining Best Overall Value, 
and quoting the amended language noted above.  COMPA argues that the 
"criteria quoted by the [a]gency [are] not the relevant RFP criteria" 
and thus show that the agency "failed to follow the controlling RFP 
[c]riteria."  COMPA goes on to cite revised M-5, Relative Importance 
of the Factors, which, as noted above, was re-numbered as M-4 after 
the deletion of the original M-4.  The record makes clear that the 
agency followed M-5 (the revised M-6), the correct controlling 
criteria, in determining best value.  The protester apparently 
misunderstood that a paragraph (M-4) had been deleted, resulting in 
the renumbering of the remaining paragraphs.  In short, the record 
does not support the protester's contention that the agency failed to 
follow the correct evaluation criteria.  We also note that the 
protester fails to provide any indication of how it was prejudiced by 
the agency's alleged failure to adhere to Compa's understanding of the 
evaluation scheme.    

Finally, the protester argues that the agency improperly evaluated the 
experience criterion on the basis of past contracts and not on current 
capability, "as required under the solicitation," and gave Informatics 
credit for relevant experience for services provided in support of a 
DOE Carlsbad contract which involved an individual who is currently 
employed by COMPA.  

The protester points to nothing in the solicitation to support its 
contention that the solicitation specified that only current 
capability would be evaluated under experience and, in fact, 
experience under the solicitation was to be evaluated on three 
subfactors, duration (number of years), level (similarity of previous 
contracts) and relevance to the service category.  Moreover, the 
solicitation required offerors to list past contracts and offerors 
were evaluated on these past contracts.  Informatics provided a list 
of contracts for the past 5 years and described the nature of the work 
performed under nine of them.  Informatics did not list or describe 
any contracts with the DOE Carlsbad Area Office and DOE therefore did 
not consider the Carlsbad contract to which the protester objects as 
part of the evaluation.[2]  Under these circumstances, we have no 
basis to question the agency's evaluation of Informatics's experience.  

The protest is denied.

Comptroller General
of the United States

1. An FYWP consists of a contractor's statement outlining how it 
intends to accomplish work under a particular task order in a given 
year.

2. Even if Informatics had included the Carlsbad contract in its 
proposal, the agency could properly have considered this contract as 
part of Informatics's experience as a corporate entity, which does not 
depend on the experience of the particular personnel who performed the 
work.  See Precision Elevator, Inc., B-259375,
Mar. 20, 1995, 95-1 CPD  para.  152 at 3-4.