TITLE:  Consultants In Continual Improvement, B-289351, February 12, 2002
BNUMBER:  B-289351
DATE:  February 12, 2002
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Decision

Matter of: Consultants In Continual Improvement

File: B-289351

Date: February 12, 2002

Isidor Patapis for the protester.

John A. Kern, Esq., Federal Railroad Administration, for the agency.

Susan K. McAuliffe, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of the
General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

Protest of agency's evaluation of firm's proposal is denied where record
shows that evaluation was reasonable and consistent with solicitation's
terms; protester's disagreement with evaluation is insufficient to show it
was unreasonable.

DECISION

Consultants In Continual Improvement (CICI) protests the agency's evaluation
of its proposal under request for proposals (RFP) No. DTFR53-01-R-00037,
issued by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). The protester contends
that it was unreasonable for the agency to conclude that its proposal had
weaknesses in certain areas.

We deny the protest.

The RFP anticipated the award of an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity,
fixed-price contract for a base year and four option periods for support
services for the FRA's Office of Human Resources. The required services
relate to workforce planning and training needs assessments of employees'
non-technical skills.

Non-technical skills to be considered include, for example, interpersonal
skills, supervisory and managerial leadership, teaming, conflict resolution,
oral and written communications, computer applications, and non-technical
safety related subjects. RFP para.para. C.2, F.2, and L.5. The contractor was to
assess current non-technical organizational skills of agency employees,
determine gaps between current and future skill requirements, and identify
appropriate training interventions to redress skill deficiencies. Id. para. C.3.

Offerors' technical, past performance, and price proposals were to be clear,
complete, concise, and internally consistent. Id. para. L.7. Proposals were to
be submitted in a double-spaced format; the RFP specifically warned that
information in excess of stated limitations (e.g., 10-page, double-spaced
limits for certain portions of the technical proposal) would not be
considered. Id. para. L.7. Technical proposals were to be evaluated under the
following factors, stated in descending order of importance: technical
approach (consisting of two equally weighted subfactors--the offeror's
demonstrated overall understanding of and approach to all tasking areas, and
the offeror's understanding and ability to perform sample task
requirements); key personnel; and management plan. Id. para. M.1(a). The RFP
provided that proposals would be assigned adjectival ratings of outstanding,
better, acceptable, marginal, or unacceptable. Id. para. M.1(b). The price
proposals were to be based on sample task responses; price was less
important than the stated technical factors. Offerors were advised that a
preliminary competitive range would be determined to include the proposals
considered to have a reasonable chance of being selected for award and that
those offerors were to give oral presentations.

Id. para.para. L.8, M.5.

Eighteen proposals were evaluated by the agency's technical evaluation team.
The protester's proposal (at $107,158) was rated technically acceptable. The
agency decided, however, that seven lower-priced proposals, each of which
was rated either at the same technical level or higher than the protester's
proposal, were the ones that had a reasonable chance of receiving an award
under the RFP; those seven proposals were subsequently included in the
preliminary competitive range. Award was made to Denali Associates, which
had submitted a proposal rated substantially higher than CICI's for
technical merit, and which offered a substantially lower price (at $79,605).
Following a post-award debriefing, CICI filed this protest.

CICI challenges the propriety of the agency's evaluation of its proposal.
The protester contends that the proposal weaknesses cited by the agency are
not justified.

The evaluation of technical proposals is a matter within the discretion of
the contracting agency, since the agency is responsible for defining its
needs and the best method of accommodating them. In reviewing an agency's
evaluation, we will not reevaluate technical proposals, but instead will
examine the agency's evaluation to ensure that it was reasonable and
consistent with the solicitation's stated evaluation criteria. An offeror's
mere disagreement with the agency does not render the evaluation
unreasonable. Matrix Int'l Logistics, Inc., B-277208, B-277208.2, Sept. 15,
1997, 97-2 CPD para. 94 at 4. Based upon our review of the record, we find no
basis to question the reasonableness of the agency's evaluation of the CICI
proposal.

CICI first argues that the agency improperly cited as a proposal weakness
the protester's intended use of telephone interviewing as a primary means to
initially gather skill data from employees to identify relevant
non-technical skills and competencies for their positions. CICI argues that
the agency should have regarded this approach as a well-established method
for gathering employee competency data.

The agency states that, regardless of whether telephone interviewing is
useful elsewhere, it simply was not a highly useful technique for meeting
the agency's needs here. The agency explains, for instance, that the
hazardous material railroad safety inspectors to be considered under the
RFP's sample task generally do not communicate by telephone at work as they
are often in the field or in transit on trains. The agency reasoned that
limited data collections or inconvenience and disruption to these employees
could result from the protester's proposed approach. The agency also notes
that e-mail communications would have been a more appropriate method because
inspectors typically travel with laptop computers. The record shows that the
use of computer-oriented communications was not proposed by the protester
for this early stage of information-gathering and that its proposed
alternative approaches were considered too vague to justify a higher
proposal rating than the acceptable rating assigned.

In its comments, CICI concedes that it intentionally excluded from its
proposal detailed discussions of its proprietary data-gathering techniques
and how they might have benefited the agency. An agency's proposal
evaluation, however, is dependent upon the information furnished in the
proposal. It was CICI's obligation to submit a proposal adequately detailing
its proposed technical approach in order for the agency to evaluate the
offered approach, as well as the firm's understanding of the agency's
particular requirements. See GEC-Marconi Elec. Sys. Corp., B-276186,
B-276186.2, May 21, 1997, 97-2 CPD para. 23 at 7. CICI failed to fulfill its
obligation in this regard. Since the record here provides reasonable
justification for the cited weakness in the initial information-gathering
efforts proposed by CICI for these sample task employees, we see no basis to
question the agency's failure to rate the proposal higher than it did.

Similarly, CICI protests the agency's finding that, in attempting to
demonstrate CICI's understanding of the sample task requirements, its
proposal merely restated RFP requirements without sufficiently detailing
CICI's intended strategies. In this regard, our review of the CICI proposal
confirms that, where the proposal's general subject headings indicated that
a discussion of the offeror's understanding of the requirements would
follow, what followed was in fact the protester's mere paraphrasing or
quotation of RFP work requirements, followed by limited information as to
the offeror's general approach to meeting the requirements. CICI argues that
if the agency sought more detail in its proposal's discussion of CICI's
proposed technical approach to meeting the sample task requirements, it
should have considered information included in other sections of the CICI
proposal. The agency reports that sample task responses, however, were to be
evaluated separately from the proposal's more general, overall technical
approach information and that, in any event, much of the information CICI
suggests should have been considered in the evaluation of its sample task
response was outside the scope of that sample task.

Our review of the record not only confirms the reasonableness of the
agency's position, but provides further support for the agency's
determination that a higher proposal rating than acceptable was not
warranted here. For instance, the evaluation record also points out that the
proposal was considered somewhat confusing for its internal inconsistencies
(for example, referenced figures did not present the relevant information
purported to be in the figures), and the proposal also indicated that CICI
planned to consider both non-technical and technical skills in its
assessment work, despite the fact that only non-technical skills were
relevant to the current RFP. Accordingly, in light of the fact that the
proposal merely restates the RFP requirements, fails to provide much detail
about the actual approach to be taken, and contains internal inconsistencies
and information relating to areas outside the scope of work, we cannot find
unreasonable the agency's conclusion that the proposal had weaknesses in
this regard. [1]

Another proposal weakness challenged by the protester refers to the finding
that CICI failed to clearly identify the coordination of prime contractor
and subcontractors in terms of accountability; this concern was raised in
the evaluation of CICI's management plan in conjunction with the evaluators'
concerns that no specific plan of detailed quality control procedures was
presented in the proposal. The protester, contending that its proposed
personnel's responsibilities and quality assurance efforts were clear in its
proposal, asserts that, since its personnel are experts who have performed
high-quality work in the past, each will be in charge of instituting quality
control measures for his/her work under the contract and that additional
support would be available as requested. The RFP, however, specifically
required a detailed quality assurance plan identifying the specific
procedures to be undertaken in contract performance (for instance,
describing proposed efforts for early identification and resolution of
performance problems). Our review of the CICI proposal confirms the cited
lack of such a detailed quality control plan, thus supporting the
reasonableness of the agency's determination that, consistent with the
evaluation terms of the RFP, this constituted a weakness in the proposal.

Our review of the record shows that, although the protester's overall
proposal was cited as having certain strengths by the evaluators--as were
all of the proposals rated acceptable and better--the CICI proposal
reasonably was cited as having weaknesses as well. Despite the protester's
disagreement with the agency's evaluation, the record supports the
reasonableness of the cited weaknesses. Thus, the protester has not provided
any basis to question the evaluation of its proposal. [2] Given the agency's
receipt of seven proposals rated the same as or higher than the protester's
proposal in terms of technical merit--each offering a price substantially
lower than that offered by CICI--we likewise see no basis to question the
agency's determination that CICI did not have a reasonable chance of
receiving the award under the RFP and that its proposal therefore should be
excluded from the competitive range. Ervin & Assocs., Inc., B-280993, Dec.
17, 1998, 98-2 CPD para. 151 at 3 (an agency is not required to retain in the
competitive range a proposal that the agency reasonably concludes has no
realistic prospect of award).

The protest is denied.

Anthony H. Gamboa

General Counsel

Notes

1. We note that the record shows that the protester benefited from the
agency's apparent decision to ignore CICI's failure to adhere to the RFP's
proposal length restrictions. CICI's 10-page, singled-spaced technical
approach proposal was twice the mandatory 10-page, double-spaced limits, as
noted by at least one evaluator. Application of the page limit, as the RFP
required, would have excluded from consideration material terms of the
offered approach affecting the technical acceptability of the offer.

2. The agency concedes that CICI's proposal was incorrectly found to have a
weakness in one area (regarding cross checking of competency data in the
data validation portion of the proposal). In light of the general lack of
detail in this area of the protester's proposal, however, the agency
explains that it still considers there to be a proposal weakness in this
portion of the proposal. Our review of the record confirms a lack of detail
in this area of the proposal (for example, specific validation questions are
not presented and there is no detailed discussion of how the responses are
to be tracked (individually or by group, etc.); thus we see no basis to
conclude that the overall rating of acceptable would change if the cited
weakness in the area of cross checking were discounted.