TITLE:  CMC & Maintenance, Inc., B-293803.2, December 2, 2004
BNUMBER:  B-293803.2
DATE:  December 2, 2004

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   Decision

   Matter of:   CMC & Maintenance, Inc.

   File:            B-293803.2

   Date:              December 2, 2004

   Michael McCue for the protester.

   Joseph J. Mack for Secure Services Group, Inc., an intervenor.

   Stephen T. Orsino, Esq., Federal Emergency Management Agency, for the
agency.

   Paul E. Jordan, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General
Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

   DIGEST

   Agency's decision to reevaluate quotations, after award had been made to
protester, was reasonable and appropriate where original award
determination was based on erroneous evaluation information and agency
record lacked any documentation to support original adjectival evaluation
ratings.

   DECISION

   CMC & Maintenance, Inc. protests the termination of its contract for
convenience, and the subsequent award to Secure Services Group, Inc.
(SSG), under request for quotations (RFQ) No. HSFE01-04-Q-0001, issued by
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for operation, maintenance,
and repair of mechanical components at two federal buildings. CMC asserts
that the agency's actions were unnecessary because the original award to
CMC was proper.

   We deny the protest.

   The RFQ called for quotations to provide all labor and materials necessary
for operation and maintenance at the Federal Regional Center and the
vehicle storage and administration building in Maynard, Massachusetts. 
The current contract, being performed by SSG, was to expire at the end of
August 2004, and the agency needed a bridge contract to cover services
while it finalized a new competitive solicitation. The RFQ contemplated
issuance of a fixed-price contract for a period of 1 month, with a 6-month
option expiring in March 2005. Quotations were to be evaluated under
three factors--technical qualifications (including resumes of individuals
proposed as engineering technician IV); past performance; and cost/price. 
The technical factor was considered more important than past performance
and the non-price factors were considered significantly more important
than cost. Award was to be made on a "best value" basis.

   Four vendors, including CMC and SSG, submitted quotations, which were
evaluated by the then-cognizant contracting officer, who alone evaluated
their technical qualifications. The contracting officer summarized her
adjectival ratings in matrix form and, without identifying the vendors by
name, furnished them to the three-member technical evaluation panel
(TEP) for review. Based on this review, bidder 1 (SSG) was rated
technically lower, and had a lower price, than bidder 2 (CMC); the TEP
thus recommended award to CMC. After awarding the contract to CMC, the
contracting officer left federal service and was replaced by another
individual. Thereafter, SSG requested a debriefing, but when the
replacement contracting officer reviewed the contracting file, she
determined that the evaluation was so flawed that it had to be redone. 
She notified the vendors and had the TEP review each vendor's quotation,
individually score them, and then complete a consensus evaluation. The
TEP's consensus evaluation rated CMC's quotation as good under the
technical factor and unsatisfactory under the past performance factor,
while rating SSG's quotation as outstanding under both factors. Based on
SSG's technical ratings and low price, the contracting officer terminated
CMC's contract and made award to SSG. Upon learning of the termination of
its contract and the new award, CMC filed this protest.

   CMC does not maintain that the reevaluation of quotations was unreasonable
or otherwise flawed but, rather, asserts that the termination of its
contract, and the new award to SSG, were improper because the agency had
no need to conduct a reevaluation. In CMC's view, the evaluation record
was sufficient to support the original award. 

   With regard to contract awards, an agency must document its judgments in
sufficient detail to show that they are not arbitrary. U.S. Defense Sys.,
Inc., Ba-245563, Jan. 17, 1992, 92-1 CPD P 89 at 3. Contracting
officials have broad discretion to take corrective action where the agency
determines that such action is necessary to ensure fair and impartial
competition, and we will not object to an agency's corrective action where
the agency discovers an obvious error in the evaluations and corrects the
error by reassessing the proposals. Kellie W. Tipton Constr. Co.,
Ba-281331.3, Mar. 22, 1999, 99-1 CPD P 73 at 4-5. 

   Here, the replacement contracting officer's decision to take corrective
action was both reasonable and appropriate because the original evaluation
and its record were significantly flawed. Specifically, even though the
quotations were to be evaluated on the basis of technical qualifications
and past performance, there was nothing--no strengths or
weaknesses--listed in the evaluation record to support the original
contracting officer's adjectival ratings for the vendors. Further, the
evaluation matrix was inconsistent with SSG's past performance
information. Specifically, one of SSG's past performance questionnaire
respondents had indicated that he would do business with SSG again, and
the other had indicated that he "maybe" would do business with SSG again. 
However, the original evaluation matrix indicated that these respondents
had answered "maybe" and "no," a significant difference. Moreover, the
TEP members, charged with responsibility for evaluating the proposals, had
not reviewed either proposal before making their initial award
recommendation. Given the agency's reliance on erroneous information, the
lack of supporting narrative, and the absence from the record of any
information supporting the TEP's award recommendation, the award
determination was unsupportable and potentially subject to a successful
protest challenge. U.S. Defense Sys., Inc., supra. Under these
circumstances it was within the agency's discretion to reevaluate the
quotations and make a new award determination based on a fully documented
evaluation record. Since following this course resulted in a
determination that SSG's proposal, rather than CMC's, represented the best
value, the termination of CMC's contract and issuance of a new contract to
SSG were unobjectionable

   The protest is denied.

   Anthony H. Gamboa

   General Counsel
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