TITLE: B-310210, Strategic e-Business Solutions, Inc., November 8, 2007
BNUMBER: B-310210
DATE: November 8, 2007
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B-310210, Strategic e-Business Solutions, Inc., November 8, 2007
Decision
Matter of: Strategic e-Business Solutions, Inc.
File: B-310210
Date: November 8, 2007
Howard Folkes for the protester.
Jeffri Pierre, Esq., Department of Health and Human Services, for the
agency.
Jennifer D. Westfall-McGrail, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office
of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the
decision.
DIGEST
1. Agency reasonably concluded that protester had failed to demonstrate
that it had a subcontracting agreement in place for a required area of
expertise where purported subcontracting agreement did not describe the
type of services to be furnished by the subcontractor or the price terms
and there was no evidence that subcontractor's offer of services had been
accepted by the protester.
2. Where agency conducted discussions that reasonably led protester into
the area of its proposal requiring amplification, agency was not required
to conduct additional discussions once it determined that proposal, as
revised, remained informationally deficient.
DECISION
Strategic e-Business Solutions, Inc. (SeBS) protests the rejection of the
proposal that it submitted in response to request for proposals (RFP) No.
CMS-2007-8A-0006, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, Department of Health and Human Services, for the development of
materials to be used to train customer service representatives in
responding to Medicare beneficiary inquiries. The protester takes issue
with the evaluation of its proposal.
We deny the protest.
The RFP provided for an initial screening of proposals on a pass/fail
basis to determine their compliance with a solicitation requirement
pertaining to experience.[1] The proposals that passed the factor were
then to be evaluated on the basis of multiple additional factors
(technical understanding, management plan, optional tasks, personnel
qualifications, corporate experience, past performance, and cost/price),
while the proposals that failed the factor were to be excluded from
further consideration. The experience factor provided as follows:
The prime contractor and/or its subcontractors proposing under this
contract shall demonstrate that it has provided integrated training,
content, and quality monitoring services in a multi-channel contact
center servicing Medicare beneficiaries. The contractor shall have
experience with the current CMS Next Generation Desktop (NGD)
functionality and an understanding of the build process in order to
provide actionable recommendations as they relate to the NGD or any of
its integrated components.
Note: This requirement may be met with a combination of experience from
the prime and subcontractor(s) and/or the prime may use experience
across multiple legal entities that are owned under a single corporate
umbrella. . . . Subcontracting agreements and the establishment of new
legal entities must be final at the time of proposal submission.
RFP at 76. Offerors were instructed to demonstrate their compliance with
the foregoing requirements by (1) providing a narrative summary explaining
their compliance, (2) furnishing copies of "formal subcontracting teaming
agreements" and documentation substantiating any new legal entities, and
(3) citing specific examples demonstrating their compliance with the above
requirements. Id. at 66-67.
SeBS submitted its proposal by the August 2, 2007 closing date. In its
proposal, the protester represented that "SeBS consultants" (whom it did
not further identify) had NGD experience. After reviewing SeBS's proposal,
the contracting officer advised the protester that it had not furnished
sufficient information to achieve a rating of pass under the experience
requirement and that it needed to clarify how its team satisfied the
requirement. Of particular relevance to this protest, the contracting
officer asked SeBS to clarify its team's experience with NGD functionality
and to identify the consultants that it would be using to meet the
requirement for NGD experience. He also asked SeBS to clarify whether the
consultants were being proposed as part of the SeBS team.
SeBS responded to the agency's request for additional information by
noting that it had "negotiated consulting support from" a company with NGD
experience.[2] Protester's Aug. 16, 2007 Response to the Agency at 7. SeBS
included with its response a copy of a letter addressed to SeBS by the
company. The letter, termed a "contracting service agreement," stated
that, upon award of a contract under the RFP to SeBS, the company
"offered" to provide the protester with professional services in support
of the contract "on an as requested basis after discussion and mutual
agreement on a defined set of services to be delivered by [the company]."
Id. at 1. The letter further provided that rates and fees would be
negotiated after the contract had been awarded. The words "Accepted on
behalf [of] Strategic e-Business Solutions, Inc." had been typed at the
bottom of the letter, but no signature had been entered in the blank above
the words.[3]
After reviewing SeBS's response, the contracting officer advised the
protester that it had not furnished sufficient information to demonstrate
that it had NGD experience, and, accordingly, that its proposal had failed
the initial screening and would not be considered further. In a
subsequently furnished debriefing, the contracting officer explained that
it was not the knowledge and experience of SeBS's named proposed
consultant that the agency questioned, but rather, SeBS's failure to
demonstrate that it had an "active subcontracting agreement" with the
company. Debriefing Letter at 3.
SeBS protested to our Office on September 7, arguing that the agency had
applied an unstated evaluation criterion in rejecting its proposal for
failing to furnish a fully-negotiated subcontracting agreement. SeBS
maintains that all that the solicitation required was a written agreement
to enter into a subcontract (as opposed to a partnership or joint venture)
with its proposed consultant, not a "fully negotiated subcontract with
prices." Comments at 4.
Contrary to the protester's position, the RFP required more than written
evidence of an agreement to enter into a subcontract; the RFP language
quoted above clearly provided that any subcontracting agreements on which
an offeror relied to establish the required experience had to be "final"
at the time of proposal submission. The letter from the consultant
provided by SeBS failed to furnish any detail whatsoever regarding the
services to be delivered, stating only that the consultant would provide
"professional services" to SeBS in support of the contract "after
discussion and mutual agreement on a defined set of services to be
delivered" by the consultant. Similarly, the letter left open the price
terms of any agreement, stating that the consultant's "rates and fees will
be negotiated once the contract has been awarded." Further, as noted
above, the version of the letter furnished by the protester to the agency
did not contain a signature by an SeBS representative; thus, there was no
evidence that the two parties had in fact entered into an agreement. Given
the general nature of the letter and its lack of specificity regarding
basic terms, we think that the agency reasonably concluded that SeBS
failed to demonstrate that it had a final subcontracting agreement in
place to establish the required NGD experience that SeBS itself was
missing, as required by the RFP.
Next, the protester argues that the agency failed to conduct meaningful
discussions with it by failing to advise it that the documentation that it
had submitted was insufficient to establish that it had entered into a
subcontracting agreement covering NGD expertise. The protester is in
essence arguing that after notifying it that it had not adequately
addressed the issue of NGD experience in its initial proposal and giving
it the opportunity to submit additional information, the agency had an
obligation to notify it and permit it to submit still more information
once the agency determined that the additional information submitted by
the protester was still insufficient.
We disagree. While it is true that when an agency engages in discussions
with an offeror, those discussions must be meaningful, meaning that they
must lead the offeror into the areas of its proposal requiring correction
or amplification, the requirement for meaningful discussions does not
obligate an agency to continue to conduct successive rounds of discussions
until all proposal defects have been corrected. Metson Marine Servs.,
Inc., B-299705, July 20, 2007, 2007 CPD para. 159 at __; Metro Mach.
Corp., B-295744, B-299744.2, Apr. 21, 2005, 2005 CPD para. 112 at 19.
Here, the questions posed by the agency were clearly sufficient to place
the protester on notice that it needed to furnish further information
regarding the consultant(s) that it would be using to meet the requirement
for NGD experience and their status vis-`a-vis the SeBS team. Once the
agency had determined that the additional information furnished by the
protester in response to its questions was still insufficient to
demonstrate that SeBS had entered into a subcontracting agreement for NGD
expertise, the agency was under no obligation to give the protester
another opportunity to cure the informational deficiency. See OMV Med.,
Inc., B-281490, Feb. 16, 1999, 99-1 CPD para. 38 at 7.
The protest is denied.
Gary L. Kepplinger
General Counsel
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[1] The solicitation contemplated the award of a cost-plus-fixed-fee
contract for a 3-month transition period, a 15-month base period, and four
1-year option periods.
[2] The protester named the company in its response, but we have not
included this information in our decision because the protester has
identified it as confidential.
[3] SeBS furnished a copy of the subcontractor's letter to our Office as
an attachment to its protest; this version of the letter does contain a
signature in the blank over the words "Accepted on behalf of Strategic
e-Business Solutions, Inc." Since the signature did not appear on the
version of the letter furnished to the agency, we can only conclude that
the signature was entered after the protester had furnished the agency
with a copy of the letter.