United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao_comptroller_general legislative 2016-06-23 U.S. Government Publishing Office 2008-06-18 monographic deposited born digital 67 p. GA 1.13:B-311344 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-B-311344 P0b002ee18fd43363 f:311344 DGPO 2016-06-23 2016-06-23 GAOREPORTS-B-311344 machine generated eng fdlp COMPTROLLERDECISION GAOREPORTS-B-311344 B-311344 Comptroller General Decision 1. Protest is sustained, where the agency, in making the award decision, did not assess the relative merits of the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria identified in the solicitation, which provided for a relative order of importance for the various technical requirements, and where the agency did not take into account the fact that one of the proposals offered to satisfy more "trade space" technical requirements than the other proposal, even though the solicitation expressly requested offerors to satisfy as many of these technical requirements as possible.<p/> 2. Protest is sustained, where the agency violated the solicitation's evaluation provision that "no consideration will be provided for exceeding [key performance parameter] KPP objectives" when it recognized as a key discriminator the fact that the awardee proposed to exceed a KPP objective relating to aerial refueling to a greater degree than the protester.<p/> 3. Protest is sustained, where the record does not demonstrate the reasonableness of the agency's determination that the awardee's proposed aerial refueling tanker could refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures, as required by the solicitation.<p/> 4. Protest is sustained, where the agency conducted misleading and unequal discussions with the protester, where the agency informed the protester that it had fully satisfied a KPP objective relating to operational utility, but later determined that the protester only partially met this objective, without advising the offeror of this change in its assessment and while continuing to conduct discussions with the awardee relating to its satisfaction of the same KPP objective.<p/> 5. Protest is sustained, where the agency unreasonably determined that the awardee's refusal to agree to the specific solicitation requirement that it plan and support the agency to achieve initial organic depot-level maintenance within 2 years after delivery of the first full-rate production aircraft was an "administrative oversight," and improperly made award, despite this clear exception to a material solicitation requirement.<p/> 6. Protest is sustained, where the agency's evaluation of military construction costs in calculating the offerors' most probable life cycle costs for their proposed aircraft was unreasonable, where the evaluation did not account for the offerors' specific proposals, and where the calculation of military construction costs based on a notional (hypothetical) plan was not reasonably supported.<p/> 7. Protest is sustained, where the agency improperly added costs to an element of cost (non-recurring engineering costs) in calculating the protester's most probable life cycle costs to account for risk associated with the protester's failure to satisfactorily explain the basis for how it priced this cost element, where the agency did not determine that the protester's proposed costs for that element were unrealistically low.<p/> 8. Protest is sustained, where the agency's use of a "Monte Carlo" simulation model to determine the protester's probable cost of non-recurring engineering associated with the system demonstration and development portion of the acquisition was unreasonable, where the model's inputs concerned total weapons systems at an overall program level and there is no indication that this is a reliable predictor of anticipated growth of the protester's non-recurring engineering costs.<p/> 9. Protester is not required to file a "defensive protest" when during the procurement it is apprised of an agency's evaluation judgments with which it disagrees or where it believes the evaluation is inconsistent with the solicitation's evaluation scheme, because GAO's Bid Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R. sect. 21.2(a)(2) (2008), require that where the protest involves a procurement conducted on the basis of competitive proposals under which a debriefing is requested and, when requested, is required, these protest grounds can only be raised after the offered debriefing.<p/> 10. While an agency, in an appropriate case, may request under GAO's Bid Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R. sect. 21.3(d) (2008), that a protester provide specific relevant documents, of which the agency is aware and does not itself possess, this does not allow for "wide-open" document requests by an agency of broad categories of documents. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-B-311344/html/GAOREPORTS-B-311344.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-B-311344/pdf/GAOREPORTS-B-311344.pdf GAO/B-311344 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-B-311344 Comptroller General Decision GAO/B-311344; B-311344; B-311344.3; B-311344.4; B-311344.6; B-311344.7; B-311344.8; B-311344.10; B-311344.11, The Boeing Company, June 18, 2008; Volume 122 Page 3 122 Stat. 3 Public Law 110-181