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Protest That Solicitation Contained Biased Specifications

B-193240 Published: May 29, 1979. Publicly Released: May 29, 1979.
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Highlights

Servo Corporation of America protested the contract award to Bendix Corporation for a system to detect, analyze, and transmit atmospheric meteorological data for use by the Army Field Artillery. After Servo alleged that the procurement procedures were improper, the Army conducted a technical review of the original technical evaluations of the proposals of Servo and Bendix. Servo contended that the Army evaluation team was not technically competent in the meteorological area and that the Army was biased in favor of awarding the contract to Bendix. Servo further alleged that the Army possessed documents that were relevant to Servo's allegations of bias. A merger was contemplated between Servo and Beukers, who possessed technology that would be advantageous to Servo. Servo believed that Bendix interfered with the contemplated merger; consequently, the inability of Servo to obtain the technology affected the evaluation of its proposal. The Army insisted that during the evaluation process it was assumed that Servo owned the Beukers' technology, but there was a question as to whether Servo had the capability to use Beukers' technology. In view of the fact that Servo made no specific allegations of fraud on the part of Army procurement officials and cited no definitive responsibility criteria which the contracting officer failed to apply, the protests were denied.

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