[Protest Alleging Navy Violated Evaluation Procedures]

A firm, the only bidder under a Navy invitation for bids to maintain the grounds at the Naval Avionics Center, protested that the Navy violated established procedures for evaluating bids. The Navy solicited bids to determine whether to perform the work in-house or by contract. Based on a comparison of the Government estimate of in-house performance with the protester's bid, the Navy determined it would cost less to maintain the grounds in-house. GAO held that it will consider a protest over an agency's decision to continue to perform services with its own employees rather than by contract only to determine whether cost comparison procedures have been followed and where these procedures have been followed, and the cost of contracting out was found more costly, the decision to retain the work in-house was proper. GAO also held that a new basis of protest presented after the filing of the initial protests must independently satisfy timeliness criteria prescribed in bid protest procedures. In this case, the protester learned of a new basis and presented it to GAO for the first time in its comments on the agency report; therefore, the filing did not meet the requirement that protests be filed not later than 10 working days of the time of the basis of the protest was learned. Accordingly, the protest was denied in part and dismissed in part.