Evaluation of Lease-Based Proposal Compared with Proposals for Government Equipment Purchase

A company protested the evaluation factors in a solicitation and sought more favorable evaluation of its lease-based proposal in comparison with proposals for the Government's purchase of equipment. The protest was denied because: the provision for considering the residual value of purchased equipment in comparing relative costs was reasonable, and the method used for computing this value was not shown to be erroneous; lease proposals should be evaluated over the longest time that equipment will be leased, and rights to equipment after lease expiration are too speculative to be used as an evaluation factor; the possibility that additional taxes would accrue through leasing was too speculative to be considered in proposal evaluation; costs of Government self-insurance of purchased equipment were too indefinite to be used in evaluation; and the conclusion that the agency acted unreasonably in requiring lessors to assume risk of loss was not supported.