[Protest of Army Exclusion of Proposal From Competitive Range]

A firm protested its exclusion from the competitive range under an Army solicitation for combat communications electronic systems, alleging that the Army: (1) refused to provide it with access to documents required to develop its protest; (2) improperly evaluated its technical proposal; (3) improperly refused to consider information obtained from the preaward survey in its technical evaluation; and (4) unnecessarily subjected it to a preaward survey. The protester claimed recovery of its proposal preparation costs, protest costs, and costs for participating in the preaward survey. GAO found that: (1) the contracting agency has the primary responsibility for determining which documents are subject to release; (2) the Army reasonably determined that the protester's technical proposal was unacceptable; (3) information contained in a preaward survey is not a substitute for information that should have been included in a technical proposal; and (4) conducting a preaward survey is a customary agency procedure. Accordingly, the protest was denied and the claims were not allowed.