[Protest of Customs Service Contract Award for Property Management]

A firm protested a Customs Service contract award, contending that: (1) the award was unreasonable and inconsistent with the solicitation's evaluation criteria; and (2) the award should have been made to it as the highest rated offerer. GAO noted that: (1) the solicitation assigned the maximum of 80 points for technical factors and 30 points as the maximum score for cost; and (2) even though the protester's offer received the highest score, the Source Evaluation Board (SEB) recommended that award be made to the awardee because its proposed approach entailed less risk than the protester's approach. The protester argued that: (1) cost should have been the determining evaluation factor since its offer was essentially equal to the awardee's technical offer; and (2) the decision to award the contract to the awardee involved the consideration of a factor which was not included in the solicitation's evaluation criteria. GAO found that: (1) source selection officials have the ultimate responsibility for determining what, if any, significance to attach to technical and cost scores; (2) unless a solicitation provides that a contract will be awarded to the offerer whose proposal receives the highest number of points, award need not be made on that basis; (3) there was no statement that the highest scored offerer would be awarded the contract; and (4) the selection of a higher priced, technically superior offer was not objectionable where award on that basis was consistent with the solicitation's evaluation criteria. GAO also found that: (1) evaluators were not required to downgrade proposals for failure to list subcontractors since the list was not intended for evaluation purposes; (2) the use of the degree of risk to differentiate between proposals was not unreasonable since the element of risk was clearly related to the offerer's ability to perform the contract; (3) it is permissible to award a contract to a firm other than the lowest cost offerer if the source selection official's decision to do so is reasonable and consistent with the established evaluation scheme; and (4) where a protester supplements its original timely protest with a new ground of protest more than 10 working days after the basis for the new argument should have been known, the new ground for protest is untimely filed. Accordingly, the protest was denied in part and dismissed in part.