Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital
Highlights
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital (PPMH) protests the award of a contract to Sterling Medical Associates, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. VA-247-07-RP-0122, issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for primary care and mental health services for veterans. Phoebe asserts that VA misevaluated its and Sterling's proposals and performed an improper "best value" analysis.
B-311385, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, June 19, 2008
DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE
The decision issued on the date below was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has been approved for public release.
Decision
Matter of:
Jeffrey E. Weinstein, Esq., for the protester.
Laurel A. Hockey, Esq., Cohen Mohr, for Sterling Medical Associates, an intervenor.
Harold W. Askins III, Esq., Department of Veterans Affairs, for the agency.
Mary G. Curcio, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.
DIGEST
1. Protest that agency purportedly performed inadequate cost realism analysis is denied where no such analysis was required because solicitation contemplated award of fixed'price, rather than cost-reimbursement, contract and did not provide for any realism analysis.
2. Protest challenging scores assigned protester's and awardee's proposals under technical evaluation factors is denied where protester was not competitively prejudiced; even if protester's proposal received maximum possible technical score and awardee's score were reduced in accordance with protester's allegations, awardee would remain in line for award when price scores are considered.
DECISION
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital (PPMH) protests the award of a contract to Sterling Medical Associates, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. VA-247-07-RP-0122, issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for primary care and mental health services for veterans. Phoebe asserts that VA misevaluated its and
The solicitation provided for a best value award of an indefinite'quantity/ indefinite'delivery fixed-price contract based on four evaluation factors (in descending order of importance): experience and staffing (comprised of six subfactors), coordination and continuity of care (six subfactors), past performance (five subfactors), and price. RFP at 67. The solicitation provided that the factors, including price, would be numerically scored, id. at 66, and that the award would be based on a scoring system ....
Three offerors responded to the RFP, including PPMH and
PPMH's proposal received 75.44 (out of 77 possible) technical points and 8.95 points for price, for a total score of 84.39 points. Price Negotiation Memorandum (PNM) at 2.
PRICE EVALUATION
PPMH protests that VA failed to perform an adequate price evaluation of
This argument is without merit. As noted, the RFP contemplated the award of a fixed-price contract. There is no requirement that a realism analysis be performed when award of a fixed-price contract is contemplated. McDonnell Douglas Corp., B'259694.2, B-259694.3, June 16, 1995, 95-2 CPD para. 51 at 9. This reflects the fact that it is unobjectionable for a firm to submit a below-cost proposal for a fixed-price contract, since fixed-price contracts generally are not subject to adjustment during performance and the contractor, not the agency, bears the financial risk of increases in the cost of performance.
AWARD DECISION
PPMH challenges the award decision on a number of bases: (1) the award decision was improper because it was based on the point scores reported to the SSA by the SSEB, and the scoring summary on which the decision was based contains some inflated scores for Sterling--PPMH notes, for example, that while one evaluator awarded Sterling's proposal 23 points under the experience and staffing factor, none of the scores for this factor on the summary sheet is lower than 25.25 points;[1] (2) one member of the SSEB improperly deducted 4 points from PPMH's technical score with no explanation;[2] and (3) VA unreasonably failed to assign PPMH's proposal a significant strength under the accessibility subfactor for offering radiology services at a site directly across the street from its primary care center (Sterling, in contrast, offered to perform the services two miles away from its primary care center).[3]
We will not sustain a protest unless the protester demonstrates a reasonable possibility that it was prejudiced by the agency's actions, that is, unless the protester demonstrates that, but for the agency's actions, it would have had a substantial chance of receiving the award. McDonald-Bradley, B-270126,
As noted above, the RFP provided that the evaluation factors would be point scored and that the award decision would be based on the scoring system. Consistent with the RFP, in making the award decision, the SSA combined the technical and point scores to determine the awardee (although the record shows that she also considered the substantive differences among the technical proposals of the three offerors, PNM adden. at 1). PNM at 2; PNM adden. at 3. As noted above, PPMH had an overall score of 84.39 based on technical and price scores of 75.44 and 8.95, respectively, while
SITE VISIT
Under the accessibility subfactor (under the coordination and continuity of care factor), the RFP indicated that the agency would conduct a site visit to evaluate accessibility. PPMH complains that the VA did not conduct a site visit of
Again, where there is no basis for finding competitive prejudice to the protester, we will not sustain a protest challenging the waiver of a solicitation requirement. United Def. LP, B-286925 et al.,
PPMH suffered no prejudice as a result of VA's decision to waive the site visit. VA waived the requirement for all offerors, including PPMH, and PPMH does not argue, and there is no reason to believe, that it could have altered its proposal to its competitive advantage if it had known of the waiver. We also note that the record supports the agency's position that it had sufficient information to evaluate accessibility without the site visits. In this regard, while PPMH speculates that the agency may have downgraded
The protest is denied.
Gary L. Kepplinger
General Counsel
[1] PPMH asserts that, while the agency purportedly based the award decision on price because the proposals were judged to be technically equal, in fact, the SSEB determined that the proposals were technically acceptable, not that they were equal. However, the record shows that, while the SSEB referred to the proposals as technically acceptable, the SSA determined that the proposals were technically equal based on her review of the proposals' substantive differences and the point scores.
[2] PPMH argues that the evaluation was unreasonable because different evaluators assigned proposals different scores under the same factor. This argument is without merit. There is nothing unusual or improper in evaluators reaching different conclusions and assigning different scores when evaluating a proposal, since both subjective and objective judgments are involved. The mere presence of such apparent inconsistencies does not give rise to a valid protest basis. See Novel Pharmaceutical, Inc., B-255374,
[3] In the comments filed on April 18 in response to the agency report, the protester argued for the first time that the agency improperly failed to assign its proposal significant strengths for five additional elements of its proposal. However, PPMH knew from its March 13 debriefing the strengths assigned to its proposal. Accordingly, these challenges to the evaluation, filed more than 10 days after the debriefing, are untimely. See Bid Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R. sect. 21.2(a)(2) (2008); Sealift, Inc., B-298588,
[4] VA acknowledges that there are in fact some discrepancies between the point scores listed on the individual evaluators' score sheets and the summary score sheet. We have recomputed