Request for Reconsideration

A company requested reconsideration of a decision denying its protest against the award of a contract for the installation of data communications processing systems. The company contended that: (1) GAO erroneously concluded that the procuring agency had a reasonable basis for including the awardee's initial and revised proposal in the competitive range; (2) GAO applied an improper standard in deciding not to recommend remedial relief based on improper agency procurement actions; (3) the determination that the procurement was based on adequate competition failed to consider the entire record developed in the protest; (4) the dismissal of its comment regarding the agency's delegation of procurement authority was based on an improper characterization of the argument; and (5) the decision not to recommend remedial relief failed to consider the alternate forms of relief it had requested. Since the first contention was merely a repetition of arguments previously made by the protester, it did not warrant a reversal of the prior decision. GAO does not recommend remedial relief in cases where it is clear that the protester would not have been in line for award even if the procurement had not been defective. Because there was a large difference between the two offers, and since it was not apparent that the protester was prejudiced by the procurement deficiency, the prior decisions for contentions 2 and 5 were affirmed. The company's argument regarding the adequacy of competition did not show the earlier decision to be legally in error nor did it provide any information which was not previously considered; therefore, the previous decision on this issue was affirmed. The area of protest raised in contention 4 was untimely since the burden was clearly on the company to raise this new ground for protest within 10 days after the basis for protest was known. The company also requested a conference in its request for reconsideration. Since bid protest procedures do not explicitly provide for a conference in such cases and since the company previously had a conference on the merits of its protest, GAO viewed another conference as serving no useful purpose and denied the request. The prior decision on the protest was affirmed.