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Request for Reconsideration

B-195820.2 Mar 05, 1981
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A supplier of spray-applied urethane foam insulation requested reconsideration of a prior decision which denied the its protest. The protest concerned the alleged restrictiveness of the Department of the Army's interpretation and implication of its construction guide specification to exclude the use of the protester in the repair, insulation, and reroofing of six warehouses. The guide specification provided that, except for composite board, insulation urethane was not permitted on a steel roof deck, which was the type of deck present in four of the six buildings. The prior decision never reached the restrictiveness issue because GAO found that the protester was unwilling to comply with other specification requirements which GAO believed were included in the specification as a result of the Army's reasonable exercise of its technical judgment of the project's total requirements. The protester contended that GAO should have ruled on whether the use of the old roof system would have met the Government's minimum needs. An agency must draw its specifications to state only the actual minimum needs of the Government and to describe the required services or supplies in a manner which will encourage competition to the maximum practicable extent consistent with those needs. Therefore, when a protester challenges a specification as being unduly restrictive of competition, GAO generally requires the procuring agency to establish that restrictions imposed by the specification are reasonably related to its needs. The protester still bears the burden of proving that the restrictions are unreasonable. GAO believed that the protester did not carry its burden of proving that the Army's specification was unreasonable. Therefore, the prior decision was affirmed.

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