Protest Involving Unsubstantiated Evidence

A firm requested reconsideration of a decision which denied its complaint against the award of a contract to another bidder after a corrected bid price was deemed proper. The protester alleged the decision was incorrect because the record did not indicate that the awardee did not intend to bid its original price; the decision ignored the absence of profit and overhead in the Missouri State Highway Commission's (Commission) estimate; GAO ignored the substantial price disparity between the two bids after the awardee's bid was corrected; and that if the protester's bid had been slightly higher, the awardee would have been the low bidder and could have argued that its initial price was correct. No evidence was presented to support the allegation that the Commission estimates did not include contractor's overhead and profit, nor did the record support the protester's assertion of unbalanced bidding by the awardee. GAO found the procedures for the correction of bids to be consistent with Federal statutes requiring the award of contracts to the lowest responsive, responsible bidder. Other bidders are not prejudiced by these procedures since correction is only permitted upon a convincing showing of what the bid would have been at bid opening but for the mistake. GAO did not think it was meaningful to speculate as to the result if the protester's bid had been slightly higher. No evidence was provided in support of an improper application of bid correction procedures by the Commission or of either factual or legal error in the prior decision. The prior decision was affirmed.