Protest of Federal Supply Schedule Contract Award

A firm protested the Army's award of two delivery orders for storage cabinets to another firm. The award for one of the orders was made to a firm that did not have all of the required items on its schedule. The contracting officer did not realize this because the supply schedule and price lists were not available when she evaluated the quotations. In view of the contracting officer's good-faith determination and because the delivery order had already been filled, GAO made no recommendation for corrective action. However, if the contracting officer had been aware of all the facts at the time of her evaluation, the awardee should not have been automatically considered for the award. For the other delivery order, one of the needed items, a shock bar, was included with the protester's but not the awardee's coverage. Although the awardee required the Army to request a separate unit price for the shock bar, its total price was lower than the protester's. The Army decided to treat the shock bar as a nonscheduled, nonmandatory item and to make the award on the basis of low aggregate price. The protester argued that: (1) the shock bar was an integral part of the cabinet system and could not be considered an option which the contractors were free to omit from their quotations; and (2) the fact that the other contractors did not put the shock bar in their contracts did not make it a nonscheduled, nonmandatory item. GAO held that the protester's unilateral action did not raise the shock bar to the status of a mandatory item when the General Services Administration did not consider the shock bar to be mandatory at the time proposals were submitted. Therefore, the Army was free to treat the shock bar as an open-market item and make the award on the basis of low aggregate price. Accordingly, the protest was sustained in part and denied in part.