Protest of Department of Interior Contract Award

A firm protested the award of a contract under a request for proposals (RFP) issued by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for maintaining Government disk drives, disk controllers, and channel switches. USGS received three proposals in response to the RFP. The contracting officer found that only the awardee's proposal was technically acceptable; however, the protester's and the other bidder's proposal could have been made acceptable by correcting certain deficiencies. USGS requested initial technical clarifications in writing from all three firms. The protester responded to the questions posed, but USGS concluded that its responses did not adequately clarify the issues in question. The contracting officer determined that only the awardee's proposal remained technically acceptable. The protester alleged that: (1) there were improprieties in both the solicitation and the preaward process; (2) the RFP did not adequately define the parameters of evaluation to be used by USGS in its determination; (3) USGS should have referred the firm's acceptability to the Small Business Administration (SBA) for a Certificate of Competency (COC) determination before it could properly reject the firm's proposal; (4) the RFP did not define the competitive range nor did USGS explain how that range was determined; and (5) USGS ignored a cost savings by not awarding it the contract. GAO held that: (1) the protest alleging deficiencies in the evaluation criteria of the RFP was untimely and would not be considered on the merits since the protest was not filed until after the closing date for submission of proposals; (2) an agency is not required to refer a firm's acceptability to SBA for a COC determination if the firm's proposal is found to be technically unacceptable; (3) it will not disturb an agency determination to exclude a proposal from the competitive range since it is a matter of agency discretion; and (4) the low cost of a proposal is irrelevant to the selection of the awardee if the proposal has been found to be technically unacceptable. Accordingly, the protest was dismissed in part and denied in part.