[Protest of GSA Rejection of Bid and Determination of Nonresponsibility]

A firm protested the General Services Administration's (GSA) rejection of its bid for the supply of domestic tools. The solicitation stated that award would be made only to bidders offering tools that were manufactured or produced in the United States. GSA concluded that, since the protester imported a component of its product from a foreign source, the protester was nonresponsible. The protester argued that: (1) GSA lacked authority to restrict the procurement to domestic bids; (2) the issue raised a significant procurement issue requiring GAO to consider the matter regardless of the protest's timeliness; (3) GSA should have linked the protester's compliance with the source requirements to responsiveness; (4) the Small Business Administration's (SBA) failure to issue the protester a Certificate of Competency (COC) resulted from the GSA failure to file a complete report of the protest with SBA; (5) GSA improperly failed to request an extension on the protester's bid; (6) GSA incorrectly notified it initially that its bid was nonresponsive rather than nonresponsible; and (7) GSA improperly awarded the contract while the protest was pending. GAO held that: (1) the argument against the source restriction was untimely, since the GSA reasoning was apparent prior to bid opening; (2) GSA properly based its requirements on a statutory prohibition which made the argument academic; (3) a bidder's failure to comply with a solicitation's requirements concerns responsibility; (4) a nonresponsible small business is responsible for filing for a COC with SBA; (5) contracting officials are not obligated to extend bids of nonresponsible bidders; (6) defects in notices to unsuccessful bidders are generally considered minor procedural deviations; and (7) the legality of a contract award is not affected if award is made during a pending protest. Accordingly, the protest was denied in part and dismissed in part.