SOS International, LLC

DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

The decision issued on the date below was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This version has been approved for public release.

Decision

Matter of: SOS International, LLC

File: B-423366.2

Date: June 11, 2025

Dawn E. Stern, Esq., David R. Lacker, Esq., and Andrew W. Current, Esq., DLA Piper LLP, for the protester.
Jonathan J. Frankel, Esq., and Karla J. Letsche, Esq., Frankel PLLC, for Peraton, Inc., the intervenor.
Jonathan A. Hardage, Esq., and Todd J. Liebman, Esq., Department of the Army, for the agency.
Uri R. Yoo, Esq., and Alexander O. Levine, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

1. Protest challenging agency's evaluation of protester's oral presentation is denied where the task order evaluation was reasonable, consistent with the solicitation, and sufficiently documented.

2. Protester's challenges to other aspects of the evaluation are dismissed where the protester would not be competitively prejudiced by any misevaluation of its own proposal and was not an interested party to challenge the evaluation of the awardee's proposal because another offeror was next in line for award.

DECISION

SOS International, LLC (SOSI), of Reston, Virginia, protests the issuance of a task order to Peraton, Inc., of Herndon, Virginia, under task order proposal request (TOPR) No. W91RUS-24-R-GCCC, issued by the Department of the Army for information technology support services for the Army's Global Cyber Center (GCC). The protester contends that the agency's evaluation of proposals and source selection decision were unreasonable.

We deny the protest.

BACKGROUND

The Army issued the solicitation on October 25, 2024, seeking proposals to provide cybersecurity information technology support services for the Army's GCC. Contracting Officer's Statement and Memorandum of Law (COS/MOL) at 5; Agency Report (AR), Tab 25, TOPR at 1; AR, Tab 22, Performance Work Statement (PWS) at 2.[1] The solicitation was issued, using the procedures of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 16.5, to firms holding the Army's Computer Hardware Enterprise and Solutions Information Technology Enterprise Solutions-Services multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite‑quantity (IDIQ) contract. TOPR at 1, 4. The solicitation anticipated issuance of a cost‑plus‑fixed‑fee and level‑of‑effort task order with a 1-month phase-in period, an 11‑month base period of performance, three 1-year option periods, and one additional 6-month option. Id. at 2.

The solicitation advised that award would be made to the offeror whose proposal represented the best value after a tradeoff considering the following five factors: (1) demonstrated prior experience; (2) key personnel resumes; (3) oral presentation; (4) betterment; and (5) cost/price. Id. at 18‑20. For the tradeoff, all non‑cost/price factors were of relatively equal importance, while the non‑cost/price factors, taken together, were significantly more important than cost/price. Id. at 18. For the evaluation of the first three factors, the solicitation provided that the agency would assign confidence ratings (high confidence, some confidence, or low confidence), reflecting the agency's level of confidence that the offeror “understands the requirement, proposes a sound approach, and will be successful in performing the contract.” Id. at 20. The solicitation also informed offerors that proposals rated as either low or some confidence for any of the first three factors would not be considered for award. Id. at 18.

The solicitation provided for a two-phased evaluation. Id. at 1‑2. Under phase I, offerors were to submit proposals for the demonstrated prior experience factor and the key personnel resumes factor. Id. at 10‑11. The solicitation advised that only those offerors whose phase I proposals were assigned a rating of high confidence for both factors would be invited to submit phase II proposals. Id. at 11.

Under phase II, offerors were to submit their betterment and cost/price proposals and provide oral presentations. Id. at 11‑18. For oral presentations, offerors were required to “provide an oral presentation based on the questions and problem statements received in person two hours before the oral presentation.” Id. at 16. The solicitation stated that oral presentations “may or may not be recorded by the Government.” Id. The solicitation also noted that oral presentations were intended to be “an interactive exchange between the Offeror and the Government” and that these exchanges would be “viewed as a component of the oral presentation itself and do not constitute discussions.” Id. at 17. The agency would “not ask questions that will invite or allow the Offeror to change its Proposal” and warned offerors to “not volunteer any information that might be construed as changing [their] proposal.” Id. Oral presentations would be evaluated by assessing the government's level of confidence that the offeror would successfully perform all requirements “based on the answers provided to the questions provided the day of the oral presentation, and any exchanges that occur within the oral presentation.” Id. at 20. As relevant here, the solicitation informed offerors that if an offeror did not receive a rating of high confidence for its oral presentation, the offeror would not be considered for the award. Id. at 18.

Seven offerors, including SOSI and Peraton, submitted phase I proposals. COS/MOL at 18. After completing initial evaluations of the phase I proposals, the agency conducted interchanges with all offerors under FAR section 16.505 by issuing evaluation notices and providing an opportunity for offerors to update their phase I submissions. Id. at 20; AR, Tab 45, Decision for Interchanges at 1‑2. After evaluating the updated phase I proposals, the agency invited five offerors, including SOSI and Peraton, to proceed to phase II evaluations; all five offerors submitted phase II proposals and participated in oral presentations. COS/MOL at 21; AR, Tab 55, Task Order Decision Document (TODD) at 13.

During each offeror's oral presentation, the agency provided nine scenario‑based questions, two hours to prepare the presentation in response to the questions, and one hour to present the responses. See AR, Tab 55, TODD at 9‑10. Each offeror was asked one follow‑up question “to clarify the technical team's understanding of the Offeror's answer to one of the questions.” COS/MOL at 29; see generally, AR, Tab 60d, Contracting Officer's Oral Presentation Notes. The agency decided not to record the oral presentations, but each member of the technical proposal evaluation board (PEB) took contemporaneous notes. COS/MOL at 21; see AR, Tabs 60a, 60b, 60c, Evaluators' Oral Presentation Notes. Each PEB member individually evaluated each oral presentation, identified findings, and assigned ratings for each answer to each of the nine questions. COS/MOL at 21; see AR, Tabs 60a, 60b, 60c, Evaluators' Oral Presentation Notes; AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Final Evaluation Report at 1, 9‑11. Following the oral presentations, the PEB members conducted a panel discussion to establish consensus ratings for the offerors' oral presentations. COS/MOL at 21; see generally, AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Final Evaluation Report.

Following the evaluation of phase II proposal submissions, the proposals of SOSI and Peraton were assigned the following final ratings:

	SOSI	Peraton
Demonstrated Prior Experience	High Confidence	High Confidence
Key Personnel Resumes	High Confidence	High Confidence
Oral Presentation	Some Confidence	High Confidence
Betterment	1	1
Total Evaluated Cost	$219,448,970	$225,089,343

AR, Tab 55, TODD at 15, 33.

As relevant here, in assigning a rating of some confidence to SOSI's oral presentation, the agency found that while the “[p]resentation was professional and succinct,” it “[r]eceived some confidence based on [the] knowledge, skills, and abilities demonstrated in responses to some [of the] technical and staffing approach questions and scenario‑based questions.” AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Consensus Evaluation at 7. In this regard, a compilation of the evaluators' assessments showed that all three evaluators assigned a rating of low or some confidence for SOSI's responses to five of the nine oral presentation questions. Id. at 9‑11.

The contracting officer, who was also the source selection authority (SSA), reviewed the technical evaluation reports and concurred with their findings. AR, Tab 55, TODD at 1, 12. Noting the provision in the solicitation that only proposals with the rating of high confidence under the oral presentation factor would be considered for award, the SSA did not consider SOSI's proposal for award because of its oral presentation rating of some confidence. Id. at 34. The SSA conducted a comparative tradeoff analysis between Peraton and another offeror, whose proposal received a rating of high confidence under the first three evaluation factors, and selected Peraton's proposal for award. Id. at 35‑40.

The Army provided a debriefing to SOSI, and this protest followed.[2]

DISCUSSION

The protester argues that the agency's evaluation of SOSI's oral presentation was unreasonable, inconsistent with the solicitation, and undocumented. Protest at 18‑27. The protester also contends that the agency unreasonably evaluated the protester's betterment proposal, improperly failed to meaningfully investigate and identify the awardee's organizational conflict of interest (OCI), and unreasonably excluded SOSI's proposal from the best‑value tradeoff.[3] Id. at 27‑38. For the reasons discussed below, we conclude that the agency reasonably evaluated the protester's oral presentation and reasonably excluded SOSI's proposal from further consideration.[4]

Oral Presentations

The protester challenges the Army's evaluation of the protester's oral presentation, arguing that the agency's conduct of the presentations departed from the solicitation and that the agency unreasonably criticized the protester's technically sound solutions.[5] Protest at 18‑27; Comments at 16, 18‑25. The protester also contends that the Army's documentation of the oral presentation was inadequate because the agency failed to document the actual oral presentations as presented, only retaining individual evaluators' illegible and inconsistent notes. Protest at 19‑20; Comments at 17‑18. The agency responds that it evaluated SOSI's oral presentation reasonably and in accordance with the solicitation, and that the evaluation was sufficiently documented. COS/MOL at 24‑38. Based on our review of the record, we find no basis to object to either the evaluation of the protester's oral presentation or to the documentation of that evaluation.

As an initial matter, in challenging the agency's documentation of the oral presentations, the protester relies in large part on our decisions in Connected Global Sols., LLC, B‑418266.4, B‑418266.7, Oct. 21, 2020, 2020 CPD ¶ 349, and HomeSafe Alliance, LLC, B‑418266.5 et al., Oct. 21, 2020, 2020 CPD ¶ 350. See Protest at 19, 22; Comments at 17. We find, however, that the protester's reliance is misplaced because those decisions involved negotiated procurements under FAR part 15, while the procurement at issue here is a task order competition conducted under the procedures of FAR subpart 16.5. As our Office has previously explained, a task order competition under FAR subpart 16.5 provides for a streamlined procurement process requiring less rigorous documentation. See Accenture Fed. Servs., LLC, B‑421134.2 et al., Apr. 12, 2023, 2023 CPD ¶ 90 at 13‑14; Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., B‑419210, B‑419210.2, Dec. 22, 2020, 2020 CPD ¶ 409 at 4‑5.

In this regard, unlike the FAR provisions governing negotiated procurements conducted under FAR part 15, there is no requirement for a separate evaluation record for oral presentations in task order procurements conducted under FAR subpart 16.5. Compare FAR 15.102(e), with FAR 16.505(b)(7). More specifically, FAR section 16.505(b)(1)(ii) provides that contracting officers may “exercise broad discretion in developing appropriate order placement procedures,” “keep submission requirements to a minimum,” and “use streamlined procedures including oral presentations.” With respect to required documentation, FAR section 16.505(b)(7)(i) requires contracting officers only to “document in the contract file the rationale for placement and price of each order, including the basis for award and the rationale for any tradeoffs among cost or price and non‑cost considerations in making the award decision.”

Here, the solicitation provided that the oral presentations “may or may not be recorded by the Government,” and, in fact, the presentations were not recorded. TOPR at 16; see COS/MOL at 28. The agency instead maintained its documentation of the oral presentations by retaining the contemporaneous handwritten notes of the three technical evaluators and the contracting officer, and then convening a panel to prepare a consensus evaluation of the oral presentations. COS/MOL at 28; see generally, AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Final Evaluation Report; AR, Tabs 60a, 60b, 60c, 60d, Evaluators' Oral Presentation Notes.[6]

Based on our review of this record, we find that the agency's evaluative assessment of the offerors' oral presentations was sufficiently documented. While the evaluators' notes do not document every aspect of the offerors' oral presentations, they do provide the agency's documentation of the particular aspects of the offerors' presentations upon which the evaluators based their evaluative judgments.[7] Where the solicitation specifically advised offerors that the agency may not record the oral presentations, we see no applicable law or regulation that required the agency to have gone further and record or otherwise transcribe the content of the oral presentations, in exacting detail, when conducting a procurement under FAR subpart 16.5. See Accenture Fed. Servs., LLC, supra; cf., Analytica, LLC, B-418966, Nov. 9, 2020, 2020 CPD ¶ 365 at 7 (“We see no requirement in law or regulation that an agency go further to record oral presentations when conducting a procurement under subpart 8.4, and it is not our role to impose one where the FAR does not.”).

The protester next challenges the evaluation of the protester's oral presentation itself. In this regard, the protester asserts that the agency unreasonably evaluated the protester's responses to five of the nine oral presentation questions by penalizing SOSI for failing to address issues not reasonably encompassed by the questions asked, and by failing to give sufficient credit for aspects that SOSI fully addressed in its oral presentation. Protest at 20‑27; Comments at 18‑25. The protester also contends that the agency unreasonably failed to consider the protester's response to the agency's follow-up question. Comments at 16‑17.

The evaluation of proposals in a task order competition is primarily a matter within the contracting agency's discretion because the agency is responsible for defining its needs and the best method of accommodating them. Verizon Bus. Network Servs., Inc., B‑419271.5 et al., Apr. 26, 2021, 2021 CPD ¶ 191 at 7. In reviewing a protest challenging an agency's technical evaluation, our Office does not independently evaluate proposals; rather, we review the agency's evaluation to ensure that it is consistent with the terms of the solicitation and applicable statutes and regulations. VSolvit, LLC, B‑418265.2, B‑418265.3, July 30, 2020, 2020 CPD ¶ 259 at 5. We have consistently stated that we will question the agency's evaluation only where the record shows that the evaluation does not have a reasonable basis or is inconsistent with the solicitation. Id.; Data Matrix Sols., Inc., B‑412520, Mar. 14, 2016, 2016 CPD ¶ 87 at 5. A protester's disagreement with the agency's judgment regarding the evaluation of proposals, without more, is not sufficient to establish that an agency acted unreasonably. Verizon Bus. Network Servs., Inc., supra.

Based on our review of the record, we find no basis to question the agency's evaluation of the protester's oral presentation. While the protester challenges the agency's assessment of the protester's responses to five of the nine oral presentation questions, the record shows that the evaluators reasonably assigned low or some confidence ratings for failing to address certain required aspects of the questions asked. We discuss below two of the responses as representative examples.

For question number 2, the agency asked offerors to address how they would provide Army.mil / Army365 tenant management and support within the enterprise services division under PWS section 3.3. AR, Tab 62, Oral Presentation Questions at 1. The agency summarized its evaluation of the protester's response as follows:

The offeror focused on management/procedural implementations for the technical scenario, but did not provide any technological solutions. The offeror provided examples for use of data displayed in a visual, digestible format, however, the examples were for internal administration and not focused on improving the user experience. The example given for a Power Business Intelligence dashboard was limited to managing the Paid Time Off hours for contract employees.

AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Final Evaluation Report at 7. SOSI's presentation for question 2 received one rating of some confidence and two ratings of low confidence from the individual evaluators. Id. at 9.

The protester asserts that the agency's evaluation was unreasonable because the question “did not request a technical solution” but instead was “focused on our process for providing a project plan.” Protest at 23; Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 4. The protester also argues that the question “did not indicate that the Army wanted to understand the ‘user experience' of external customers as opposed to those involved in internal administration.” Protest at 23. In this regard, the protester recalls question 2 to be about “how [SOSI] would implement a large‑scale project plan for Directory Services” and asserts that its response properly “focused on using continuous service improvement []--enabled by continual collaboration with” its GCC mission partner.[8] Id.; Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 3.

The agency responds that the protester's recollection of question 2 was incomplete and therefore the firm's assessment of the sufficiency of its response was likewise flawed. COS/MOL at 31‑32. The record shows that question 2 asked as follows:

Provide Army.mil / Army365 Tenant Management and Support detailed within the PWS under Enterprise Services Division Support paragraph 3.3 and related sub-paragraphs. What are the specific steps you would take to manage current Army Unified Directory Service functions to support a global user base commitment? How would you organize, prioritize, and manage the diverse, parallel, and time-minded DevOps activities associated with supporting the global userbase? What are the specific steps you currently take to gather, develop, and maintain metrics and dashboards for virtualization data? Describe how you have employed tools such as Microsoft's Power [Business Intelligence], Microsoft Power Apps, and Elastic to improve the end user's experience.

AR, Tab 62, Oral Presentation Questions at 1. The agency argues that, given the actual question asked, the evaluators reasonably assessed the protester's response with low to some confidence for failing to provide a technical solution that addressed end‑user experience. COS/MOL at 32.

On this record, we find no basis to object to the agency's evaluation of the protester's oral presentation on question 2. First, contrary to the protester's recollection, the record shows that question 2 clearly sought a technical solution. Specifically, the question asked the offeror to address Army365 tenant management and support services under PWS section 3.3, which requires the contractor to “[a]ssess service‑based alerts, develop/determine Enterprise mission impact, report significant outages, and develop technical/non‑technical alerts to the filed.” AR, Tab 22, PWS at 14‑15. In addition, the question pointedly required the offeror to address how it would “support the global user base” and “improve the end user's experience.” AR, Tab 62, Oral Presentation Questions at 1. In fact, by asserting that the agency's question did not ask for a technical solution or to address end-user experience, the protester belies any assertion that its response to this question did address these aspects. See Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 3‑4.

Moreover, the evaluators' contemporaneous notes consistently documented that SOSI's response to this question did not provide the required technical solutions and failed to focus on improving user experience. See AR, Tab 60a(1), Transcribed Oral Presentation Notes of Evaluator A at 1 (“Offeror provided management solutions but no technical options. Discussions of tools were not focused on improving user experience.”); AR, Tab 60c(1), Transcribed Oral Presentation Notes of Evaluator C at 1 (“provided [management] solution to a tech problem. Did not give clear example at improving end user experience, only for [contractor] community.”). On this record, we find unobjectionable the agency's consensus conclusion that the protester's presentation for question 2 “did not provide any technological solutions” and was “ not focused on improving the user experience.” AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Consensus Evaluation at 7, 9.

The protester also argues that the agency's evaluation unreasonably failed to consider additional information that SOSI provided, bearing on question 2, in response to the agency's follow‑up question. Protest at 23; Comments at 20-21. In this regard, the protester recalls that the follow‑up question asked SOSI to “provide other examples for how [it] would apply a project plan for Directory Services” and asserts that SOSI responded to the question with the required information. Id.; Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 3‑4. The record, however, shows that the actual follow‑up question asked SOSI to “expand upon how [it] ha[s] employed tools such as Microsoft's Power [Business Intelligence], Microsoft Power apps, and Elastic to improve the end user's experience.” AR, Tab 60d, CO Notes at 4.

The protester maintains that the agency nevertheless failed to consider its response to the question in the overall assessment of SOSI's oral presentation. Comments at 21. We find no basis in the record to support the protester's position. In this regard, after reviewing the record (including the documentation of the follow‑up question and the evaluators' notes), the protester now asserts that its follow‑up response “necessarily included a discussion of the user experience and additional information about using Microsoft Power [Business Intelligence] and the other tools.” Id. This assertion, however, is contradicted by the initial recollection of SOSI's own representative who participated in the oral presentation. See Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 4. Specifically, SOSI's representative recalled that SOSI's response to the follow‑up question addressed how it uses “an internally developed SOS[I] application that provides customers and stakeholders with project status dashboards (using Microsoft Power [Business Intelligence]) for large‑scale projects.” Id. He further recalled that SOSI explained that this application “gives customers and stakeholders transparency into the status of all program aspects, including the status of deliverables, metrics on cybersecurity status and posture, and other program metrics.” Id. Notably, this recollection did not mention whether SOSI's response included improving the end‑user experience despite this issue being flagged during SOSI's debriefing. See AR, Tab 57, Post‑Award Debriefing Slides at 27. In fact, as noted above, the protester initially argued that question 2 and the follow‑up question did not ask SOSI to address end‑user experiences. See Protest at 23.

Consistent with the protester's initial recollection of its responses to question 2 and the follow‑up question, the evaluators found that SOSI “provided examples for use of data displayed in a visual, digestible format, however, the examples were for internal administration and not focused on improving the user experience.” AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Final Evaluation Report at 7. The agency also found that the example SOSI gave for a “Power Business Intelligence dashboard was limited to managing the Paid Time Off hours for contract employees.” Id. As noted, these findings were also supported by the contemporaneous handwritten notes of the evaluators. See AR, Tab 60a(1), Transcribed Oral Presentation Notes of Evaluator A at 1; AR, Tab 60c(1), Transcribed Oral Presentation Notes of Evaluator C at 1. The agency's consensus evaluation of SOSI's response to question 2, therefore, is consistent not only with the individual evaluators' contemporaneous record of SOSI's oral presentation, but also with the protester's recollection of the response SOSI provided to the follow‑up question. To the extent the protester disagrees with the agency's assessment of the merits of the protester's oral presentation, such disagreement, without more, is not sufficient to establish that the agency acted unreasonably. Verizon Bus. Network Servs., Inc., supra.

As another example, question number 3 asked offerors to “describe how [they] would construct a zero trust administrative model” for a specified scenario requiring administrative access to end-user devices, and to “[i]ncorporate any commercially available Microsoft Azure and/or Entra ID feature configurations to describe [the] proposed design.” AR, Tab 62, Oral Presentation Questions at 1. The protester objects to the agency's evaluation of SOSI's response to question 3, in which the agency found as follows:

This scenario-based question was specific to a public cloud infrastructure, but the offeror answered the question from the perspective of a traditional Active Directory environment. The offeror identified some key principles necessary for Azure Entra-ID management, but the response was not holistically focused on a public cloud as the scenario required. The offeror did not discuss using attribute-based access controls (which was mentioned in the description of Entra-ID) to include objects into Administrative Units where access would be delegated or denied as appropriate.

AR, Tab 54, Oral Presentation Final Evaluation Report at 7. SOSI's presentation for question 3 received two ratings of some confidence and one rating of low confidence from the individual evaluators. Id. at 9.

SOSI argues that the agency's criticism mischaracterizes SOSI's presentation and “does not track” the question asked. Protest at 24; Comments at 21‑22. We find that the protester's assertions are not supported by the record.

In its initial protest filing, the protester relies on its representative's recollection to assert that SOSI's response to question 3 “addressed . . . cloud‑specific security on a public cloud infrastructure to emphasize the need for cloud‑native security controls‑‑essential for implementing Zero Trust in such environments.” Protest at 24, citing Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 5. The contemporaneous notes of the agency's evaluators, however, consistently documented that SOSI's response to question 3 “[d]iscussed implementation in a traditional [active directory] forest, not cloud” and “didn't fully cover cloud env[ironment].” AR, Tab 60a(1), Transcribed Oral Presentation Notes of Evaluator A at 1; AR, Tab 60c(1), Transcribed Oral Presentation Notes of Evaluator C at 2. Moreover, while the protester initially asserted that the question “did not ask specifically about Azure Entra‑ID management,” Protest at 24, the record shows that the question specifically asked that the offeror's proposed solution “[i]ncorporate any commercially available Microsoft Azure and/or Entra ID feature configurations.” AR, Tab 62, Oral Presentation Questions at 1.

After reviewing the agency report (which included the evaluators' notes and the oral presentation questions provided to offerors), the protester argues that question 3 “does not ask offerors to address this issue from a cloud perspective” because “the word ‘cloud' does not even appear in the question.” Comments at 22. This new argument, however, contradicts both its prior declaration recalling that question 3 was “a scenario‑based question which related to zero‑trust implementation of directory services on a public cloud infrastructure” and its initial assertion that its presentation “addressed . . . cloud‑specific security on a public cloud infrastructure to emphasize the need for cloud‑native security controls.” Protest at 24; Protest, exh. 12, SOSI Representative Decl. at 5 (emphasis added). Further, question 3 specifically asked offerors to incorporate “Microsoft Azure and/or Entra ID,” which are a cloud computing platform and a cloud‑based access management service, respectively. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/… (last visited June 2, 2025); https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/fundamentals/whatis (last visited June 2, 2025). On this record, we find that the agency reasonably assigned low to some confidence ratings for the protester's response to question 3 for, among other things, failing to propose a cloud‑based solution as required.

In sum, based on our review of the record, including the contemporaneous evaluator notes, we find no basis to question the agency's evaluation of SOSI's oral presentation. Accordingly, we deny this protest ground.

Remaining Challenges

SOSI also challenges the agency's evaluation of the firm's proposal under the betterment factor and argues that the agency unreasonably excluded the proposal from the best‑value tradeoff analysis. Protest at 27‑30, 35‑38. The protester also argues that the agency unreasonably failed to meaningfully investigate and identify the awardee's OCI. Id. at 30‑33. As noted above, the solicitation stated that a proposal rated low or some confidence for the oral presentation factor would not be considered for award. TOPR at 18. Because we find that the agency reasonably excluded the protester's proposal from further consideration based on the rating of some confidence assigned to SOSI's oral presentation, we find that the protester was not competitively prejudiced by any errors with respect to other aspects of the agency's evaluation of SOSI's proposal. In this regard, even if the protester could show that other aspects of the evaluation of its proposal were unreasonable, its proposal was properly eliminated from further consideration for award. Competitive prejudice is an essential element of any viable protest, and where none is shown or otherwise evident, we will not sustain a protest, even where a protester may have shown that an agency's actions arguably were improper. Zolon PCS, LLC, B‑419283, Jan. 14, 2021, 2021 CPD ¶ 26 at 8; VSolvit, LLC, supra. at 6.

SOSI is also not an interested party to challenge the agency's evaluation of Peraton's proposal. In order for a protest to be considered by our Office, a protester must be an interested party, meaning it must have a direct economic interest in the resolution of a protest issue. 4 C.F.R. § 21.0(a). A protester is an interested party to challenge the evaluation of an awardee's proposal only where there is a reasonable possibility that the protester's proposal would be in line for award if the protest were to be sustained. Verisys Corp., B‑413204.5 et al., Oct. 2, 2017, 2017 CPD ¶ 338 at 13. Where there is an acceptable offeror that would be in line for the award ahead of the protester if the protester's challenge to the award were to be sustained, the protester's interest is too remote to qualify as an interested party. SRA Int'l, Inc.; NTT DATA Servs. Fed. Gov't, Inc., B‑413220.4 et al., May 19, 2017, 2017 CPD ¶ 173 at 28. Here, there was another technically acceptable offeror whose proposal received the rating of high confidence under each of the first three non-cost/price evaluation factors. See AR, Tab 55, TODD at 35. This offeror's proposal would be next in line for award if SOSI's allegations were sustained. Accordingly, based on our conclusion that the agency reasonably found SOSI's proposal ineligible for award, we conclude that SOSI is not an interested party to challenge the agency's evaluation of the awardee's proposal because it would not be in line for contract award were its protest to be sustained.

The protest is denied.

Edda Emmanuelli Perez
General Counsel

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