In People, Technology and Process, LLC, B-410898.7 (March 3, 2016), the GAO upheld the VA’s decision to excluded the protestor from the competitive range. This protest involved the VA’s Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation procurement, or T4NG. This IDIQ task order contract is valued at $22.5 billion over the base and option periods.
Award is to be made on a best-value basis considering price and the following five non-price evaluation factors: (1) technical; (2) past performance; (3) veterans involvement; (4) veterans employment; and (5) small business participation commitment. The technical factor was further divided into two subfactors, sample tasks and management. The sample task subfactor was designed to “test” offerors’ “expertise and innovative capabilities.”
The protestor described its technical approach to the sample tasks, but did not describe how it would manage them. Instead, the protestor described its management capabilities under the separate management subfactor. This made perfect sense to the protestor based on its reading of the RFP.
Yet, during the evaluation the VA rated the protestor’s proposal unacceptable because one of its sample tasks did not include how it would manage the work. The protestor argued that it did not do so because “the RFP provided no indication that the VA would consider issues related to project management when evaluating the sample task responses.” As such, the protestor argued that the VA did not follow the stated evaluation criteria.
The GAO disagreed with the protestor. The GAO held that the RFP’s evaluation criteria for sample tasks was broad enough to include consideration of management, even though there was another evaluation subfactor specifically dedicated to management. In this regard, the GAO noted that the RFP asked offerors to demonstrate their “methods and approach to meeting the sample task requirements,” which the GAO held was “not focused exclusively on offerors’ technical approaches to performing the sample tasks,” but rather “all of the aspects of an offeror’s approach that were relevant to performing the tasks” including management.
This decision was a close call. In the future, when in doubt, include all of the elements necessary to perform a sample task even though you may have addressed it elsewhere in your technical proposal.
