Link: GAO Opinion
Agency: General Services Administration
Disposition: Protest denied.
Keywords: Past Performance; Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS)
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GAO Digest:
Agency’s evaluation of protester’s past performance was reasonable, where the agency consistent with the solicitation considered vendors’ past performance information in the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS).
General Counsel P.C. Highlight:
The existence of positive past performance is irrelevant if it is not available to the Contracting Officer pursuant to the solicitation which in this case was the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS).
GAO denies the protest of All Points International Distributors, Inc. (API), regarding the issuance of a delivery order to another offeror, under a request for quotations (RFQ), issued by the General Services Administration(GSA), for soft shelters and related equipment for the United States Sustainment Command, 580th Signal Company in Bagram, Afghanistan.
API protests the agency’s evaluation of its past performance as unacceptable contending that its performance on previously completed projects has been exceptional. The protester contends that GSA’s best value determination was flawed because the agency improperly reviewed only a single example of API’s past performance despite the fact that GSA knew API had performed many similar contracts in the past. GAO states that the evaluation of past performance is a matter of agency discretion, and GAO will review the evaluation only to ensure that it was reasonable and consistent with the solicitation’s stated evaluation criteria and applicable statutes and regulations. The evaluation by its very nature is subjective; an offeror’s disagreement with the agency’s evaluation judgments does not demonstrate that those judgments are unreasonable.
The contracting officer, consistent with the terms of the RFQ, considered available Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) data for both vendors. The information in PPIRS for API indicated that API’s past performance had been poor. That report also indicated that API was given the opportunity to respond to this assessment but did not do so. Moreover, the protester does not argue that the information in the PPIRS is inaccurate nor does the protester attempt to explain its prior performance. Although API generally suggests that it has other examples of positive past performance that were ignored by the agency, it has not identified those examples nor asserted that this information was included in the PPIRS. In short, the protester has provided no basis to question the reasonableness of the agency’s findings that its unfavorable recent performance of similar work suggests that similar incidences of delinquent delivery could be anticipated under this contract, which may increase the ultimate cost of performance for the agency. The protest is denied.