Link: GAO Opinion
Agency: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Disposition: Protest denied.
General Counsel P.C. Highlight:
GAO denies the protest of Crown Agents USA, Inc., regarding the exclusion of its proposal from the competitive range under a request for proposals (RFP), issued by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to obtain technical support services for the Strengthening Core Economic Governance Institutions Project for South Sudan, identified as the CORE II project.
GAO denied the protest where the evaluators had a reasonable basis for finding that Crown Agents’ proposal was insufficiently tailored to the specific context of South Sudan. Therefore, GAO had no basis to question the evaluators’ relative assessments of the protester’s proposal under the technical approach evaluation factor. Additionally, GAO addressed the protester’s challenge that the agency inadequately documented its past performance evaluation. GAO found that the contemporaneous evaluation record included the written consensus scores for the TEC under each evaluation factor including past performance. Therefore, there was no merit to the protester’s assertion that the agency’s evaluation findings were inadequately documented.