Link: GAO Opinion
Agency: Department of the Navy
Disposition: Protest denied.
Keywords: Technical Acceptance
General Counsel, P.C. Highlight: Where an RFQ requires offerors to submit sufficient information for the Agency to “evaluate compliance with the requirements,” the offeror’s quote must address each RFQ requirement to be considered technically acceptable.
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DeVal Corporation protested the issuance of a purchase order to Rogers Associates Machine Tool Corporation under a request for quotations by the Department of the Navy, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, for skid platforms. DeVal challenged the agency’s technical evaluation as unreasonable because the RFQ–with the exception of welding requirements–did not specifically require vendors to submit information addressing certain compliance and related requirements in the RFQ. DeVal stated that it should have received the purchase order since its quoted price was lower than Rogers’s. The GAO determined that DeVal’s protest was based on a flawed premise, in that the RFQ did not require quotations to include any specific information apart from welding experience. Further, while DeVal asserted that it is compliant the RFQ’s requirements, the failure of its quotation to address certain specific requirement in any way made it impossible for the agency to determine that DeVal met it and thus the agency was found to have reasonably evaluated DeVal’s quotation as technically unacceptable.