Link: GAO Opinion
Agency: National Institute of Standards and Technology
Disposition: Protest denied.
Keywords: Technical Evaluation
General Counsel P.C. Highlight: It is a vendor’s burden to submit an adequately written quotation in response to an RFQ and the vendor runs the risk that its quotation will be evaluated unfavorably where it fails to do so.
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George T. Brown Associates, Inc. (Brown) protests the issuance of a purchase order under a request for quotations (RFQ), issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), for live webcasting.
The RFQ was issued as a total small business set-aside and contemplated the issuance of a fixed-price purchase order for full turnkey services to provide live webcasting of a three-day public meeting of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB). The meeting was to discuss issues pertaining to information security and privacy. The RFQ included a statement of work that included eight specific tasks to be performed. One task required the contractor to provide a link to the NIST website and provide a webcast page with the “same look/feel” as the current ISPAB page; another task required the contractor to allow viewers to send, post, and tag questions to posted agenda items.
Brown’s quotations received a rating of technically unacceptable for two of the eight tasks. Brown’s quotation was found unacceptable for the task that required a link to the NIST website and a webcast page with the same look and feel as the current ISPAB page. Brown’s quotation required visitors to login with personal information, which was different from the ISPAB page and violated NIST’s privacy policy against mandatory disclosure of personal information.
Brown’s quotation was also found unacceptable under the task requiring that viewers be allowed to send, post, and tag questions to posted agenda items. Brown’s quotation stated that the firm would provide an e-mail link and instructions for submitting questions “if requested.”
GAO reviews challenges to an agency’s technical evaluation to determine whether the agency acted reasonably and in accord with the solicitation’s evaluation criteria and applicable procurements statutes and regulations. A vendor’s mere disagreement with the agency’s evaluation is not sufficient to demonstrate that the evaluation is unreasonable. It is a vendor’s burden to submit an adequately written quotation and it runs the risk that its quotation will be evaluated unfavorably where it fails to do so. GAO fins no basis to object to the agency’s evaluation. The RFQ required that the vendor provide full turnkey webcasting that meets the requirements of eight specific tasks. The record shows that Brown’s quotation did not meet these requirements because its login requirement violated the NIST privacy policy, its webcast page did not have the same look and feel as the ISPAB page, and the quotation did not demonstrate with certainty that Brown would meet the requirement to send, post and tag questions without further action from the agency. The protest is denied.