Matter of Greystones Consulting Group, Inc.
Decided: July 18, 2023
Agency: Department of the Air Force
Disposition: Protest Denied
Keywords: Technical Evaluation
Protest Insight
This case highlights the importance of an offeror submitting a thorough, well-written proposal that clearly demonstrates compliance with the solicitation requirements. As GAO made clear here, it’s an offeror’s responsibility to ensure proposals demonstrate compliance with all solicitation requirements, and where a proposal fails to do so, the offeror runs the risk that its proposal will be rejected. Here, while Greystones argues its proposal did meet the terms of the solicitation, GAO found the agency was reasonable in making the opposite assessment based on the information provided in the proposal.
Companies should thoroughly evaluate the potential for success with any protest situation. The time, expense, and negative consequences associated with challenging your Government customer warrants a strategic evaluation between your executive leadership, capture, proposal, and legal teams. General Counsel has the experience to assist clients with assessing award decisions, developing legal courses of action, filing either as an unsuccessful bid protestor or the awardee intervenor, litigating the protest, and developing post-decision lessons learned for more effective future business development practices.
Summary of Facts
Greystones Consulting Group, LLC, a woman-owned small business, protests the Department of the Air Force’s decision not to award the firm a contract under RFP No. FA880623R0001, issued by the United States Space Force for data services support. The RFP was issued on January 17, 2023, in accordance with the commercial items procedures of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) part 12, and the negotiated procurement procedures of part 15. The agency requested proposals to provide a commercial solution with capabilities supporting an integrated Data-as-a-Service platform in support of Space Command and Control operations.
The solicitation provided that the award would be based on two evaluation factors: (1) commercial software solution, and (2) technical approach. Only offerors with an acceptable rating under the technical approach factor would be eligible for the award. After evaluating proposals, the agency decided to make the award to 18 of 34 offerors. On March 24, 2023, the agency informed Greystones that it had not been selected for award and Greystones requested a debriefing. In the debriefing, the agency informed Greystones that its proposal had been evaluated as unacceptable under the technical approach factor, making it ineligible for award.
Basis of Protest
The protester challenges the agency’s evaluation of its proposal as unacceptable, arguing that its proposed solution satisfies all of the solicitation’s requirements, but the agency applied unstated evaluation criteria in its technical evaluation. The agency responds that its evaluation of Greystones’s proposal was reasonable and in accordance with the solicitation’s evaluation criteria.
Protest Denied
GAO explained that the evaluation of an offeror’s proposal is a matter within the agency’s discretion. In reviewing protests of an agency’s evaluation of an offeror’s technical proposal, GAO does not reevaluate proposals, but instead reviews the evaluation to determine if it was reasonable, consistent with the solicitation’s evaluation scheme, as well as procurement statutes and regulations, and adequately documented. Previous GAO decisions have noted that “clearly stated RFP technical requirements are considered material to the needs of the government, and a proposal that fails to conform to such material terms is technically unacceptable and may not form the basis for award.”
Here, the solicitation’s technical approach factor required an offeror to document the capabilities of its proposed commercial software solution to meet the data ingest, store, and share requirements stated in the statement of work (SOW). The SOW required the contractor to “[p]rovide a single, integrated platform” that is able to ingest, store, and share large datasets and to “provide a detailed technical explanation” of how its solution would ensure that the three capabilities (ingest, store, and share) were satisfied. However, the agency was concerned that Greystones had not proposed a single integrated platform solution.
Greystones proposed the use of its proprietary Greystones analytics platform (GAP), asserting that “there is not a single tool that does everything, therefore providing a suite of tooling with unified policies and security allows end-users to pick the best tool for the job.” The source selection evaluation board (SSEB) determined that Greystones had failed to demonstrate how its proposed solution satisfied the solicitation’s requirement for a single, integrated platform.
GAO noted that the RFP explicitly required offerors to provide a “single, integrated platform” that was able to store and share large datasets. However, Greystone’s proposal claimed that its GAP solution was “not a single tool that does everything,” which caused the agency to question whether the solution was a suite of multiple disparate tools or a single integrated platform. GAO explained that “it is an offeror’s responsibility to submit a well-written proposal that clearly demonstrates compliance with the solicitation requirements, and where a proposal fails to do so, the offeror runs the risk that its proposal will be rejected, as was done here.” Thus, GAO found the agency’s assessment that Greystones failed to sufficiently explain how its GAP solution was a single, integrated platform reasonable.
Additionally, the SSEB found that Greystones’s proposal failed to meet the RFP’s data-sharing requirements because the proposal failed to address the “methods, tools and capabilities for sharing native to the proposed single integrated solution.” GAO found that Greystones “only generally discussed data sharing, and restated the solicitation’s data sharing requirements” without discussing technical specifics and stated it would “ensure 100 [percent] of the requirements are met.” However, GAO has made clear that “blanket statements of compliance do not establish technical acceptability where the solicitation’s terms require a level of detail beyond simple acknowledgment of the solicitation’s requirements or certification that an offeror will meet them.” Here, the RFP explicitly stated that the proposal “should not simply rephrase or restate the Government’s requirements, but rather shall provide convincing rationale to address how the offeror intends to meet these requirements.” Thus, GAO denied the protest.
Our Government Contracts Practice Group has extensive experience in government contract law, helping clients solve their government contract problems relating to the award or performance of a federal government contract, including bid protests, contract claims, small business concerns, and teaming and subcontractor relations. If you need more guidance or information, contact Lauren Travis, Senior Counsel in our Government Contracts practice area at General Counsel, P.C., 703-556-0411.