We proved the agency abused its discretion in determining a competitor’s proposal was technically acceptable.
The US Navy used the LPTA procurement method to solicit proposals for the award of a fixed-price contract to provide live firefighting and damage control training services at the offeror’s turn-key facility. There were two offers. The agency determined that both were technically acceptable and awarded to the low-priced offeror. Our client filed a pro se protest and then retained us.
The solicitation had two evaluation factors: technical and price. The technical evaluation comprised a self-evaluation checklist and a pre-award facility inspection checklist used by agency evaluators. According to the solicitation, a proposal would be unacceptable and ineligible for award if the facility failed to meet one or more of the requirements on the facility inspection checklist.
The agency report included photographs taken by the agency evaluators during their pre-award site inspection. Several of those photographs showed a portable restroom trailer. Based on those photographs, we filed a supplemental protest arguing that the awardee’s facility was not technically acceptable because it failed to provide restrooms and changing facilities in permanent structures, as required by the inspection checklist. Although both the awardee and the agency argued that the portable restroom trailer was a permanent structure, those arguments were undercut by two separate factors. First, photographs of the facility taken after the agency’s site inspection showed that the portable restroom trailer had been removed. Second, the agency could offer nothing that demonstrated the permanence of the restroom trailer. As a result, the GAO sustained the protest.
