Typically, agencies will provide a handful of evaluation factors, sometime more, in a solicitation. Common evaluation factors are technical, past performance, and cost. A recent protest decision looked at a solicitation that contained separate factors for 1) offeror’s technical capability and 2) staffing and management approach. The question was, can an agency combine its evaluation for two different factors? If it does mix the two evaluation criteria, is that enough to sustain a protest?
In Spectrum Healthcare Resources, Inc., B-421325 (Mar. 21, 2023), GAO reviewed a protest by Spectrum (or protester) of award to Dentrust Dental International (Dentrust or awardee) of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contract for medical and behavioral health services. The solicitation sought “medical professionals to provide Medical and Behavioral Health Services to FEMA employees” for services like “occupational health center services, medical employability and fitness for duty consultations, immunizations and travel medication.” …
GAO interpreted the Solicitation as requiring “that while an offeror’s technical capability was to be evaluated based on its verifiable experience, under the staffing and management approach the agency specifically would assess an offeror’s plan to achieve the objectives of the IDIQ SOW.’” So, experience for the first factor and a plan for the second factor. Under this interpretation, GAO found unreasonable the agency’s assessment of the two weaknesses under the technical capability factor for Spectrum’s failure to address how it would deploy personnel–i.e., its “plan to achieve the objectives” of the SOW, as the solicitation required the agency to assess offerors ability to meet the requirements of the SOW–or how offerors planned to perform–under the staffing and management approach factor… Read the full article here.
