Protest Denial Decision: $100M+ Naval Information Warfare Systems Command HR System Development, Operations, and Sustainment Services contract

Digest

1. Protest challenging the agency’s cost realism evaluation, which found the protester’s proposal materially noncompliant with the solicitation, is denied where the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation and applicable procurement law and regulation.
2. Protest challenging the agency’s decision not to conduct discussions is denied where the solicitation provided that the agency intended to make award without discussions and no statute or regulation required the agency to conduct discussions.
3. Protest challenging the agency’s cost realism evaluation of the awardee’s proposal is denied where the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation and applicable procurement law and regulation.
4. Protester is not an interested party to raise other challenges to the agency’s evaluation and award decision where, due to being materially noncompliant under the cost evaluation factor, it would not be eligible for award.

Discussion

The agency issued the RFP on June 22, 2023, under the General Services Administration (GSA) Alliant 2 governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) vehicle and pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) section 16.505 procedures. Agency Report (AR), exh. 1, RFP at 72. According to the RFP, the agency is engaged in efforts to transform “a complex family of systems that enable the Navy to perform HR [human resources] and other non-tactical business operations ashore and afloat,” which the agency refers to more commonly as “MyNavy HR.” AR, exh. 2, RFP, Performance Work Statement (PWS) at 1. As part of those efforts, the agency intends to evolve its current MyNavy HR support environment from over 200 “legacy applications” to “a cloud-based architecture comprised of five systems”–one of which is the “Authoritative Data Environment (ADE),” which the RFP explains is “the next step in the evolution of the Navy’s objective to provide an enterprise level authoritative data warehouse and data services.” Id. at 1-2. In this context, the RFP seeks a contractor to provide various information technology services to support the development, operations, and sustainment of the ADE; among other things, the contractor would be expected to support “all aspects of the Systems Development Life Cycle [ ] such as development, integration, testing, implementation, and sustainment of ADE capabilities.” Id. at 5.

The RFP contemplated the issuance of a single cost-plus-fixed-fee, level of effort task order, which would also include cost-reimbursement line items, to be performed over a base year period, four option years, and an optional 6-month extension. RFP at 41, 75. The RFP stated that the agency “intends to award a task order to the responsible offeror whose proposal conforms to the RFP’s requirements and is determined to be the most advantageous to the Government based upon an integrated assessment of the evaluation factors,” listed in descending order of importance: technical approach; cost; management; and sample scenario. Id. at 87-88. While the RFP provided that the non-cost factors, when combined, were significantly more important than cost, the RFP also provided that the importance of cost would increase “with the degree of equality of the non-cost evaluation factors” and may become the “determining factor for award” when, for instance, “offerors are considered essentially equal in terms of technical …

Decision

General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc., (GDIT) of Falls Church, Virginia, protests the issuance of a task order to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) of Bethesda, Maryland, under request for proposals (RFP) No. N0003923R5555, issued by the Department of the Navy, Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, for development, operations, and sustainment services. The protester primarily challenges the rejection of its proposal under the cost evaluation factor. The protester also challenges various other aspects of the agency’s selection process, including the agency’s decision not to conduct discussions, the evaluation of the awardee’s cost proposal, and the award decision.

We deny the protest.

Read the decision here.

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