Decision Released: USAF ICBM Systems Engineering and Integration Services protest sustainment

File: B-420860.4; B-420860.5; B-420860.6

Digest

Protest challenging the agency’s evaluation of proposed professional employee compensation plans and cost realism is sustained where the record does not demonstrate that the agency conducted an evaluation in accordance with the solicitation.

Discussion

The protester raises a number of challenges to the agency’s evaluation and best-value tradeoff. Many of these challenges focus on the exchanges between the offerors and the Air Force during corrective action and the resulting evaluation of professional employee compensation and cost realism.[4] As discussed below, we find that the Air Force’s evaluation in those regards was inconsistent with the solicitation and the best-value decision premised on those evaluations was therefore unreasonable and sustain the protest on that basis.[5]

BAE challenges the agency’s reevaluation of costs in response to our decision resolving the earlier protests of Guidehouse and Jacobs. The protester alleges that Guidehouse submitted a revised cost proposal that contradicted and abandoned material aspects of what Guidehouse included in its technical capability and mission capability volumes–areas the agency had not allowed offerors to revise when it implemented its corrective action. Comments at 5-21. The protester argues that Guidehouse violated the “corrective action ground rules” and Guidehouse’s proposal, thus, should have been found to be unacceptable. Id. at 5-6. In addition, the protester contends that the agency’s professional employee compensation and cost realism evaluations were unreasonable because they failed to consider the fact that Guidehouse’s cost proposal was inconsistent with its technical capability and mission capability proposals. Id. at 22‑32 …

Decision

BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services Inc., of Rockville, Maryland, protests the award of an integration support services contract to Guidehouse LLP, of Falls Church, Virginia, under request for proposals (RFP) No. FA8207-21-R-0001. The Department of the Air Force issued the solicitation for systems engineering and integration services in support of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) organization. BAE Systems challenges the agency’s evaluation of professional employee compensation plans, cost realism, and the resulting award decision.

We sustain the protest.

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