Kupono Government Services, LLC; Akima Systems Engineering, LLC

The procurement

Management and operation of DOE's National Training Center under an IDIQ contract combining cost-plus-award-fee, labor-hour and fixed-price line items. The cost evaluation asked whether each offeror's proposed costs were consistent with the methods of performance in its technical and management proposal. DOE awarded the contract to Eagle Harbor, LLC in December 2022.

The protest

Three offerors protested the award, and GAO dismissed those protests on February 23, 2023 after DOE said it would take corrective action. DOE's March 10, 2023 letter then let offerors revise only their cost proposals. Kupono and Akima argued the limit was too narrow: cost and technical were intertwined, so revising staffing or benefit costs would require changes to the technical approach those costs had to match.

The agency’s answer

DOE defended the cost-only reopening. Its contracting officer explained that the cost evaluation had mathematical errors and errors in certain assumptions, that the technical evaluations had not followed the applicable solicitation provisions as fully as they could have, and that none of the errors put inaccurate information into discussions.

What decided it

DOE never identified the flaws it was correcting, so no one could tell whether letting offerors revise only cost would fix them.

GAO found that DOE never articulated what, precisely, the flaws in its procurement were, offering only general references to mathematical errors and incomplete evaluations, so GAO could not tell whether a cost-only reopening would remedy them. The protesters also showed their cost and technical proposals were intertwined under the RFP's cost evaluation. GAO recommended that DOE let offerors revise any part of their proposals materially affected by cost changes, or all of their proposals, evaluate them, make a new selection decision, and reimburse both protesters' costs.