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B-283154 1 (1999-10-13)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptajlk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 



                    -e GeAtOa
 E                                                                 Comptroller General
                                                                   of the United States
United States General Accounting Office            DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE
Washington, DC 20548                              The decision issued on the date below was subject to a
                                                  GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has been
                                                  approved for public release.

         Decision

         Matter of: Beneco Enterprises, Inc.

         File:       B-283154

         Date:       October 13, 1999


         Clark B. Fetzer, Esq., Kirton & McConkie, for the protester.
         Robert J. Marks, Esq., Marks & Golia, for Straub/Pacific LLC, an intervenor.
         Daniel J. Dykstra, Jr., Esq., U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for the agency.
         Christine F. Davis, Esq., and James Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the General
         Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.
         DIGEST

         1. Where a solicitation provided for multiple awards based on a price/technical
         tradeoff, in which technical factors were to be significantly more important than
         price, an agency improperly rejected the protester's highest-rated proposal without
         considering its significant technical superiority and without comparing it to each of
         the three awardees' lower-rated proposals.

         2. Where a solicitation stated two price evaluation factors, but did not state their
         relative importance, the solicitation gave rise to a presumption that the factors were
         approximately equal, and the agency erred in according one of the price factors
         virtually no weight in determining each proposal's evaluated, composite price.
         DECISION

         Beneco Enterprises, Inc. protests the award of three contracts to [Offeror A],
         Straub/Pacific LLC, and [Offeror B], under request for proposals (RFP)
         No. DACA09-99-R-0006, issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for construction
         services at installations under the jurisdiction of the Corps's Los Angeles District and
         the Bureau of Prisons' Western Region. Beneco protests that the Corps misevaluated
         price and did not treat it as significantly less important than technical concerns in
         the price/technical tradeoff, as required by the RFP evaluation scheme.

         We sustain the protest.

         The RFP contemplated the award of three indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity
         (IDIQ) contracts, with an overall maximum amount of $90 million for the 36-month