Comptroller General

United States Government Accountability Office 

Washington, DC 20548 

of the United States

 

Decision 

Matter of: CCITE/SC 

File: B-400782 

Date: November 21, 2008 

Cammy C. Ticknor for the protester. 

Maj. LaChandra C. Richardson, Department of the Air Force, for the agency. 

Frank Maguire, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, 

participated in the preparation of the decision. 

DIGEST 

Agency properly assessed relevance of protester’s past performance submissions by 

applying criteria on an individual, contract-by-contract, basis--rather than applying 

criteria cumulatively, as protester argues agency should have done--where agency 

applied relevance criteria based on only reasonable interpretation of solicitation. 

DECISION 

CCITE/SC, of San Ramon, California, protests the award of a contract to another 

offeror under Department of the Air Force request for proposals (RFP) No. FA4427-

08-R-0014, for medical support personnel at Travis Air Force Base, California. The 

protester principally contends that the agency misevaluated the relevance of its past 

performance submissions. 

We deny the protest. 

The RFP sought personnel for 10 different positions/employee classes, RFP at 3-30, 

and provided that award would be made on a “best value” basis considering three 

factors--technical, past performance, and price. Id. at 49. The past performance 

evaluation, the only part of the evaluation relevant here, was to be based on “past 

and present efforts provided by the offeror” and past performance information 

otherwise obtained by the government. Id. at 50. The past performance evaluation 

was to result in an overall performance confidence assessment of substantial 

confidence (exceptional or good performance survey results), satisfactory 

confidence (satisfactory results), limited confidence (marginal results), no 

confidence (unsatisfactory results), or unknown confidence (neutral results). An 
unknown confidence rating meant that the proposal would be treated neither 

favorably nor unfavorably with regard to past performance. Id.

The RFP required, inter alia, that offerors submit past performance information. 

Specifically, it required offerors to “Provide a list of no more than five (5) of the most 

relevant contracts performed for Federal agencies and commercial customers within 

the last two (2) years,” and defined relevance as follows: 

VERY RELEVANT Contractor has provided all of the services in this PWS 

[performance work statement] and has provided all of the 

positions/employee classes.

RELEVANT Contractor has provided some of the same services in this 

PWS and has provided at least 7 of the positions/employee 

classes. 

SOMEWHAT RELEVANT Contractor has provided similar services as the ones in the

PWS. Must apply to at least 5 of the same or related

positions/employee classes.

NOT RELEVANT Contractor has not provided any similar services as the ones 

in the RFP, or the services were similar but apply to less 

than 5 of the positions in the RFP. 

Id. at 48, § C.3(b). The RFP further provided that offerors “submitting less than three 

(3) recent and relevant surveys will receive a neutral rating.” Id. 

The protester submitted information with regard to four contracts. Agency Request 

for Summary Dismissal at 4. The agency rated two of the contracts not relevant--

because they only covered two similar positions/employee classes, while seven were 

required for a contract to be considered relevant--and two somewhat relevant-- 

because they covered five of the positions/employee classes. Id. Since only two 

contracts were found to have any relevance, in accordance with section C.3(b), the 

agency assigned the proposal a performance confidence assessment of unknown 

confidence (neutral survey results). 

CCITE/SC contends that its prior contracts improperly were rated somewhat

relevant or not relevant, because the agency’s method for determining the number of

positions/employees covered by the contracts was incorrect. Protest at 1-2. More 

specifically, the protester asserts that the RFP “did not require offerors to provide 

numbers of employees per contract referenced to be considered recent and 

relevant,” id. at 2, but, rather, allowed for considering the positions/employees 

covered by the submitted contracts cumulatively. CCITE/SC states that the four 

prior contracts it submitted, considered cumulatively, provided “some of the same

services” as set forth in the PWS and provided at least seven of the positions/ 

employee classes required by the RFQ. Protest at 2-4. CCITE/SC concludes that this 

should have been sufficient for the four contracts to be rated at least relevant, which 

would have improved its performance confidence assessment. 

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Where a dispute exists as to the meaning of solicitation language, we will resolve the 

matter by reading the solicitation as a whole and in a manner that gives effect to all 

provisions of the solicitation. See Honeywell Regelsysteme GmbH, B-237248, Feb. 2, 

1990, 90-1 CPD ¶ 149 at 5. To be reasonable, an interpretation must be consistent 

with the solicitation when read as a whole and in a reasonable manner. Id.

We find the protester’s interpretation of the RFP untenable. While the RFP did not

expressly state that contracts would be evaluated separately, we think that was the 

import of the relevant provisions. As noted, the RFP advised offerors to provide 

“five (5) of the most relevant contracts performed,” and then listed the descriptions 

of the four relevance categories. This reference to “relevant contracts,” followed by 

a listing of the relevance categories, made it sufficiently clear, we think, that 

relevance was to be determined for each contract. This view is reinforced by the 

further statement that “submitting less than three (3) recent and relevant surveys 

will receive a neutral rating”; again, this was sufficient, we think, to indicate that the 

agency would be assessing relevance on a contract-by-contract basis, since such an 

individual assessment would be necessary to determine whether “less than three 

(3) recent and relevant” contracts had been submitted. At a minimum, even if it 

could be said that the RFP was unclear on this point, there certainly was no 

reasonable basis for the protester to simply assume that relevance would be 

assessed cumulatively for purposes of determining how many positions/employees 

were covered by the contracts, given the absence of any indication that the agency 

intended to follow such an approach. It is worth noting that the term cumulative is 

not used in this provision. This being the case, to the extent the protester believed 

prior contracts should be evaluated cumulatively for relevance, it was required to

challenge the RFP on this basis prior to the closing time for receipt of proposals. Bid 

Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R. § 21.2 (a)(2) (2008). We conclude that the agency 

reasonably evaluated the relevance of CCITE/SC’s prior contracts, consistent with 

the terms of the RFP, and properly assigned CCITE/SC a neutral performance 

confidence assessment. 

CCITE/SC contends that the agency improperly failed to take into account

information from “other sources such as other Federal Government offices and 

commercial sources” to assess its past performance, as also required under section 

C.3(b) of the RFP, and differs with the agency with regard to whether it contacted 

appropriate points of contact related to CCITE/SC’s past performance submissions. 

Protest at 3-5. Prejudice is an essential element of every viable protest, and where 

none is shown or otherwise apparent, we will not sustain a protest, even if the 

agency’s actions may arguably have been improper. TELESIS Corp., B-299804, 

Aug. 27, 2007, 2007 CPD ¶ 150 at 7 (no prejudice from allegedly improper evaluation 

where record established no reason to believe that revised score would affect 

competitive range determination). Since we conclude that CCITE/SC’s proposal 

properly received a neutral performance confidence assessment for failure to 

provide three or more relevant contracts--based on an inadequate number of covered 

positions/employees--and there is no evidence that the agency’s alleged omissions 

Page 3 B-400782 
had any effect on the number of CCITE/SC’s relevant contracts, there was no 

prejudice to CCITE/SC resulting from the alleged omissions. 

The protest is denied. 

Gary L. Kepplinger 

General Counsel 

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