United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548

Comptroller General

of the United States

Decision

Matter of: Native Resource-Rowe Joint Venture

File: B-406880

Date: September 13, 2012

Ruth E. Ganister, Esq., Rosenthal and Ganister, LLC, for the protester.

Mark Ezersky, Esq., General Services Administration, for the agency.

Jacqueline Maeder, Esq., and David A. Ashen, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, 

GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.

DIGEST

Price/technical tradeoff was reasonable where agency determined that protester’s 

minor technical advantage was not worth the associated additional cost.

DECISION

Native Resource-Rowe Joint Venture (NR-RJV), of Bernalillo, New Mexico, protests 

the General Services Administration’s (GSA) award of a contract to Allied National 

Services, Inc., of Minneapolis, Minnesota, under request for proposals (RFP) 

No. GS09P-12-KSD-0018, for janitorial, grounds maintenance and related 

maintenance services for the North Los Angeles Federal Building and the 

Huntington Park Social Security Administration Federal Building in Los Angeles, 

California. The protester contends that the agency failed to properly apply the 

solicitation’s stated evaluation factors and conducted a flawed source selection.

We deny the protest.

The solicitation, issued February 10, 2012 as an 8(a) small business set-aside, 

contemplated the award of a fixed price contract for a base year with four 1-year 

options. Award was to be made to the responsible offeror whose proposal was 

determined to be the most advantageous to the government considering 

three evaluation factors: experience, past performance and price. RFP at 111. 

Experience was more important than past performance, and, when combined, the 

two technical factors were more important than price. Id. at 111-12. The solicitation 

further provided that as technical proposals became more equal in their technical 

merit, price would become more important. Id. at 126. 

DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

The decision issued on the date below was subject to 

a GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has 

been approved for public release.
Page 2 B-406880 

The solicitation established “standards” for both the experience and past 

performance factors. As relevant here, the experience standard would be met when 

the offeror provided three projects performed within the past 3 years, and two of the 

three projects demonstrated that the offeror had performed work similar to that 

described in the solicitation. RFP at 112. “Similar work” was defined as “janitorial, 

grounds maintenance and related services,” performed “in a building consisting of 

commercial office, executive, and public meeting spaces with a gross square 

footage of 250,000 square feet or more.” Id. 

The agency received 20 proposals, including proposals from NR-RJV and Allied, by 

the extended March 12 due date. The proposals were evaluated by a three member 

technical evaluation board (TEB), which scored and contemporaneously 

documented in narrative form their analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of 

each proposal. While NR-RJV’s resulting overall technical score of 8.2 was higher 

than Allied’s score of 6.8, NR-RJV’s fourth low price of $6,047,737 was 16.7% 

higher than Allied’s evaluated low price of $5,181,000. AR, Tab 23, Evaluation of 

Proposals and Source Selection Determination, at 2-5. 

Further, the agency concluded that, in spite of the point score differential between 

the two offerors, the actual technical differences in fact were minor. AR, Tab 23, 

Evaluation of Proposals and Source Selection Determination, at 6. As an initial 

matter, not only did both offerors each receive 4 strengths, but in addition, Allied 

received only 2 weaknesses while NR-RJV received 3. Further, the agency 

determined that NR-RJV’s overall technical evaluation score was higher than Allied’s 

because NR-RJV had provided 3 references that met the “similar work” definition 

while Allied provided only 2 references meeting the “similar work” definition. Id. at 5. 

However, the agency noted that while all of Allied’s references were positive, one of 

NR-RJV’s references provided negative feedback, indicating that she would not use 

the protester to perform work in the future. Id. at 6; AR, Tab 17, Source Selection 

Evaluation Report, at 16; AR at 4. The agency also was concerned that only one of 

the three NR-RJV references was for Native Resource, the 8(a) member of the joint 

venture. AR, Tab 23, Evaluation of Proposals and Source Selection Determination, 

at 5-6; AR, Tab 17, Source Selection Evaluation Report, at 16.

The agency ultimately determined that the minor technical differences between the 

two proposals did not warrant payment of NR-RJV’s significant price premium. The 

agency thereupon concluded that Allied’s proposal represented the best value to the 

government. Upon learning of the consequent award to Allied, and after being 

debriefed, NR-RJV filed this protest with our Office challenging the source selection 

decision. 

NR-RJV does not challenge the technical evaluations, but instead simply relies on its 

higher overall technical point score to argue that, contrary to the agency’s position, 

the difference between the overall technical merits of the two proposals was 

significant. According to the protester, given the solicitation’s emphasis on the 
Page 3 B-406880 

importance of technical considerations relative to price, and in light of the higher 

technical point score for its proposal, the selection of Allied’s lower-rated proposal 

was improper.

In conducting cost/technical tradeoffs, selection officials retain considerable 

discretion in determining the significance of technical point score differentials. The 

determinative element is not the difference in technical scores per se, but the 

considered judgment of the selection officials concerning the significance of the 

difference. IBP, Inc., B-289296, February 7, 2002, 2002 CPD ¶ 39 at 5. Further, the 

business judgment of a source selection official in determining how much additional 

cost an agency is willing to incur to obtain the benefit of a higher rated proposal is 

governed only by the tests of rationality and consistency with established evaluation 

criteria. Id.

We see nothing unreasonable in the agency’s award decision here. NR-RJV’s 

argument that it should have been selected for award is based entirely on its point 

score relative to Allied’s point score. However, contrary to the protester’s assertion, 

there is no basis to conclude that the 1.4-point difference in the overall technical 

scores assigned the two proposals represented a finding by the TEB of NR-RJV’s 

technical superiority. While it appears that NR-RJV’s point score was higher than 

Allied’s as a result of the protester having an additional reference for a similar 

contract effort, the agency determined that this advantage was largely offset by the 

fact that one of NR-RJV’s references indicated that she would not use the protester 

to perform work in the future (while all of Allied’s references were positive), and by 

Native Resource’s own limited experience. Given these concerns, and the similar 

number of strengths and weaknesses for the two firms, we see no basis to question 

the agency’s conclusion that the technical difference between the proposals was 

minor. Nor do we see a basis to question the agency’s conclusion that this minor 

technical difference did not warrant payment of an 16.7% price premium.

The protest is denied. 

Lynn H. Gibson

General Counsel