Sumaria Systems, LLC (B-422527.3; B-422527.4)

Category: Technical Evaluation, Process Issue

Date: October 23, 2024

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-422527.3%2Cb-422527.4

You should not care.

Sumaria Systems, LLC, protested the Air Force's task-order award to Applied Research Solutions, Inc., for engineering and support services. Sumaria challenged the evaluation of its quote and alleged unequal treatment in technical scoring, specifically regarding employee transition scores.

GAO found the evaluation reasonable, consistent with the solicitation, and free from unequal treatment. The Air Force was not required to contact points of contact (POCs) for clarifications, and Sumaria's submitted documents did not meet requirements to support their self-scoring claims.

GAO also dismissed claims regarding discretely generated documents in Applied’s submission, noting the error was harmless as Applied’s validated score stood without the disputed material. The protest was denied due to lack of merit.

Digest

1. Protest that agency misevaluated protester’s task order proposal is denied where the record shows the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the solicitation’s evaluation criteria.
2. Protest that agency conducted an unequal technical evaluation is denied where the record shows that the differences in the evaluation were reasonably based on differences in the offerors’ proposals.
3. Protest that agency misevaluated awardee’s proposal by considering document that the solicitation provided would not be credited is denied where the record shows that although the agency cited the document in support of the evaluation, the error was not prejudicial because the information in the document was duplicative of other information that was properly considered.