Agency’s Failure to Adequately Address Protest Grounds Interpreted as Concession Evaluation was Unreasonable; GAO B-412624.3, Best Value Technology, Inc.—Costs

Protester’s request for a recommendation that it be reimbursed its costs of filing and pursuing its protest is granted, where the protest was clearly meritorious given the errors in the agency’s technical and past performance evaluations; where the agency did not address the grounds of the protest in its agency report or in its response to the request for costs, and therefore GAO concluded the agency conceded its technical and past performance evaluations were not reasonable; and where the agency did not state its intention to take corrective action until six weeks after the clearly meritorious protest grounds were raised, causing the protester to incur the additional cost of replying to the agency’s report and responses.