Agency Reasonably Compared Awardee’s Labor Costs to Those Proposed by Incumbent; GAO B-412468.8, Target Media Mid Atlantic Inc.

Protest challenging the agency’s cost evaluation of the awardee’s professional compensation is denied, where the agency reasonably compared the awardee’s proposed labor rates to those proposed by the incumbent prime contractor, which also bid on the contract; and where the agency reasonably relied on data from salary.com to assess the awardee’s proposed compensation for associate-level personnel; and where the agency was not required to conduct a separate cost realism determination of the awardee’s fringe rates, but reasonably concluded that the rates were comparable to those proposed by the protester and the incumbent.