Awardee’s Lower Rates Not Evidence of Inadequate Cost Realism Evaluation; GAO B-413974.3, Synergy Solutions, Inc.

Protest challenging agency’s cost realism, technical, and past performance evaluations is denied, where the agency employed multiple methods of evaluating realism and applied historical staffing information equally to the awardee’s and protester’s proposals, and protest alleging the agency engaged in unequal discussions is denied, where the agency reasonably informed the awardee of a concern indicating it did not understand a basic factual requirement of the solicitation, and weaknesses identified in the protester’s proposal were more broad.