Agency Reasonably Rejected Proposal That Failed to Delineate Experience of Key Individual; Deloitte Consulting, LLP, GAO B-416882.4
Protest alleging that the agency erred in rejecting a proposal as technically unacceptable is denied. The agency found that one of the protester’s proposed key individuals did not have the experience required by the solicitation. The protester argued that the requisite experience could be implied from the individual’s past work. GAO, however, found that the protester was required to crosswalk the experience of it proposed personnel to the requirements of the solicitation. The protester failed to provide crosswalk; it was reasonable for the agency to find that the proposed individual lacked the required experience.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a solicitation for information technology services to support the agency’s acquisition and planning system. The solicitation required offerors to propose an enterprise solutions architect as a key person. The architect had to have 10 years of experience in Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), or Custom User Interface (UI).
Deloitte Consulting submitted a proposal in response to the solicitation. The FDA, however, determined that Deloitte’s proposed enterprise architect did not have the requisite 10 years of experience in EPM, OBIEE, or UI. Accordingly, Deloitte’s proposal was technically unacceptable. Deloitte protested.
Deloitte contended that its enterprise architect had over 20 years of experience using Oracle’s Hyperion and Essbase technologies. Those technologies, Deloitte argued, are the same as Oracle EPM and thus its architect had sufficient experience in the requisite technology.
Deloitte’s proposal did state that the company’s enterprise architect had experience 20 years of experience with Hyperion and Essbase. But much of that experience overlapped where the proposed individual worked for different employers. To compute the length of experience with the required programs, the contracting officer eliminated duplicative periods of time form the overlapping employment. This revealed that the proposed architect only had 8.25 years of experience with the required programs.
GAO found that the agency’s analysis of the proposed architect was reasonable. The FDA had explicitly requested that Deloitte provide a crosswalk from the experience of tis proposed personnel to the qualifications in the solicitation. Deloitte did not provide such a crosswalk. I the absence of the crosswalk, GAO had no basis to find the agency’s evaluation unreasonable.
Deloitte is represented by Paul A. Debolt, Chelsea B. Knudson, Spencer P. Williams, and Taylor Hillman of Venable, LLP. The intervenor, Guidehouse, is represented by Brian G. Walsh, Philip J. Davis, Tara L. Ward, Moshe B. Broder, and Lindy C. Bathurst of Wiley Rein LLP. The agency is represented by Seeta Rebbapragada and Douglas Kornreich of the Department of Health and Human Services. GAO attorneys Raymond Richards, Charmaine A. Stevenson, and Laura Eyester participated in the preparation of the decision
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