Agency Reasonably Used Provisional Rates to Assess Realism of Awardee’s Proposed Indirect Rates, When Corporate Changes Rendered Historical Rates Unreliable; GAO B-411970.9, Smartronix Inc.; ManTech Advanced Systems International Inc.

Protest challenging the agency’s cost realism evaluation is denied, where the agency reasonably concluded that changes to the awardee’s corporate structure rendered its historical rates less reliable for determining the realism of its current proposed rates and therefore used the awardee’s provisional rates; and protest challenging the agency’s best-value tradeoff decision is denied, where the agency reasonably concluded one protester’s methodology for determining FTE hours was unreliable, and reasonably concluded the past performance references provided by the awardee and a second protester were essentially equal in quality, despite the findings of lower level evaluators.