In Unusual Argument, Protester Says Agency Waited Too Long to Rightfully Reject Its Proposal; COFC No. 16-376C, Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education on behalf of the Desert Research Institute v. United States

Protest of the agency’s best value tradeoff decision is denied where (1) despite the awardee’s Transition Plan having been stricken for exceeding page limitations, the agency reasonably assigned the awardee a rating under a Transition Plan criterion based on information gleaned from elsewhere in the proposal; (2) the agency reasonably declined to seek clarification and did not immediately reject the protestor’s proposal when required information was omitted from the protester’s cost volume; (3) the protester waived any argument that the agency improperly withheld the incumbent’s labor data from offerors; (4) the protester’s complaints about the technical evaluation of its proposal were either non-prejudicial or mere disagreement with the agency; and (5) there was no evidence the SSO drew unwarranted conclusions form the Source Evaluation Board’s evaluation and or improperly criticized the protester’s strategic vision in the source selection decision.