Enviremedial Services, Inc. (B-423552,B-423552.2)

You should care.

Category: Past performance, cost or price evaluation

Date: 28 August 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423552%2Cb-423552.2

Enviremedial Services protested the Army Corps of Engineers' award to BryMak & Associates for preventative maintenance and repair services at eighteen sites supporting the 81st Readiness Division across Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. ESI challenged the agency's evaluation of past performance and pricing.

GAO sustained the protest, finding multiple flaws in the past performance evaluation and best value tradeoff.

Past performance evaluation errors: The agency improperly considered a contract awarded to BryMak Eagle Pro LLC as relevant past performance for BryMak & Associates without explaining the relationship between the entities. The agency also incorrectly credited BryMak with performance on two contracts actually performed by its team member CBFS, despite the agency's postprotest claim this was a "typographical error." Additionally, the agency failed to adequately document why a joint venture contract performed by CBFS should be considered relevant.

Best value tradeoff deficiencies: The source selection authority's analysis relied solely on adjectival ratings without conducting the qualitative comparison required by the solicitation. Despite ESI having more directly relevant past performance (five very relevant contracts vs. BryMak's three), the authority failed to consider the solicitation's requirement to give greater consideration to more relevant experience.

Unbalanced pricing: GAO dismissed ESI's unbalanced pricing allegations as factually insufficient, noting that mere price disparities between offerors without evidence of materially overstated prices do not establish unbalanced pricing.

Past performance evaluations must be properly documented and best value tradeoffs require qualitative analysis beyond assigned ratings.

Digest

1. Protest alleging that awardee's pricing is unbalanced is dismissed where the protester fails to credibly allege that one or more of the awardee's prices was overstated.
2. Protest challenging agency's past performance evaluation is sustained where aspects of the agency's relevancy evaluation were unreasonable or not sufficiently documented.
3. Protest challenging agency's best‑value tradeoff is sustained where the tradeoff failed to adequately compare proposals and was based on an unreasonable and inadequately documented past performance evaluation.