PCI Bhate JV, LLC (B-423853)

You should not care.

Category: Technical evaluation, process issue, IDIQ

Date: 2 January 2026

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423853

PCI Bhate JV protested the Air Force’s decision not to select it for award under an RFP for multiple-award construction and design-build IDIQ contracts at Offutt Air Force Base. The protest turned entirely on proposal-format compliance, not the substance of the offeror’s construction approach.

The solicitation imposed a 100-page maximum across proposal volumes and warned that excess pages would not be read or considered. PCI Bhate submitted 112 pages. Because the firm was among the eight lowest-priced offerors, the agency moved to evaluate its proposal, removed the final 12 pages from the end of the technical volume, and then found the proposal technically unacceptable because required information for the experience and seed-project subfactors fell in the excluded pages.

GAO denied the protest. It found the solicitation unambiguously treated page limits as a hard maximum and reasonably allowed the agency to disregard excess pages. GAO also rejected PCI Bhate’s argument that the agency should have stripped pages from the price volume instead, concluding the Air Force’s approach was consistent with the solicitation’s structure and evaluation scheme.

The protest is denied.

Digest

Protest challenging agency's evaluation of its proposal as technically unacceptable is denied where the record shows the protester's proposal exceeded the solicitation's page limits, and the agency's decision not to consider the extra information within the extra pages was reasonable and consistent with the solicitation's terms.