QA Engineering, LLC (B-423716, B-423716.2)

You should not care.

Categories: LPTA, technical acceptability, quality control

Date: 30 September 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423716,b-423716.2

QA Engineering, a small business, protests the award of a contract to Koman Advantage for construction of a small arms storage facility at Kirtland Air Force Base. The RFP contemplated a lowest priced technically acceptable award for a pre-engineered metal building and associated site work. Under the management approach factor, offerors were required to describe their approach to quality control for "onsite construction activities and offsite fabrication." The agency found QA Engineering technically unacceptable because its proposal did not address quality control of the PEMB at the fabrication site.

QA Engineering argued the agency applied an unstated evaluation criterion by requiring discussion of the PEMB specifically. GAO disagreed. The solicitation described the work as construction of a PEMB and explicitly required offerors to address quality control for offsite fabrication. The term "PEMB" was simply the agency's alternative description for the offsite fabrication requirement. QA Engineering's management proposal contained virtually no information about offsite fabrication quality control—a single reference to "on-site and off-site inspections" in one sentence. QA Engineering also alleged disparate treatment, but the record showed other acceptable offerors substantively addressed offsite fabrication in their proposals. Because QA Engineering was properly found technically unacceptable and at least three other acceptable proposals existed, competitive prejudice could not be established.

The protest is denied.

Digest

1. Protest challenging the agency's evaluation of proposals is denied where the agency's evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation and applicable procurement law.
2. Protester cannot establish competitive prejudice concerning other aspects of the agency's evaluation where the protester's proposal was technically unacceptable and therefore ineligible for award, and there was at least one other technically acceptable proposal that would be next in line for award even if our Office were to sustain the protester's other protest grounds.