J.C.N. Construction Co. v. United States

60 Fed. Cl. 400, 2004 WL 905253
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedApril 15, 2004
DocketNo. 04-0121-C
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 60 Fed. Cl. 400 (J.C.N. Construction Co. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Federal Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
J.C.N. Construction Co. v. United States, 60 Fed. Cl. 400, 2004 WL 905253 (uscfc 2004).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER1

LETTOW, Judge.

This post-award bid protest is before the Court on plaintiffs motions for a preliminary injunction and for judgment upon the administrative record and defendant’s cross-motion for judgment upon the administrative record. Plaintiff, J.C.N. Construction Company, Inc. (“JCN”), challenges the government’s awards to five other offerors of contracts under a multiple award construction contract (“MACC”). This MACC encompassed a range of projects to be constructed at Navy installations in the Northeastern United States over a five-year period, with such projects individually expected to range in cost from $25,000 to $1.7 million. The request for proposals (“RFP” or “solicitation”) called for submissions particularly related to a “seed project” which the contracting agency, the United States Naval Facilities Engineering Command (“Navy”), said it would use as the basis for evaluating all proposals. The Navy designated five awardees, with the seed project specifically awarded to Patel Construction Company, Inc. (“Patel”), the intervening defendant in this case. Subsequent task orders under the MACC were to be subject to competition among the five contractual awardees. JCN filed a protest of the awards before the General Accounting Office (“GAO”), but GAO denied relief. After JCN’s complaint was filed in this Court, the Navy agreed to withhold the issuance of task orders under the MACC other than the seed project until April 16, 2004.

Pursuant to Rule 65(a)(2) of Rules of the Court of Federal Claims (“RCFC”), a hearing on plaintiffs application for a preliminary injunction was consolidated with a hearing on the merits of the claim for an injunction and the cross-motions for judgment upon the administrative record, and the consolidated hearing was held on March 19, 2004. For the reasons set out below, the Court denies JCN’s application for a preliminary injunction, request for injunction, and motion for judgment upon the administrative record and grants the government’s cross-motion for judgment upon the administrative record.

BACKGROUND

A. The Contract Solicitation

The Navy’s solicitation was issued on April 8, 2003 and was labeled “Maine Multiple Award Construction Contract.” Compl. at 1. It sought proposals for indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity construction projects, including design-build projects, at Naval installations located in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. AR 29-30.2 The solicitation contemplated awards to up to five offerors of contracts for a base period of one year with four subsequent one-year options during which the Navy could place separate task orders for projects. Id. at 29. Individual projects were estimated to cost between $25,000 and $1.7 million, with a maximum total of $30 million for all task orders placed during the full performance period. Id.

The “solicitation also ineorporate[d] a seed project upon which all proposals [would] be evaluated for award.” Id. That initial project was for construction of a working dog kennel at the Naval Air Station, Brunswick, ME. AR 30. The dog kennel would house up to eight [402]*402dogs and would “be an enclosed building including spaces for kennel compartments, food preparation, work/treatment area, storage and mechanical room.” Id. The estimated price range for the dog kennel was $250,000 to $500,000. Id. The offeror found to be the best overall value to the government based on price and certain technical evaluation subfaetors would be awarded the contract for the seed project and be one of the up-to-five contract awardees. AR 44. Each awardee not given the seed project would receive a guaranteed minimum of $5,000. Id. Best-value source selection procedures would also be applied in selecting the other awardees. Id.

The solicitation procedures called for offerors to make separate, severable proposals regarding price and technical aspects of the proposed construction work. AR 36. The only price to be submitted by offerors related to the seed project because future task orders were to be the subject of subsequent competition on technical and price grounds. Offerors’ technical proposals would be evaluated under four equally weighted subfactors — Relevant Past Performance, Management Approach, Safety Record, and Commitment to Small Business Concerns — the combination of which would be considered approximately equal to price. AR 36-43; see also AR 17 n. 2. The subfactors would be assigned one of the following adjectival ratings: exceptional, very good,3 acceptable,4 deficient but correctable, or unacceptable. AR 43.5' Respecting evaluation of offerors’ technical proposals, the solicitation provided that “technical evaluation board members will ... assess each factor of each proposal as indicated in the RFP as [it] relate[s] to the seed project.” Id. The offerors’ price proposals for the seed project were to be “evaluated for reasonableness and the offerors[’] ability to be competitive on future projects.” AR 44.

A Source Selection Plan (“Plan”) governed the Navy’s evaluation of proposals received in response to the solicitation. The source selection organization was headed by the Source Selection Authority (“SSA”), who appointed two advisory teams — a Technical Evaluation Team (“TET”) and a Source Selection Team (“SST”) — with the latter team including a Price Analyst. AR 777-78, 801. The TET was responsible for evaluating and rating each technical proposal against the four technical subfactors, preparing a written report, and presenting an oral briefing to the SST. AR 804-05. Correspondingly, the Price Analyst was obliged to analyze each price proposal, prepare a written evaluation, and brief the SST and SSA. AR 803. The SST was assigned the duties of developing the Plan, receiving briefing from the TET and Price Analyst, and recommending to the SSA final technical and price ratings, the competitive range, and award. AR 802-03. The SSA was then responsible for approving the Plan, considering the teams’ recommendations, and exercising her independent judgment in approving award of the MACO. AR 801-02.

B. The Navy’s Consideration of the Proposals

Seventeen offerors, including JCN, submitted timely proposals, the technical aspects of which were evaluated by the TET between May 13 and July 2, 2003. AR 960. The [403]*403TET’s initial evaluation ranked offerors into bands based on overall technical ratings. AR 963. Proposals rated Exceptional or Very Good were placed in the first band; those rated Acceptable were placed in the second band; and proposals containing at least one subfactor rated Unacceptable were relegated to the third band. AR 963-964. JCN received an overall rating of Acceptable and was accordingly placed in the second band. AR 963. Patel, the ultimate awardee of the seed project, was also placed in the second band, receiving an overall rating of Deficient but Correctable with a preliminary minimum rating of Acceptable. The Source Selection Board Report explained that the preliminary ratings were subject to adjustment:

Some ratings are Deficient but Correctable (DC) with a preliminary/anticipated minimum rating in parentheses. The deficiencies for the firms in the top two bands are considered minor and easily correctable.

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Bluebook (online)
60 Fed. Cl. 400, 2004 WL 905253, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jcn-construction-co-v-united-states-uscfc-2004.