ASPR 5-1106.4 applies the same requirements to coordinated procurements, and also provides that the procuring department can either refuse to accept an unrealistic delivery schedule or can request that the unrealistic schedule be changed.

While the fixtures supplied by Grove concerning Pettibone delinquencies on earlier truck contracts differ from those furnished by DSA and Pettibone, it is admitted that Pettibone has experienced frequent delays of varying degree on virtually all recent contracts allegedly caused by the unavailability of components. The state of component availability or nonavailability, as well as Pettibone's obligations under other current truck contracts and the effect of those obligations on Pettibone's ability to meet the delivery schedule as revised, was within the cognizance of the contracting officer when the IFB was canceled. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from this information is, in our opinion, that not even Pettibone, which was the only contractor in current production and which therefore would be the contractor from which earliest delivery could logically be anticipated, could meet the revised schedule. Instead of verifying the emergency need for the revised schedule, the impossibility of meeting the revised schedule should have been pointed out to the Navy in accordance with the above-quoted ASPR provisions, and the earliest possible schedule on which deliveries could be reasonably anticipated should have been determined. If, at that point, it had appeared that Pettibone could have offered much earlier delivery, cancellation of the IFB and negotiation with Pettibone would have been proper. However, the delivery schedule required of Grove in the IFB was substantially the same as that agreed to by Pettibone in the later negotiated contract, and if it were not for the problem of the inadequate data package, Grove apparently could have met the deliveries promised by Pettibone. It should be pointed out that Grove would have had the benefit of the same priority assistance relied upon by Pettibone to assist its performance. We therefore conclude that cancellation of the IBB on the ground of the revised delivery schedule demonstrated poor procurement management.

To the Director, Office of Economic Opportunity, August 21, 1970:

Further reference is made to the protest of Urbanetics, Inc., against the award by the Office of Economic Opportunity of fixed-price contract No. BOO-5099 to Sam Harris Associates, Ltd. (Harris) for a survey of minority manufacturing firms. This matter was the subject of reports dated May 4 and 21, 1970, with supporting documents from the Associate Director for Administration, and the Office of the General Counsel.

The record shows that the subject contract was awarded under request for proposals (RFP) No. PD-012, which was issued on January 20, 1970,

pursuant to the authority set forth in Federal Procurement Regulations (FPR) 1-3.210 (a) (13). The contracting officer had determined that adequate specifications could not be drafted to obtain the requirement on a formally advertised basis.

The RFP stated that a firm fixed-price award was contemplated but that alternate proposals would be considered. The specific work requirements to be accomplished and the criteria for evaluating proposals were set forth in the RFP as follows:

Specific:

The Contractor shall provide all necessary qualified personnel, facilities, materials, and services (including travel and per diem) required to identify and collect data on minority manufacturing firms throught the continental United States with the capacity to produce products and services required by cooperating government procurement agencies. Identification of these firms shall be limited to those located in urban and rural poverty areas with coordination from Small Business Administration and Office of Economic Opportunity. The Contractor shall develop an equitable distribution of the firms between urban and rural

areas.

In performance of this contract, the Contractor shall conduct the following work:

1. Evaluate not less than three hundred (300) minority business enterprises utilizing Exhibit "A" attached hereto. NOTE: The Contractor shall notify each firm being evaluated that under no circumstances should it believe that the submission of this data makes it eligible to receive a federal subcontract.

2. Prepare a listing of as many firms as possible including name, address, telephone, product line or major line, and where possible list last contract and the product line furnished to the Federal Government, list equipment on hand and the capacity of this equipment. Exhibit "A" shall be used for this listing.

3. Collaborate and coordinate Contractor's efforts through consultations with OEO personnel and Small Business Administration officials charged with the administration of Section 8(a).

4. Submit materials, reports, and lists weekly during the operation of the contract and at the end of the contract period submit to the Contracting Officer, Office of Economic Opportunity and Small Business Administration twenty (20) copies of a final report, within ten (10) days after completion of the contract.

Technical proposals will be evaluated pursuant to the following factors:

1. Demonstration of an understanding of the objectives, goals and major concepts of the study.

2. Prior experience and capability of the Offeror's staff in performing work of the type required by this request for Proposals.

3. Technical qualifications and capability of the staff

assigned to this project.

The contracting officer states that 11 companies submitted proposals by the closing date of February 19, 1970, and the following six were determined to be acceptable and within a competitive range:

The selection panel, which consisted of four OEO employees and three Small Business Administration employees, evaluated the Harris proposal as follows:

Sam Harris Associates, Ltd.

This contractor won our nomination to do the subject survey of minority businesses because we feel that they will produce a more accurate and reliable product. The strength of this proposal is in:

Sam Harris, who will give 30 percent of his time to this
project, Walter Cooper and Ted Ledbetter are three of the
most experienced and knowledgeable people in the area of
minority enterprise. They have been involved with the major
business development programs of SBA, EDA and OEO's Title IV
program. Ken Brown, project manager, has experience with
McKinsey and Company and as director of Economic Research
for the New York City Department of Commerce and industrial
development. The backgrounds of the other project partici-
pants add up to the most experienced and knowledgeable staff
of any of the proposed staff of any of the proposed projects,
by far.

In addition, the methodology of this proposal offers a much better chance of having a reliable quality than any other of the proposals reviewed. The contractor will use

ten (10) in-house surveyors who will be deployed throughout
the country. They will hold interviews directly and on-site
with the firms. Each of those surveyors is to conduct three
to five business surveys per week. The surveyors will
personally observe the operations of the firms and make their
presentation in proposed supplemental reports which each
member would submit in addition to the questionnaire. The
reports would include information on the physical facilities,
the estimated capacity and the ability of the firms to pro-
duce quality products based upon uniformly prepared criteria
for evaluating such firms.

The information submitted by the team members to the
Washington headquarters would be reviewed by a panel of three
professional persons with experience in this area. This

panel would be available for solving all problem cases in-
house whenever these occur. The procedure issues consistent
information and eliminates the necessity for training a
large number of subcontractors staffs over which the prime
contractor has no control.

We recognize that Harris has bid above the allocated price. There are three areas of effort which we feel can be cut in the negotiation. They are:

1. The requirement to identify additional products. (last item in Task #3--page III-7).

2. Identification of grouping of manufacturing firms for integrative production relationships (Task #5 first sentence, first paragraph--page III-9).

3. The proposal calls for weekly trips back to Washington for project staff. We do not think that more than four trips per staff member are necessary. Of course, it may be that given per diem, etc., the cost to the government will not be much affected by eliminating this travel.

In any event, we think that the Harris proposal is considerably superior to its nearest rival and some extra cost to assure uniformity of survey results is warranted.

In subsequent negotiations Harris deleted from its proposal the three areas shown above. Additionally, Harris reduced the number of researchers from 10 to eight and changed its proposal from a cost-reimbursement type to a fixed-price basis.

The record indicates that representatives of the other five concerns in the competitive range were also contacted concerning their offers and given 24 hours to submit revisions to their proposals. The negotiator states that the negotiations with these concerns were "preliminary'' and did not involve any price discussions. Although it appears that the proposals of Urbanetics and the other four concerns were considered weak in the area of obtaining uniform survey results, in that they proposed to rely excessively on third parties for the research duties or did not propose

to use sufficient researchers in the field for collecting the data, the record indicates that those offerors were not informed of such weaknesses. Urbanetics was the only offeror which failed to submit a proposal revision, however, only Harris and Transcendental were regarded as having made substantial changes in their proposals.

In regard to the negotiations which took place with Urbanetics, the contract negotiator states that he asked a representative of the concern if he cared to make any change in his proposal. The representative stated that he did not know where any changes could be made, and that Urbanetics would not revise its proposal.

A point system was used to rate the proposals which was based on points assigned to each evaluator's choice for first (20), second (15), third (10), and fourth (5). This resulted in rankings as follows:

It is reported that further price negotiations were conducted with Harris on the basis of total dollars, and its price was reduced to $72,000. It is also reported that negotiation of price did not take place with other firms because no other technical proposal, as originally submitted or as modified, was determined to be technically equivalent to the Harris proposal.

Pursuant to the determination that Harris had submitted the best proposal, an award was concluded with that concern for a firm fixed-price contract of $72,000 on March 23, 1970, which was in excess of the $60,000 originally allocated for the procurement. We have been informally advised that performance of the contract was completed in late June in accordance with the 90-day period of performance stipulated in the RFP.

Urbanetics protested the award to this Office claiming that the areas in which its proposal was considered technically deficient were not fully set forth in the RFP as requirements or as evaluation factors. In addition, the company maintains that no meaningful negotiations ever took place between it and OEO, and that it should have been advised of the alleged deficient areas of its proposal.