B-400421, Turner Consulting Group, Inc., October 29, 2008
Decision
Matter of: Turner Consulting Group, Inc.
Daniel
A. Turner, Turner Consulting Group, Inc., for the protester.
Jeffrey C. Morhardt, Esq., and Antoiner White, Esq., Department of Education,
for the agency.
Christina Sklarew, Esq., and Guy R. Pietrovito, Esq., Office of
the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.
DIGEST
Where a request for quotations contains a late submission clause and provides for the electronic submission of quotations, an agency reasonably rejected protester’s quotation as late where there was no evidence that the quotation was received by the time specified for the submission of quotations.
DECISION
Turner Consulting Group, Inc. of
The RFQ contemplated the award of an order to a General
Services Administration Federal Supply Schedule vendor in accordance with
Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 8.4. The RFQ required that
vendors submit their quotations electronically to the contract specialist and
the contracting officer by
Turner states that on Sunday, July 20 at 10:12 p.m. (the evening before the due date for receipt of quotations), its vice president (VP) transmitted the firm’s quotation, consisting of an e-mail with five attached files in Adobe portable document format (pdf), to the contract specialist and contracting officer at the email addresses specified in the RFQ. Turner also transmitted copies of this email to two other, non‑agency recipients, one of whom automatically forwarded his email to a government email account that is sponsored by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for his work on another project. This addressee received the email and all its attachments at his OMB mailbox a few minutes after Turner’s transmission. Protest at 7.
Turner states that, after sending its quotation to these four recipients, the firm sent a second email to the contract specialist and contracting officer, informing them that Turner had submitted its quotation. Turner did not receive any messages from its email system, informing the firm of errors or problems with the delivery of these emails. After transmitting these emails, Turner’s VP called the contract specialist and left a telephone voicemail message requesting confirmation that the agency had received Turner’s quotation. Turner did not receive any response to this voicemail request.
On Monday, July 21, at
Turner immediately re-sent the email with the five attached
pdf files, comprising its quotation, which the agency again did not receive. The contract specialist suggested that Turner
separate the attachments and send the quotation in multiple emails. Turner did so, and four of the five
attachments were successfully delivered to the contract specialist’s email account. Turner eventually converted the remaining pdf
file to a Microsoft Word document, which Turner successfully transmitted to the
contract specialist.
Two other firms successfully transmitted quotations to the
agency by the
The contract specialist contacted the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer and requested assistance in investigating the situation, asking whether there was any way to determine whether the agency’s server had rejected Turner’s email with its attachments. After being told that a search of the office’s records had detected no problems in the agency’s server and that there was no record of having received the email, even at the outermost point of entry in the agency’s system, the contracting officer rejected Turner’s quotation as late. This protest followed.
Turner does not dispute that its quotation was received late; rather, the crux of Turner’s protest is that some unspecified error in the agency’s internet system prevented the timely delivery of Turner’s quotation. Turner maintains that, because its email to the agency was simultaneously and successfully transmitted to the two other non-agency recipients, the paramount cause of its quotation not reaching the designated agency email accounts must be something in the agency’s email system or server, such as, Turner speculates, an arbitrary blocking of pdf files or other arbitrary fault in the agency’s system.
DOE does not dispute that Turner attempted to send its
quotation by email before the
FAR provisions in Parts 14 and 15, governing the late
delivery of bids and proposals, generally do not apply to the late delivery of
a quotation. However, where as here the RFQ
contains a late submission provision that quotations must be received by a
stated deadline to be considered, quotations cannot be considered if received
after the deadline. See Data
Integrators, Inc., B-310928,
Here, there is no question that Turner’s quotation was not
received by the agency by the time required for submission of quotations. Although Turner contends that something in
DOE’s internet system prevented the timely receipt of Turner’s quotation, there
is no evidence in the record to support this contention. Rather, DOE states that its investigation
found no problems with the agency’s servers that would prevent the timely
receipt of quotations, and that the agency timely received other emailed
quotations which included pdf files, see Contracting Officer’s Statement
at 3, which lends support to this view.
Moreover, Turner’s late delivery of its quotation could not be completed
until after the protester had changed the format of one of its email
attachments, which also lends support to the agency’s view that Turner’s
inability to timely deliver its quotation to the agency was more likely the
result of a corrupted file. We recognize
that Turner disputes that its attachments were corrupted and that it continues
to contend that it timely transmitted its quotation to DOE; this, however, does
not demonstrate that DOE timely received the firm’s quotation or was
responsible for Turner’s inability to timely deliver its quotation to the
agency. In short, given that there is no
evidence in the record to show actual timely receipt of the Turner’s quotation,
we have no basis to find unreasonable the agency’s rejection of the quotation
as late. See International
Garment Processors, B-299674; B-299743; B‑299746,
The protest is denied.
Gary L. Kepplinger
General Counsel