B-400563, Piedmont Hoist & Crane, October 8, 2008
Decision
Matter of: Piedmont Hoist & Crane
Roger
H. Payne for the protester.
David L. Bell, Esq., Naval Facilities Engineering Command, for the agency.
Kenneth Kilgour, Esq., and Christine S. Melody, Esq., Office of
the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision.
DIGEST
Protest that agency improperly refused to consider the protester’s late quotation is denied where the agency already had made award prior to receipt of the protester’s quotation, and the delay in receipt of the quotation (which was sent electronically) was due to the protester’s decision to modify the email address specified in the solicitation for submission of quotations.
DECISION
Piedmont Hoist & Crane
(PHC) protests the rejection of its quotation as late by the Department of the
Navy, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, under request for quotations (RFQ)
No. N40085-08-Q-1799 for design and installation of a two-ton bridge crane at
On
On September 5, PHC contacted the agency to ask about this
procurement and was told that the agency had not received a quotation from PHC
and that award had been made to another vendor.
PHC maintained that it had sent its quotation by email on August 21, at
The protester does not dispute that its quotation was received late and after award. Rather, the protester argues that the circumstances surrounding the late receipt of its quotation compel the agency to consider it. In this regard, the protester argues that the error in the email address it used was the result of the unclear manner in which the address was set out in the RFQ. Moreover, the protester asserts that the email address it used must exist because the protester received a notice of receipt of its email, similar to notices of receipt that it has received in response to other email submissions that were known to have been properly received.
We have long held that the
requirement to obtain competition to the maximum extent practicable means that
language requesting quotations by a certain date cannot be construed as
establishing a firm closing date for the receipt of quotations absent a
provision--which was not present here--expressly providing that quotations must
be received by that date to be considered. Instruments & Controls Serv. Co., B-222122,
The protester’s argument that
the email address used by the agency for receipt of quotations was “complicated
and error-prone,” Comments at 2, and that if the address had been clear the
protester would not have made the entry error, does not compel a different
result. As noted above, the email address,
with the underscoring, was clearly visible in the electronic version of the RFQ
once the cursor was placed over the address.
To the extent the underscoring was not apparent to PHC, PHC nevertheless
failed to act reasonably in the electronic submission of its quotation, which
directly resulted in the agency not timely receiving its quotation. Without first raising the issue with the
agency, PHC simply assumed that what it perceived as blank spaces between the
characters in the agency’s email address were unintended and immaterial--as
noted above, the email address used by PHC for the submission of its quotation
simply eliminated the underscored spaces.
It was unreasonable for PHC to make this assumption and thereby modify
the email address designated in the RFQ for the submission of quotations. Given PHC’s own actions, we have no basis to conclude
that the agency acted unreasonably by rejecting PHC’s late quotation.
The protest is denied.
Gary L. Kepplinger
General Counsel