...Command had been rejected. The Instructions to Offerors specifically limited the number of pages to 25, specified the margin settings, and font sizes to be used, and required that proposals be submitted electronically. Moreover, the Army stated that any pages that exceeded the margin, font, or page limit would not be evaluated. The proposals were submitted electronically to the Government.
After receipt of proposals, the Agency initially reviewed each proposal and eliminated two proposals for failure to comply with the Instructions to Offerors in the RFP. One of the proposals that were eliminated from further consideration was that of the protester. In other words, they were eliminated from the competitive range. Specifically, the solicitation contained six margin requirements but the Protester's proposal only met two of them.
Matthews argued that the Army was unreasonable and, consequently, prejudicial to Matthews. The Army, Matthews argued, could have easily reformatted the proposal margin, spacing, and headings to meet the solicitation requirements so the proposal did not exceed the 25 page limitation or, alternatively, change the margin requirements and disregard any excess pages.
The GAO stated that “the question is not what the agency could do, but rather what it was required to do.” The GAO decided that the Army here was not required to reformat, or permit the Protester to reformat, the proposal. The GAO continued by stating that “the solicitation requirements at issue are clear, and were not contested by the Protester.”3 Regardless of what the Protester believes what the agency can or should do with respect to reformatting the proposal, there is no “requirement that the agency take such action given the RFP's clear instructions regarding reformatting and the consequences of not complying with those instructions.” The GAO also agreed with the Army that permitting the reformatting of the proposal could, potentially, lead to other disputes, presumably protests, about the manner in which the reformatting is accomplished. GAO stated this was an unacceptable risk for the Army.
The GAO averred that in previous cases, the agency may have downgraded a proposal, rather than eliminating the proposal from consideration, for failure to comply with proposal instructions.4 But the GAO stated that “there is nothing or unduly burdensome about requiring Offerors to assume the risks associated submitting proposals that do not comply with clearly stated solicitation formatting requirements.”
