## Facts

- The Navy’s Military Sealift Command, Atlantic issued an RFP for a negotiated fixed-price contract to paint Navy ships and apply non-skid surfaces to ship decks.
- The RFP required specific technical-proposal elements and warned that proposals lacking adequate technical information could be found unacceptable and excluded from the competitive range.
- Required elements included demonstrating understanding of all work items, material control, tools and facilities, identification/oversight of subcontractors, detailed quality control plans, and relevant past experience.
- W&D Ships Deck Works, Inc. submitted a timely proposal.
- Evaluators found W&D’s proposal materially deficient, including: addressing deck work but not paint work; providing only vague material-control information; omitting equipment/facilities lists; failing to explain subcontractor oversight; lacking detailed quality control plans; and providing insufficient past-performance information.
- The contracting officer determined the proposal was technically unacceptable and excluded it from the competitive range, ending W&D’s participation in negotiations.
- W&D filed a pre-award bid protest seeking to enjoin award and compel reinstatement of its proposal into the competitive range.

## Issues

1. Whether the agency’s finding that W&D’s proposal was technically unacceptable and outside the competitive range was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise contrary to law.
2. Whether W&D was entitled to injunctive relief requiring reinstatement into the competitive range and delaying award pending reevaluation.

## Decision

- The Court of Federal Claims denied the protest and denied injunctive relief.
- The court upheld the competitive-range exclusion as reasonable and supported by the record.
- The court concluded that the proposal’s omissions and lack of required detail justified a determination of technical unacceptability under the RFP’s stated requirements.

## Legal Principles

- In bid protests, agency technical evaluations and competitive-range decisions receive substantial deference; the court does not re-score proposals but reviews for rationality and legal compliance.
- An agency may enforce clear solicitation instructions requiring specific proposal content and may exclude proposals that fail to address mandatory evaluation factors.
- Offerors bear the burden of submitting complete, detailed, and solicitation-compliant proposals; material omissions may be treated as fundamental deficiencies supporting exclusion from the competitive range.
- Injunctive relief in a procurement protest generally requires a showing of likely success on the merits; failure to show an evaluation error warranting relief defeats the request for an injunction.

## Conclusion

The court sustained the Navy’s exclusion of W&D from the competitive range because W&D’s proposal failed to address major required work elements and multiple mandatory technical factors, and the court therefore refused to halt the procurement or order reinstatement of the proposal.


W&D Ships Deck Works, Inc. v. United States, 39 Fed. Cl. 638 (Fed. Cl. 1997)