The solicitation for a best-value procurement for design and engineering/technical support services required offerors to provide “evaluated” labor rate table s to be used to determine total evaluated prices.  After receiving initial proposals, the government found that several offerors had violated solicitation instructions and provided rates that were inconsistent with their “official” rates to be incorporated into the contract (e.g. one was “inflated” while another used “weighted” rates for subcontracts where instructions asked for “average rates”).  In order to better determine total prices the government sent “evaluation notices” to some of the offerors requesting “clarifications” and asking them to correct the rate tables.  The GAO said that “communications that permit an offeror to correct proposal mistakes constitute discussions unless the mistake is minor.”  Since the mistakes were not minor the GAO asserted the communications were “discussions” which opens the door for discussing other weaknesses of all the proposals.  Hence, UDRI’s protest that the government failed to discuss certain evaluated weaknesses of its proposal – unrelated to the labor rates – was sustained because the communications constituted discussions rather than clarifications (University of Dayton Research Institute, GAO, B-296946).

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