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B-290688 1 (2002-09-20)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacyau0001 and id is 1 raw text is: I G A 0Comptroller General A- Accountability * Integrity * Reliability of the United States United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 Decision Matter of: REEP, Inc. File: B-290688 Date: September 20, 2002 Gilbert J. Ginsburg, Esq., for the protester. Lt. Col. Daniel K. Poling, Department of the Army, for the agency. Scott H. Riback, Esq., and John M. Melody, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protester's argument that another firm has an impermissible conflict of interest, and thus should be precluded from competing under solicitation, is dismissed as premature where award has not yet been made. DECISION REEP, Inc. protests the actions of the Department of the Army in connection with its effort to obtain language training services under the Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) using request for quotations (RFQ) No. DAKF23-02-Q-0059. REEP principally maintains that another firm, Worldwide Language Resources, Inc., has a conflict of interest, and that the agency should preclude it from competing for its language training requirements. We dismiss the protest. The agency advises our Office that it has made no award decision in connection with the acquisition. This being the case, REEP's protest merely anticipates what it considers improper action by the agency, namely, award to Worldwide. We recognize that it could be argued that the failure to exclude a firm with an alleged conflict of interest from a competition is a defect in a solicitation that should be challenged prior to the submission of proposals or quotations. See 4 C.F.R. § 21.2(a)(1) (2002). Solicitation provisions, however, are not generally the vehicle for excluding firms with a conflict of interest from competing for award; rather, conflicts are generally handled on a case-by-case basis without public notice through the solicitation. Moreover, treating protests such as this one as premature may avoid unnecessary litigation, since the allegedly conflicted firm may not be the eventual

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