GAO: Agency “Unreasonable” In Denying Site Visit An agency must accommodate a reasonable request for a site visit so that a contractor may have an opportunity to compete for work, the Government Accountability Office ruled. GAO sustained a protest by Dellew Corp. over an operation and maintenance contract at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research center in Newport, OR. On Jan. 11 NOAA’s contract specialist informed Dellew that site visits would be scheduled for Jan. 17, 18 or 19. But the contract specialist was out of the office beginning Jan. 12 and did not return Dellew’s messages until the seventeenth. On the eighteenth the agency notified Dellew that its site visit was scheduled for the next day. Dellew protested that its executives, based in Hawaii and Washington state, could not get to Oregon on such short notice, but NOAA refused to re-schedule the visit. In sustaining the protest, GAO found “that the agency did not act reasonably with regard to the scheduling of Dellew’s site visit, and that under the circumstances here, this deprived Dellew of an opportunity to compete intelligently and on relatively equal terms.” It urged NOAA to reopen the competition. The case is Matter of: Dellew Corporation, File: B-299408.