An alleged adulterous relationship between a Navy program manager and a contractor support employee did not provide a basis to challenge the Navy’s award to a different contractor.
The GAO’s recent decision in Harris IT Services Corporation, B-408546.2, B-408546.3 (Oct. 31, 2013) involved more salacious allegations than one typically encounters in a bid protest case, but the GAO’s ruling was no surprise: after all, the awardee was not the company employing the allegedly unfaithful employee.
Unbalanced pricing can justify the exclusion of a contractor’s proposal, even if the contractor alleges that the pricing represents its actual cost structure.
As demonstrated in a recent GAO bid protest decision, an agency is justified in rejecting a proposal on the basis of unbalanced pricing when the agency reasonably concludes that the unbalanced pricing poses an unacceptable risk to the government.
It sounds like a tale from Bizarro World: under a recent Department of Homeland Security solicitation, a small business received a “Neutral” score for the small business participation factor, while its large competitor was awarded a “Good” score for the same factor.
One might think that the GAO would sustain a bid protest, especially because the small business in question planned to self-perform nearly two-thirds of the contract work. Think again. The GAO denied the protest, holding that under the solicitation, offerors could only receive small business participation credit for subcontracting to small businesses, not for self-performing at the prime contract level.
Earlier this week, the International Cycling Union announced that it would strip Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles, stating that overwhelming evidence existed that Armstrong had won those titles by doping. For cyclists who play by the rules, it is only fair that they not be forced to chase Armstrong’s Tour record, which he apparently achieved in an unacceptable way (and you can count me among those who think Roger Maris and Hank Aaron have pretty strong claims to baseball’s single-season and career home run marks, too).
When it comes to sporting records, comparing a clean athlete to a cheater seems unfair. Similarly, in the government contracting world, using unacceptable proposals as a basis of comparison for other proposals’ price realism is improper, according to a recent GAO bid protest decision. In Lifecycle Construction Services, LLC, B-406907 (Sept. 27, 2012), the GAO sustained the protest because of significant errors in the agency’s evaluation of the protester’s price realism–including comparing that price to the prices of three unreasonably high-priced proposals.
If you’re an eight-year-old who has recently begun the literary journey to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, avert your eyes, because here comes a major spoiler: at the end of the Harry Potter series, a grown-up Harry, now married to his pal Ron’s sister, Ginny, sends his own child off to Hogwarts. Oh, and Ron is married to Hermione, and they also have Hogwarts-bound offspring.
How do I know this culturally valuable information? Because I read to the very end of the last Harry Potter book (yes, I’m one of those people). Contrast this with the VA, which in a recent GAO bid protest case, refused to consider certain information presented by the protester because the information was contained in an exhibit to the proposal, not the narrative section. The GAO’s reaction: “read the whole stinkin’ proposal, VA.”
Past performance is a key ingredient in most competitive government procurements. Even if a contractor’s overall past performance record is excellent, a single blemish can damage the contractor’s chances of award.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, the agency relied on a single adverse past performance reference to assign the contractor a poor past performance rating–even though the contractor strongly disagreed with the adverse reference. The GAO held that there was nothing wrong with the agency’s past performance evaluation.
Is it a conflict of interest for a contractor’s former employee to evaluate his old firm’s competitive proposal? Not necessarily, according to the GAO.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, the agency’s technical evaluation board included a member who had previously worked for the winning offeror. As one might expect, this did not sit particularly well with one of the awardee’s competitors, which filed a GAO bid protest. The GAO’s ruling: there was no conflict of interest.