GAO recently sustained a bid protest to a General Services Administration (GSA) acquisition for warehousing and deployment services at the strategic national stockpile–a literal “stockpile” of the nation’s largest supply of critical pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and supplies, and emergency supplies. GSA issued this solicitation and conducted this acquisition on behalf of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), an operating agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But according to GAO, in evaluating offerors under its solicitation, here, GSA failed to provide offerors with the meaningful discussions required by the FAR. So, GAO sustained the protest and recommended that GSA: reopen the procurement to conduct meaningful discussions with offerors, accept and evaluate revised proposals after doing so, and make a new award decision on that basis.
Continue readingTag Archives: weaknesses
Protester Goes Seven for Seven in Arguments Before GAO
Veterans of the bid protest process know that it’s not uncommon for a protester to make half a dozen arguments and prevail on only one.
Know what that’s called? A win. But when a protester goes seven for seven, you have to tip your cap.
Continue readingGAO: Proposal Strengths Must be Based on Solicitation Criteria, Not Merely Benefit to Government
Agencies often find unanticipated, innovative content in offerors’ proposals. And unsurprisingly, those proposals are often the ones selected for award. But a recent GAO decision reminds us that all strengths an agency assigns must be supported by the stated evaluation criteria.
In other words, the solicitation must thoroughly inform offerors of these evaluation criteria, and the agency must equally evaluate offerors under them. An offeror’s proposal should not get extra credit for proposing things that are not anticipated by or logically encompassed in the solicitation.
Continue readingWeaknesses Cannot Be Assigned Unequally, GAO Confirms
An unequal evaluation can get an agency into hot water and force a reevaluation, as GAO has stated before. But with agencies entitled to broad discretion in their evaluations, how do you know what constitutes unequal evaluation?
Some GAO opinions can leave you wondering where the line is drawn, but a recent GAO decision provides an easy-to-understand example involving a requirement to train personnel under certain regulations. In that case, the GAO held that it was improper for the agency to assign a weakness to the protester for omitting a discussion of certain regulations as applied to its training program, while failing to assign weaknesses to several awardees whose proposals also omitted this discussion.
SSA vs. SSEB: Protest Sustained Where Ratings Changes Weren’t Reasonable
In a best value acquisition, the final decision is typically made by a Source Selection Authority. But what happens when the SSA disagrees with the ratings assigned by the evaluators, such as a Source Selection Evaluation Board?
The SSA has a good deal of discretion, but that discretion isn’t unlimited. In a recent decision, GAO sustained a protest where the SSA’s disagreements with the SSEB didn’t appear to be reasonable.
Contractor Proposes Unavailable Key Employee, GAO Sustains Protest
A contractor’s proposal to use an unavailable employee to fill a key personnel position caused the GAO to sustain a competitor’s protest.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO concluded that a offeror failed to satisfy a material solicitation requirement concerning key personnel where the employee included in the proposal left the offeror’s employment–and the agency knew that the employee was not available to perform the contract.
GAO: Agency Discussions Need Not Include “New” Weakness
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency did not fail to provide an offeror with meaningful discussions about an evaluated weakness in the offeror’s staffing approach because the aspect of the staffing plan deemed to be a weakness was introduced in the offeror’s final proposal revision, or FPR.