GAO recently held in ATA Aerospace, LLC, B-417427 (July 2, 2019) that agencies are required to explain how offerors’ proposed labor hours and prices are, or are not, in line with historical data from predecessor contracts when conducting cost realism evaluations.
When an agency performs a cost realism evaluation under a solicitation involving significant labor costs, the agency must evaluate offerors’ proposed rates of employee compensation, not just offerors’ fully burdened labor rates. In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency erred by basing its realism evaluation on offerors’ fully burdened labor […]
In conducting a cost realism evaluation, an agency was entitled to use an offeror’s historic approved indirect rates and current incumbent direct labor rates to upwardly adjust the offeror’s evaluated cost, in a case where the offeror’s proposed rates were significantly lower. The GAO recently held that an agency did not err by adjusting a […]
An agency’s cost realism evaluation was improper because the agency “mechanically” compared an offeror’s proposed staffing to an undisclosed government estimate. In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that it was improper for the agency to apply its own estimates for labor hours and costs without considering the protester’s unique technical approach.
As part of federal contracting, the total price of each award is disclosed. This is of course a great way to promote trust and transparency in federal contracting and in the handling of taxpayer dollars. But it also leads to other contractors scrutinizing an awardee’s price and thinking one of two things: (1) “That price […]
Price realism—the evaluation of whether a proposed price is too low—is a method the government may use to evaluate fixed price offers to ensure that offerors are proposing pricing that reflects an understanding of the work required by the solicitation. Prices that are unrealistically low can result in proposal elimination. This means price realism is […]
GAO recently awarded the reasonable costs of filing and pursuing a protest to an agency’s evaluation and award decision, after finding that the agency unduly delayed corrective action in response to a clearly meritorious protest. Let’s take a look.