GAO bid protest decisions, commentary on GAO bid protest regulations, and related topics.
Michael Jackson famously bought the publishing rights to most of the Beatles’ songs, but purchasing the Beatles’ music didn’t mean that Jackson could claim to have appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
As the GAO recently held, a similar principle applies in government contracting: simply buying another company’s government contract does not necessarily entitle the new contractor to lay claim to the other company’s experience.
During the NFL’s recent replacement referee debacle, the rules of the game sometimes seemed to be in flux. San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh, for instance, convinced the replacement refs to give him two extra challenges by playing dumb about how the challenge process works. But with the “real” referees back on the field, NFL teams now know that they once again need to play by the rules.
When it comes to proposals, contractors, too, need to play by the rules. An agency solicitation sets forth the ground rules of the competition, and varying from those stated rules can result in an unacceptable offer–as one contractor recently discovered when it attempted to amend the solicitation’s pricing table.
Politicians love vagueness. It’s easy for a candidate to promise broad generalities like lower taxes, a stronger military, better schools, or a free pony in the backyard for every American child (okay, I made that last one up). It’s a lot more difficult to provide specifics about how all those wonderful things will be achieved.
Government contractors, too, can be tempted to rely on vague declarations in proposal-writing. After all, it’s a lot easier than addressing the nuts-and-bolts of the procuring agency’s needs. But as one contractor recently discovered in a GAO bid protest decision, a vague proposal may also be an unacceptable proposal.
In today’s tight budgetary climate, performance-based acquisitions and similar techniques to maximize efficiency seem to be on the rise. Performance-based acquisitions can offer unique opportunities for contractors to develop innovative approaches to meet an agency’s needs while minimizing costs.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, one offeror proposed fewer labor hours–and a different labor mix–than the awardee, resulting in a lower overall price. Nevertheless, without explanation, the procuring agency in question unilaterally raised the offeror’s labor hours to match the hours proposed by the awardee, resulting in a corresponding increase in evaluated price. The GAO was none too pleased with the agency’s action, sustaining the offeror’s bid protest.
Our firm experienced a strange email outage yesterday: I could receive incoming email messages through my Outlook account, but anything I tried to send bounced back. After several bounce backs, I began emailing clients and other contacts from a gmail account (if you were on the receiving end, my apologies for the temporary lack of a professional email address, but it’s better than ignoring you, right?)
All this is to say that I can sympathize with McKesson Technologies, which experienced technical difficulties (as well as an unfortunate spelling problem) when trying to submit a proposal by email. Although the agency awarded McKesson the contract anyway, a competitor filed a GAO bid protest, and that was the end of McKesson’s award.
File this one in the “A for effort” category. In a GAO bid protest, a contractor recently complained that it was unfairly excluded from a competition because the gloves sought by the agency were not “clothing” covered by a domestic preference law. Not surprisingly, the GAO’s response was, “nice try.”
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.”