Joint venture partner or subcontractor?  An offeror’s teaming agreement for the CIO-SP3 GWAC wasn’t clear about which tasks would be performed by joint venture partners and which would be performed by subcontractors–and the agency was within its discretion to eliminate the offeror as a result.

A recent GAO bid protest decision demonstrates that when a solicitation calls for information about teaming relationships, it is important to clearly establish which type of teaming relationship the offeror intends to establish, and draft the teaming agreement and proposal accordingly.

Here at SmallGovCon, my colleagues and I discuss teaming agreements and joint ventures frequently.  As important as teaming is for many contractors, one might think that the FAR would be overflowing with information about joint ventures and prime/subcontractor teams.  Not so.  Most of the legal guidance related to joint ventures and teams is found in the SBA’s regulations.  The FAR itself is much less detailed.  FAR 9.601 provides this definition of a “Contractor Team Arrangement”:

“Contractor team arrangement,” as used in this subpart, means an arrangement in which—

(1) Two or more companies form a partnership or joint venture to act as a potential prime contractor; or

(2) A potential prime contractor agrees with one or more other companies to have them act as its subcontractors under a specified Government contract or acquisition program.

So, under the FAR, a Contractor Team Arrangement, or CTA, may take two forms: a joint venture (or other partnership) under FAR 9.601(1), or a prime/subcontractor teaming arrangement under FAR 9.601(2).  The details of how to form each arrangement are left largely to guidance established by the SBA.

Let’s get back to the GAO protest at hand.  The protest, NextGen Consulting, Inc., B-413104.4 (Nov. 16, 2016) involved the “ramp on” solicitation for the NIH’s major CIO-SP3 small business GWAC IDIQ.  The solicitation included detailed instructions regarding CTAs.  Specifically, the solicitation provided that if an offeror wanted its teammates to be considered as part of the evaluation process, the offeror’s team needed to be in the form prescribed by FAR 9.601(1), that is, a joint venture or partnership.  In contrast, the solicitation provided that, for prime/subcontractor teams under FAR 9.601(2), only the prime offeror would be evaluated.

NextGen Consulting, Inc. submitted a proposal as a CTA.  NextGen identified three teammates: WhiteSpace Enterprise Corporation, Twin Imaging Technology Inc., and the University of Arizona.  The teaming agreement specified that NextGen and WhiteSpace were teaming under FAR 9.601(1), whereas Twin Imaging and the University were teaming with the parties under FAR 9.601(2).

The teaming agreement identified “primary delivery areas” for each teammate.  With respect to the 10 task areas required under the solicitation, NextGen was to handle overall contract management and related responsibilities for task areas 2 and 4-10, WhiteSpace was assigned task area 1, Twin Imaging was assigned task area 3, and the University was assigned task areas 1, 4, 5, and 10.  In its proposal, NextGen referred to the capabilities of “Team NextGen” for all 10 task areas.

The NIH found that because the teaming agreement distributed the task areas without regard for whether the teaming relationship fell under FAR 9.601(1) or FAR 9.601(2), it was impossible for the agency to distinguish between the two types of teammates.  The NIH concluded that the resulting confusion about the roles and responsibilities of the parties made it impossible for the NIH to evaluate the proposal in accordance with the solicitation’s requirements–which, of course, called for the evaluation only of FAR 9.601(1) teammates.  The NIH eliminated NextGen from the competition.

NextGen filed a bid protest with the GAO, challenging its exclusion.  NextGen argued that the NIH unreasonably excluded its proposal based upon a misintepretation of the teaming agreement.  NextGen contended that, taken as a whole, the teaming agreement was clear.  NextGen pointed out that the teaming agreement specifically identified itself and WhiteSpace as FAR 9.601(1) teammates, and specifically identified Twin Imaging and the University as FAR 9.601(2) teammates.

The GAO disagreed.  It noted that “the solicitation required that a CTA offeror submit a CTA document to clearly designate a team lead and identify specific duties and responsibilities.”  Contrary to NextGen’s contentions, “[t]he record shows that as a whole, NextGen’s CTA provided conflicting information as to who the team lead was, and failed to clearly identify the specific duties and responsibilities of the team members.”  GAO pointed out that NextGen’s proposal used the term “Team NextGen,” which “did not provide any indication as to what the specific duties and responsibilities of the team members were.”

Joint venture agreements and prime/subcontractor teams are very different arrangements.  As the NextGen Consulting protest demonstrates, it is important for an offeror to understand what type of teaming arrangements it is proposing, and draft its teaming documents and proposal accordingly.