It’s the day after you submitted an offer for a big government contract, when one of your key personnel walks into your office. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for me,” she says, “but I’ve decided to take an opportunity elsewhere.”

Employee turnover is a part of doing business. But for prospective government contractors, it can be a nightmare. As highlighted in a recent GAO bid protest, a offeror was excluded from the award simply because one of its proposed key personnel resigned after the proposal was submitted.

It’s a harsh result, but it highlights that contractors must not only attract key personnel—they must also retain them.

At issue in URS Federal Services, B-413034 et al. (July 25, 2016), was a solicitation issued under the Navy’s SeaPort-e multiple-award IDIQ contract vehicle, which sought engineering and technical services at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. Proposals would be evaluated on a best value basis, under three factors: technical, past performance, and cost. The technical factor—the most important factor under the evaluation criteria—had three subfactors, relating to an offeror’s technical understanding/capability/approach, workforce, and management plan.

The workforce subfactor consisted of two elements. Under the staffing plan element, the Navy would evaluate “the degree to which the Offeror’s [sic] plan to support all areas of the [statement of work] with qualified people based on the staffing plan/matrix, as well as the availability of those individuals.” Though the RFP required offerors to propose 35 full-time equivalent personnel, it did permit offerors to propose “pending hire” personnel where the contractor had not yet identified a firm candidate for a position. The key personnel résumés element, then, was to be evaluated to assess the degree to which résumés of key personnel meet the pertinent qualifications. The RFP, moreover, required résumés to be provided that best demonstrated offeror’s ability to successfully meet the task order requirements.

URS Federal Services, Inc. submitted a proposal. URS submitted the resume of a certain individual (who was not identified by name) to fulfill a key role as a senior software engineer. The individual in question was proposed to work only half as much as a full-time employee, or “0.5 FTE” in human resources lingo.

After URS submitted its proposal, the proposed senior software engineer resigned. URS’s proposal was evaluated as being technically unacceptable, due to an unacceptable rating under the workforce subfactor. Specifically, the Navy faulted URS because, in part, it proposed to fulfill 0.5 FTE of the senior software engineer key personnel requirement with the individual who had resigned from URS after its proposal was submitted.

URS protested this finding of unacceptability, arguing that this person’s departure was not URS’s fault. It further said that this personnel substitution was simply a “ministerial action” under the contract, and should not have been assigned a deficiency.

GAO explained that when an agency learns that a key person is no longer available, “the agency has two options: either evaluate the proposal as submitted, where the proposal would be rejected as technically unacceptable for failing to meet a material requirement, or reopen discussions to permit the offeror to correct this deficiency.” Therefore, GAO wrote, “URS’s submission of a key person who was not, in fact, available reasonably supported the assignment of an unacceptable rating to the firm’s proposal.”

GAO also rejected URS’s argument that the substitution of its personnel was a “ministerial act” under the contract:

[I]t is apparent from the RFP that the replacement of key personnel was within the discretion of, and subject to the approval of, the contracting officer. More importantly, as discussed above, the submission of key personnel résumés was a material requirement of the RFP, and the unavailability of the identified key personnel reasonably formed the basis of an unacceptable rating. Likewise, and contrary to URS’s contention, the record reasonably supports the assignment of a deficiency to URS’s proposal.

GAO held that the unavailability of one of its proposed key personnel was a material failure by URS to meet one of the RFP’s requirements. The Navy reasonably assigned URS a deficiency and found its proposal to be unacceptable. GAO denied URS’s protest.

Losing a key employee can be disruptive to a government contractor’s mission and its morale. But as URS Federal Services shows, losing a key employee can also cost a contractor an award. Where a solicitation requires the identification of key personnel, offerors should do their very best to propose personnel who can—and will—be available to perform the work.