Tag Archives: bids and proposals

GAO to VA: Read the Whole Stinkin’ Proposal

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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.”

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Price Realism: GAO Rejects “Incumbent Knows Best” Argument

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When an incumbent contractor loses a follow-on contract to a lower-priced competitor, the incumbent sometimes complains that after successfully performing the contract, it “knows what it takes” to get the job done, and that based on its experience, the competitor’s price is unrealistically low.

It is a perfectly logical argument, with one big problem: it can be very difficult to convince the GAO that an incumbent knows better than the procuring agency what constitutes a realistic fixed price for a contract.  The difficulty in succeeding with such an “incumbent knows best” price realism protest is demonstrated in a recently released GAO bid protest decision, Resource Ltd., B-406492, B-406492.2 (June 6, 2012).

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Proposal Ambiguity Torpedoes Contractor’s Bid

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Sometimes, unintentional ambiguities can lead to a few laughs.  One website, for instance, reports funny ambiguous newspaper headlines, such as “Kids Make Nutritious Snacks” and “Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant.”

When it comes to bids and proposals, however, ambiguities are no laughing matter.  As one contractor discovered in a recent GAO bid protest decision, a procuring agency may reject a contractor’s bid if it contains an ambiguity regarding a material solicitation requirement.

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GAO Protests: Unfair “Pop Quiz” Leads to Sustain Decision

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My least favorite college class was a physics course, supposedly for non-majors, which I took only to meet my graduation requirements.  One week, we spent a great deal of class time going over some rather complex material in the main textbook.  The following week, the professor gave a pop quiz–on completely different material, which I (along with many of my classmates) had not read very closely.  Needless to say, I thought the whole thing was rather unfair.

A recent GAO bid protest decision brought back those unpleasant memories.  In Rocamar Engineering Services, Inc., B-406514 (June 20, 2012), an agency gave an extra test to an unprepared contractor–and only that contractor.  Fortunately, unlike my grade in that physics course, the result of this unfair pop quiz was overturned, by way of a sustained GAO protest.

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FedConnect Mistake Sinks Contractor’s Bid

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I’m no technology whiz by any stretch, but when I worked on Capitol Hill before law school, my boss made me the office systems administrator, responsible for troubleshooting computer and tech issues.  Occasionally, I had to call in outside help, but most of the time I relied on that old standby, control-alt-delete, to “fix” my colleague’s computers.  Once, when I was in a meeting, a colleague called me back to the office in a panic, because the copier wasn’t working.  The problem, which I quickly diagnosed: it wasn’t plugged in.

I bring this up because sometimes, even very smart people like my Capitol Hill colleagues are not so great with technology.  The same is true in the government contracting arena.  No matter how wonderful a proposal a contractor writes, it does no good if technology problems prevent it from reaching the procuring agency on time.  As agencies turn more and more to higher-tech  methods for obtaining contractor’s proposals, like the FedConnect system, it is critical that contractors understand how the technology works, as one contractor learned the hard way in a recent GAO bid protest decision.

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GAO Protests: Incumbent Contractor Rejected as Technically Unacceptable

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Remember the “Dan & Dave” commercials for Reebok?  In advance of the 1992 Olympics, the shoe company launched an advertising campaign centered on the competition between two American decathletes, Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson.  At the time, O’Brien seemed like better bet–he was the reigning world champion and held a new world record in the sport.  Reebok’s campaign fizzled, however, when O’Brien missed the pole vault at the Olympic trials and failed to qualify for the U.S. team.  It didn’t matter that O’Brien was possibly the best decathlete in the world.  He didn’t do well at the trials, so he didn’t get a spot on the team.

If you are an incumbent contractor, Dan O’Brien’s story is worth keeping in mind.  As demonstrated in a recent GAO bid protest decision, if you write a technically unacceptable proposal, it doesn’t matter how well you have performed on the incumbent contract.  The agency can–and will–disqualify an incumbent contractor for writing an unacceptable proposal.

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Beware of Boilerplate: Unnecessary Certification Sinks Bid

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It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.  When 4Granite, Inc. submitted a bid in response to a Corps of Engineers IFB, 4Granite included a document not required by the government, titled “Company Information and F.A.R. and D.F.A.R. compliance statements.”  In the compliance statement, 4Granite pledged to comply with the clause at FAR 52.212-1 and the clauses at FAR 52.212-3 through 5.

The problem?  Those clauses weren’t in the IFB.

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