Tag Archives: bids and proposals

GAO: Vague Proposal Deserved “Unacceptable” Score

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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.

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GAO: Agency Improperly Adjusted Contractor’s Proposed Level of Effort

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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.

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Email Attachment Problem, Spelling Mistake Doom Proposal

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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.

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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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