Typically, agencies will provide a handful of evaluation factors, sometime more, in a solicitation. Common evaluation factors are technical, past performance, and cost. A recent protest decision looked at a solicitation that contained separate factors for 1) offeror’s technical capability and 2) staffing and management approach. The question was, can an agency combine its evaluation for two different factors? If it does mix the two evaluation criteria, is that enough to sustain a protest?
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Transformers: Offerors in Disguise – GAO Sustains Protest Regarding Evaluation Based on Separate Offers from the same Offeror
Without wanting to make the audience feel too old, I was not yet born when Transformers was a pop culture phenomenon. Still, it’s a simple but fun concept: robots that transform to and from cool vehicles. Regardless of what form they take, they are still the same character.
The same cannot be said of government contractors submitting an initial bid for the first phase of a solicitation as a prime contractor and a bid as a member of a contractor teaming agreement (CTA) for the second phase of said solicitation. While the same company is involved, the bids are treated as being from different entities. Such was the case in the GAO matter of Softrams, LLC, B-419927.4 (Feb. 7, 2022).
Continue readingCan’t Pad Key Personnel Résumé, Says GAO
GAO recently sustained a protest to the evaluation of an awardee’s management approach based on a material misrepresentation in its proposed key personnel experience (that the protester found on Linkedin, no less). And GAO found the misrepresentation was material because the agency relied upon it, and it significantly impacted the agency’s evaluation. Let’s take a closer look.
Continue readingGAO Sustains Protest, Reminds Government It Must Show Its Work
If a teacher has told you once, they’ve told you a thousand times, show your work. That was GAO’s reminder to GSA in its decision in Hoover Properties, B-418844 (Sept. 28, 2020). In the case, GAO sustained a protest from property management company Hoover Properties, the non-awardee of a GSA request for lease proposal (RLP), in which Hoover argued that GSA failed to provide adequate documentation for its evaluation.
Continue readingPersistence Pays: GAO Sustains After Fourth Protest Due to Unreasonably Narrow Corrective Action
In its recent decision, Peraton, Inc., B-416916.8, et al. (Aug. 3, 2020), GAO ultimately sustained a protest that the Department of State’s corrective action was unreasonably limited—recommending the protester be reimbursed its protest costs in the process.
For more on how it reached this result, buckle up! Because it was a long road for the protester to reach the GAO sustain.
Continue readingGAO Awards Costs After Agency Unduly Delays Corrective Action
GAO recently awarded the reasonable costs of filing and pursuing a protest to an agency’s evaluation and award decision, after finding that the agency unduly delayed corrective action in response to a clearly meritorious protest.
Let’s take a look.
Continue readingGAO: Proposal Evaluations Can’t Take Place in La La Land
Wouldn’t it be swell to simply erase those less-than-flattering moments from your past merely by deleting them? For instance, what if your biographer simply omitted any mention of you being excited for and seeing the apparently horrible new Cats movie?
Does erasing a historical fact–such as an unfavorable detail from a proposal–mean that it never happened?
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