The firm successfully protested to the GAO the VA’s award of a $23 million solar project in Las Vegas to R.E.M. Construction Co. The project was to be awarded by the VA on the basis of price and technical considerations deemed most advantageous to the government. After the firm’s client, SPINT, submitted the second lowest priced proposal, the VA awarded the project to R.E.M., with a higher priced proposal than SPINT, ostensibly because of R.E.M.’s superior technical rating.
In the fall of 2011, the firm protested the award arguing the VA improperly evaluated SPINT’s technical proposal. The VA took immediate corrective action and re-evaluated the proposals. After the VA’s re-evaluation, the project was again awarded to R.E.M in March 2012. At that time, the VA failed to notify SPINT of the re-award and also did not post notice of the re-award on FedBizOpps. After SPINT received word of the re-ward to R.E.M. in May 2012, it requested a debriefing from the VA, which the VA refused to provide. The firm then protested the re-award, once again challenging the VA’s evaluation of SPINT’s proposal. In response, the VA filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that SPINT was notified of the re-award via e-mail in March 2012, and therefore its protest two months later was untimely. The firm defeated the motion to dismiss with a novel argument of the sufficiency of electronic notice, and then eventually supplemented its protest to challenge the VA’s utter failure to conduct a tradeoff analysis of all of the responsive proposals, as is required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations.
In a published decision, the GAO determined that the VA unreasonably evaluated SPINT’s proposal and fundamentally failed to perform a best-value tradeoff analysis. Accordingly, the GAO recommended that the VA re-evaluate all of the proposals, properly document its evaluation, perform a proper tradeoff analysis, and reimburse SPINT for the fees it incurred pursuing the protest.
A copy of the published decision can be viewed here.
GAO File No. B-406024.4
Counsel: David S. Demian and Christopher R. Sillari