Lapsed SAM registration is a hot protest topic these days. In this case, the protester argued the awardee hadn’t maintained its registration after submitting its proposal. Luckily for the awardee, GAO found the argument was untimely.
Zolon PCS II, Polaris Consulting Group, Inc., GAO B-420745. 2
- Protests – The agency awarded two contracts for administrative support services. Two disappointed offerors protested.
- Premium Pay – The agency assessed a strength to one of the awardee’s technical proposals for paying a premium to employees with security clearance. One of the protesters objected to this strength. The protester reasoned the RFP prohibited offerors from submitting price information in their technical proposals. The protester argued the agency should have disregarded the premium pay, not assessed a strength for it. But GAO found the proposal only prohibited offerors from proposing labor rates; it did not prohibit offerors from including a specified percentage of a premium pay to be added to a labor rate. Without the labor rate, the specified percentage of premium did not constitute price information.
- Latent Ambiguity – The protester argued that if the agency expected offerors to include details about premium pay in their technical proposals, then the solicitation was latently ambiguous. GAO didn’t agree. The solicitation required offerors to describe their strategy for retaining employees. Nothing in the solicitation prohibited offerors from including information about premium pay as part of this strategy.
- Disparate Treatment Re Premium Pay– Both protesters argued the agency disparately evaluated proposals concerning premium pay for employees with clearances. GAO didn’t see it. The agency reasonably found the awardees had provided more detail on how clearances factored into payment.
- Disparate Treatment Re Transition – Both protesters alleged disparate treatment with respect to the evaluation of the transition subfactor. But GAO found the differences in ratings stemmed from substantive differences in the proposals.
- Relevance of Past Performance – One of the protesters complained the agency unreasonably determined that some of its past performance references were not relevant. GAO didn’t see a problem. The protester’s references focused on IT support and not the type of administrative support contemplated by the solicitation.
- Awardee’s Past Performance – One of the protesters contended the agency had unreasonably credited one of the awardees with past performance. The awardee had submitted past performance from one of its subcontractors. But this subcontractor had performed the past contracts as part of a joint venture. The protester argued the agency had wrongly attributed the past performance of the joint venture to the awardee. GAO, however, found the agency had only attributed the percentage of work the subcontractor performed for the joint venture; the agency had not attributed all the joint venture’s work to the awardee.
- Lapsed SAM Registration – The awardee’s SAM registration lapsed in between proposal submission and award. One of the protesters argued the agency should have found this awardee nonresponsbile due to failure to maintain an active SAM Registration. GAO found the argument was untimely. The protester had only raised this argument in a supplemental protest. But the protester had all the information it needed for this protest argument when the agency announced the award.
Protester Zolon is represented by Aron C. Beezley, Patrick R. Quigley, and Gabrielle Sprio of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. Protester Poloris is represented by Roger V. Abbott and Adam Bartolanzo fo Miles & Stockbridge P.C. Intervenor LMR is represented by Willaim A. Shook of the Law Office of William A. Shook PLLC. The agency is represented by Daniel Lamb and Mary Clements McKenney of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. GAO attorneys Raymond Richards and John Sorrenti participated in the decision.
–Case summary by Craig LaChance, Senior Editor
