This post-award protest challenged the Navy’s evaluation of technical proposals and award of an IT support services contract. NexGen Data Systems argued that the agency unreasonably evaluated the awardee’s technical capabilities and unfairly assessed NexGen’s own technical understanding. GAO denied, finding that the significant strength assessed to the awardee’s technical capability and the weakness assessed to NexGen’s technical understanding were warranted.
NexGen Data Systems, Inc., GAO, B-423209.2; B-423209.3
- Background. The Navy issued an RFP for IT support services focused on transitioning from on-premises data center hosting to commercial cloud environments. The procurement was set aside for small businesses under the SeaPort-Next Generation IDIQ contracts. NexGen Data Systems protested after the Navy awarded the task order to Modus21, LLC, arguing the agency improperly evaluated both companies’ technical proposals.
- Technical Capability Evaluation – NexGen challenged the agency’s assignment of a significant strength to Modus21’s proposal under the technical capability factor. The agency awarded this strength based on Modus21’s demonstrated experience with business process re-engineering across Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, while the RFP only required experience with one category. GAO found the evaluation reasonable, noting that experience across all three categories exceeded requirements and provided a considerable advantage to the government.
- Awardee’s Weakness – NextGen argued that the agency unreasonably concluded a weakness assessed to Modus21 under the technical capability factor only presented a moderate risk. However, GAO found that the agency reasonably concluded that the weaknesses presented only a nominal risk due to related experience that mitigated the deficiencies.
- Technical Understanding Weakness – The agency assigned a weakness to NexGen’s proposal for failing to demonstrate understanding of balancing cloud costs with labor required to sustain systems over time. NexGen argued this constituted an unstated evaluation criterion, but GAO disagreed. The RFP explicitly stated the agency’s “ultimate goal of balancing cloud spend and the labor required to sustain the system over time,” making this a stated evaluation consideration. While NexGen’s proposal mentioned reducing both cloud and labor costs separately, it failed to demonstrate understanding of how these costs would be balanced to control long-term expenditures, making the weakness assignment reasonable.
- Missed Strengths – NexGen alleged the agency failed to assign five strengths to its technical understanding proposal. GAO found that three of these alleged strengths relied on an unapproved tool that cannot be used in the environment where the agency operates. The agency reasonably determined that proposing an unavailable tool does not demonstrate sufficient technical understanding to warrant strength assignments. For the remaining alleged strengths, NexGen failed to demonstrate that the agency’s evaluation was unreasonable. Even if one overlooked strength existed, NexGen could not show competitive prejudice since Modus21’s proposal would have remained technically superior overall.
The protester is represented by Katherine B. Burrows, Tracey L. Pruiett, Daniel J. Figuenick III, Ryan J. Boonstra, and Kelly A. Kirchgasser of PilieroMazza PLLC. The intervenor, Modus21, LLC, is represented by Richard J. Vacura, Steve Cave, and Lauren J. Horneffer of King & Spalding LLP. The government is represented by Nicole D. Bryson and Harold W. Askins III of the Navy. GAO attorneys Nathaniel S. Canfield and Evan D. Wesser participated in the decision.
