Decision Released: USAID O&M Services to Support IT Infrastructure and Systems protest denial

B-422235.5, B-422235.6

Digest

Protest that agency’s waiver of organizational conflicts of interest is invalid and unreasonable is denied when the waiver is consistent with the requirements of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

Discussion

In its various protest submissions, NTT contends USAID failed to reasonably consider Salient’s alleged OCIs, and, as a result, improperly waived them. As discussed below, we find no basis to sustain any of NTT’s protest allegations.

We view the protester’s challenge to USAID’s OCI waiver to be the threshold issue in this protest, and we address it first. In this regard, the FAR requires that contracting officials avoid, neutralize, or mitigate potential significant conflicts of interest to prevent an unfair competitive advantage or the existence of conflicting roles that might impair a contractor’s objectivity. FAR 9.504(a), 9.505. As an alternative to avoiding, neutralizing, or mitigating an OCI, an agency head or designee, not below the level of the …

Decision

NTT DATA Services Federal Government, LLC (NTT), of Herndon, Virginia, protests the agency’s decision to allow Salient CRGT, Inc. (Salient), of Fairfax, Virginia, to compete for the award of a contract under request for quotations (RFQ) No. 72MC1023Q00002, issued by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for operations and maintenance services in support of the USAID’s information technology (IT) infrastructure and systems. The protester argues that Salient has unmitigable organizational conflicts of interest (OCIs), the agency unreasonably decided not to exclude Salient from the competition, and the agency failed to properly execute a waiver of Salient’s OCIs.

We deny the protest.

Read the decision here.

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