Updated December 11, 2023
With little fanfare, the first post-award challenge related to T4NG2 was recently shot down (details of that protest are provided below) but Joint Venture Primes on any upcoming IDIQ bid, (to include IHT 2.0, SPRUCE, etc) will and should be watching closely as a fresh batch of T4NG2 Protests are expected to be filed with GAO and/or the Court of Federal Claims very soon.
Why will and should these protests be followed so closely?
With one of the largest IT budgets in the Federal sector and a centralized funding activity, the level of competition for Department of Veterans Affairs contracts remains arguably the fiercest and most competitive in the entire Federal IT and consulting sector. Period.
While it has been relatively quiet since the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the Prime awardee list for the $60.7B VA T4NG2 IDIQ Prime six weeks ago, no one should confuse the lack of GAO filings with a lack of activity. Unsuccessful bidders have been precluded thus far from filing protests until the official debriefings take place, but with the first wave of debriefs on the near horizon, an onslaught of protests is expected to follow. The extra time between award and debrief has only given potential protestors more time to prepare their arguments, and with the prospect for many major VA partners (and key subcontractors) to be shut out of this important $60.7B IT services contract for 10 years, the level of scrutiny will be unmatched.
The rationale for the forthcoming challenges will vary greatly and we will not attempt to cover them all here, but a primary argument will center around the scoring and how so many large firms made the final cut. Booz Allen Hamilton (a named Prime awardee on T4NG2), and a top IT and consulting partner to Veterans Affairs, was so concerned about the way the RFP scoring was structured, that they went so far as to file a pre-award protest with the courts, which they agreed to have dismissed after they received an award.
However, the more interesting and broadly applicable set of challenges may focus on the size status and eligibility requirements of the many Joint Venture awardees. Emboldened by a recent decision whereby the government sided with a Protestor that alleged that a vendor was not eligible for the subject Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) set aside because its SBA’s Mentor Protege Joint Venture agreement did not comply with SBA’s regulations at 13 C.F.R. § 128.402, there has been a lot of industry discussion related to this topic. The one key takeaway for joint ventures on any future IDIQ bids is to revisit their operating agreement to ensure that the regulations are met, with the managing member maintaining proper control.
OrangeSlices will be tracking these activities closely and we will share details of any actions as they are made available.
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Posted November 29, 2023
Protest Dismissal Language
“November 6, 2023 – MicroTechnologies LLC filed a protest alleging that Zetta Solutions, LLC (Zetta) is not a proper Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) joint venture. The Contracting Officer (CO) forwarded the protest to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA).
On November 20, 2023, OHA ordered the Protestor to show cause, no later than November 27, 2023, why the protest should not be dismissed for lack of specificity. OHA explained that, under applicable regulations, a proper SDVOSB status protest must include “[s]pecific allegations supported by credible evidence that the [challenged] joint venture does not meet the VOSB or SDVOSB eligibility requirements listed in [13 C.F.R.] part 128”. (Order at 1, quoting 13 C.F.R. § 134.1005(a)(2).) A nonspecific protest will be dismissed.
OHA noted that the challenged concern, Zetta, is a joint venture between GigaTECH, LLC and its SBA-approved mentor, Sierra7, Inc. Although Protestor questioned whether Zetta is an eligible SDVOSB joint venture, Protestor did not contend that GigaTECH, LLC, the protégé member of the joint venture, is not an SDVOSB. (Id.) Nor did Protestor advance any reason to believe that Zetta is non-compliant with SDVOSB joint venture requirements set forth in 13 C.F.R. part 128. (Id.) Protestor did not respond to OHA’s Order.
By failing to respond to OHA’s Order to Show Cause, Protestor essentially concedes that its protest was nonspecific. E.g., VSBC Protest of Terrestris LLC, SBA No. VSBC-269-P (2023). Furthermore, a party’s failure to comply with an OHA order may, by itself, be grounds for dismissal.
For these reasons, the protest is DISMISSED. This is the final decision of the U.S. Small Business Administration.”
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